Against "Secrets" - How to Gain Your Reader's Trust by Friendly Plotting
A Talk by Daniel Wallace (Daniel David Wallace)
About this Talk
What would it mean to plot your story in a way that makes your reader a full collaborator and participant in your storytelling? This craft talk invites you to re-think the value of surprises, twists, frame shifts, and late reveals (anything that forces your reader to wait to experience the full story). Rather than holding back the best parts of the story until the end, this talk will help you create a story that feels warm and welcoming to your ideal readers from the start.
We'll study how to:
- give away the small mysteries (in order to shock them with the big mystery)
- force the protagonist to cope with revelations early
- replace reader confusion with clues and hints
PS the final word is "ice"