Withholding Information

I'm in a critique group that meets once a week and I enjoy it. I often find it very helpful. Right now I'm submitting chapters of a novel in progress to the group, and a couple of comments I got at our last meeting on that chapter started me to thinking about the power of information in writing.

One group member wanted me to reveal more about a character when we first meet her. Another wanted to know what role the "wind" was playing in the book because I'd featured the breeze in each of the previous chapters we'd looked at.

I appreciated the questions but they're not going to get what they want. Not right now, at least. The wind will be important. The character will be seen again. But for writers, "information" is the currency we buy and spend with. And we dare not give any information away for free. We are buying our readers' attention and emotional involvement, and we have to milk every last bit of purchasing power out of our information.

I don't remember where I heard it, but somewhere along the line I picked up a guideline for writing that I think is very important. "Never give the reader any more information than they absolutely have to have to understand what is happening in the story. Tell them only what they "have" to know and keep every other bit of information under wraps until it, too, has to be revealed.

That's a rule I can live with.
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