: Re: Intentionally leaving out a part of the story, for a more interesting reveal? In the story I am writing, I have a character who is working on a project and will present it to a group of

@Jamie945

Vote Up Vote Down

When I am stressed out my clear thoughts are usually taking a backseat because I am focused on whatever is stressing me out. You can try to omit the stuff by simply not explicitly talking about it:

What do I need now? I need... I need... macaroni! Yes, macaroni! That's perfect! And... Yarn! Where do I have my yarn?

or to make it a bit less hectic:

I am trying to find the materials I need. Luckily I have most of it in my kitchen: a knife, butter, my trusty old microwave and a rubber band. I feel like McGuiver when I am running back to my room with all the stuff that I need for the first stage of the project. I just hope that it will all work out the way I am imagining it so that I can start with the hot glue and the insulant material by tomorrow evening...

The effect of this is that it's obvious that your reader is not supposed to know what is happening. Some people may like this, some people may not. You will never be able to please everyone.

But you should make sure that this is not too long or at least regularly interrupted by normal scenes, for examples conversations in the pub with a few friends. Reading multiple chapters of such vague descriptions like I did here would be extremely boring and your readers would anticipate something grand.

It's already enough to have a couple paragraphs of this style to have your reader anticipate something grand - a few paragraphs of weird descriptions should yield a couple pages of important plot where these things play an important role. If it's not that important that you will talk about all the weird little details you should think about whether you really want to do something like this or just skip past it with a bit of description.

(0)

Login to post a comment!