: 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

@Shelton455

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I'm a little late on the scene but I'll just mention a few things that might help.

what are the effects of intentionally omitting obvious information
from the reader for a bigger reveal later?

It's all about execution. If done poorly, without an explanation to justify this omission, it will feel gimmicky and contrived. Your reader won't appreciate it, at least if they're a discriminate reader above middle grade age.

What can be done to minimise any damage it could cause?

There's dozens of tools at your disposal to not only minimize the damage but to actually make the book more suspenseful and interesting because of your omission.

Using an unreliable narrator is one of the most useful and colorful literary devices available. Not only is it a built-in conflict generator to fuel the plot, but it completely justifies why this information would be withheld from the reader in the first place.

Structuring your story around an unreliable narrator can be fun, like puzzling out a mystery. You can establish their untrustworthiness upfront or gradually over the course of the narrative, eventually exposing them as a liar, delusional, unaware or distracted--whatever their motivation happens to be for omitting the information.

Consider Gillian Flynn's novel Gone Girl, where the two perspective characters give contradictory accounts of what happened leading up to the inciting incident (the wife's disappearance and alleged murder). The husband's perspective occurs in the present timeline of the story after the incident takes place, whereas his wife's perspective is an epistolary account of the past leading up to that event via diary entries. The reader is aware that one of these characters isn't telling the truth and the mystery and suspense gradually builds until the details of the past converge with the events of the present story timeline.

In this case, the diary is used as a framing device to reveal details about the past that happened prior to the events in the other perspective character's timeline, told through the perspective of the missing wife. As more information is gradually revealed, the reader constantly reconsiders what could have happened to her, as one potential motive after another presents itself to explain her disappearance. Did she runaway? Was she murdered? Did she kill herself? Is she crazy? Or is the husband a liar?

Using non linear story telling could allow you to reveal the process of the project's development without actually disclosing what that project is. Nesting the project details into a past time frame, for instance, wouldn't distract from the immediate story conflict. You could structure it in such a way where the reader is guessing what the project could possibly be while misdirecting them in your current timeline, or vice versa.

Misdirection and red herrings are useful tools that employ subtlety, subtext and suggestion using limited but provocative information to force the reader to make inaccurate but plausible deductions. How you structure your story, using these devices, will determine how plausible and satisfying your final reveal/twist will be to the reader.

So it all depends on execution.

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