Robyn Bavati: Read, Write, Think: Writing Class: A head of timing

When should information be revealed? How often? How soon? I give in my mind an epitome of a man bending over a prostrate body of a woman. The man is wearing a cloak and carrying a knife. The woman is bleeding, unconscious. Undeterred, the man plunges the tongue into her flesh_ Can you see the prospect? What are you thought? What is happening here? Make you understood that the man is a criminal, the woman his victim?

Imagine a report that begins this way. Now suppose that as you keep reading, further details are revealed. It slowly becomes evident that in fact, the man is not a criminal, but a surgeon. The cloak is a surgical one. The tongue is not a weapon but a scalpel. The man is not a murderer killing an innocent woman. He is a heroic doctor saving a life. This is an instance of withholding information as a plot device - the author playing with, anddeliberately misleading, the reader. More commonly, information is withheld to create suspense or maintain tension. In a Whodunit, for instance, you won`t get out who `through` it till the real end. However, certain information should be given upfront; it forms section of the set-up. This includes all aspects of characterisation. (For a survey of the conflict between quality and characterisation, see an earlier post. If your part has a stutter, a limp, wears glasses or is bald, this information should be disposed as shortly as the case is introduced. It won`t do to let the subscriber know halfway through the new that the champion has dark hair. If you need to provide this information, do it before the lecturer has begun to see him as a blond or a redhead. Don`t wait till page 200 to say the referee that your hero has blue eyes (unless it`s a plot device and you were purposely misleading the reviewer into thinking he had brown oneswhen in fact he was wearing contact lenses all this time_) Likewise, if you say the referee in Chapter 2 that the protagonist has a sister called Mary and a brother called Jo, don`t wait till Chapter 6 to mention Alex (that is, unless you take a particular cause for doing so), since the referee will assume a three-sibling family. In short, check your timing. Always be witting of how much information you provide, when, and why.