We all know what we know. The smartest among us also know what they don’t know. These are the classic “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” in life.
You, the author, know every detail, but your reader is in the dark, except for what you purposely share or what a reader has surmised.
How you breadcrumb the path is key to the enjoyment of the story. What you withhold, equally, helps carry the story forward. People flip pages to find out what they want to know. Curiosity drives readers. This is, of course, especially true for mysteries! But it’s the same for a romance. Even though there is always a happy ending, readers love to guess how it could possibly come about. Really, it’s true of all books. Readers are waiting to figure out “what it’s all about.”
In great books, information is purposefully doled out. Pieces of information, even ones that seem wholly unrelated, eventually fit together into satisfying patterns that unlock new meaning. How you hand out information can make or break the success of your “unfolding.”
The feeling of being on a treasure hunt when reading means you want to sate this craving for good information. Because readers know this is how books work, they weigh every detail that comes their way to consider if it has profound meaning.
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