100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Don’t play the mystery game
Twelve ways to avoid making your reader hate you

You are playing the mystery game when you withhold some vital piece of information because you think the reader will hang in there until the end just to find out what it is. More likely the reader will be distracted by the unanswered question and will not pay close attention to what you write.

In On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner put it this way: “One of the most common mistakes among young writers is the idea that a story gets its power from withheld information—that is, from the writer setting the reader up and then bushwhacking him. Ungenerous fiction is first and foremost fiction in which the writer is unwilling to take the reader as an equal partner.”

Every writing teacher has read hundreds of unpublished stories that begin with something like “The package arrived at two a.m. Sammy opened it in a frenzy; he stared at its contents and smiled.” The story goes on and on, and we hear a lot about “it” or “the contents of the package.” If we stick around long enough, we discover in the last paragraph that the package contained an adorable beagle puppy.

Another common version of the mystery game occurs in the first-person story. We don’t learn until the end that the speaker is not a person at all but a 1957 nickel or an oak tree. This is silly stuff. Gardner describes it as the writer jumping out at the last minute and yelling, “Surprise!” It’s also an extremely efficient way to drive away readers.

Similarly, when writing a paper for a school assignment, bring the statement you wish to prove into the paper’s beginning, and then prove your statement. Don’t wait until you are almost finished with your paper to mention what it is you are writing about.