Undercurrent vs. Subtext vs. Theme

A while ago, I had a follower ask me to do a post about undercurrents, subtext, and themes, and how they are different, which is also one of the reasons I did that whole article about how to write theme the other week.

So basically:

I have an article about undercurrents.

I have an article about subtext.

And I now have an article about theme.

Worth noting is that "undercurrent" is a term I made up. I don't know if other people use another word for it. So if you have no clue what I mean by "undercurrent," it's probably only because you haven't read my article on it, which is fine. Whatever you want to call it, it's helpful you understand the concept.

But here's the thing, as I've thought about this post, some could easily argue that "undercurrent" and "subtext" are the same thing (and maybe that's why a term for "undercurrent" doesn't exist), but to me, they are somewhat different concepts, even if they overlap. Sorta like nectar vs. honey.

Also, I think it's important to keep in mind that I'm probably regularly evolving my ideas about writing, to some extent. And since this is a blog, you guys get to follow my process with that, so my ideas and term choices might shift a little bit, which can be confusing. (Like in my recent theme article, I had to admit to using the term "theme" to mean both "thematic statement" and "theme topic" in prior posts.)

But, I still think it's helpful to think of subtext and undercurrent as two different concepts, if two sides of the same coin.

Undercurrents

Undercurrent to me is the "under" side of the story. I think of this more as . . . well . . . real (. . . in an imaginary/fiction sort of way.) It is the story (or stories) under the one we as an audience are following.

For example, mystery plots have an "under story." The audience follows the person who is investigating, that's the "surface" story. But the "under story" is the murderer's story (assuming this is a murder mystery) of how and why he killed the victim. We won't get a clear idea of the murderer's story until the end of the book, but we see parts of it hit the surface story (like clues and hints).

J. K. Rowling does this very well, which is why I always refer to her when talking about the concept of undercurrents. Every wizarding world story (except the last one, which is why I think it sorta failed and I wrote an article on that) has both a surface story and an undercurrent story.

Like this:

Sorcerer's Stone

Surface story: A boy finds out he's a wizard and goes to a school to learn how to wield magic.
Undercurrent story: Voldemort is trying to get the Sorcerer's Stone to return to power

Chamber of Secrets

Surface story: Harry returns to Hogwarts and tries to learn who is opening the Chamber of Secrets
Undercurrent story: Voldemort is using Ginny Weasley to try to come back through a Horcrux

Prisoner of Azkaban

Surface story: While at school this year, Harry has to worry about being attacked by Sirius Black
Undercurrent story: Sirius escaped from prison to kill Peter Pettigrew as punishment for what happened with Lily and James.

Goblet of Fire

Surface story: Harry has to compete in a dangerous tournament
Undercurrent story: Barty Crouch Jr. is working to resurrect Voldemort

Order of the Phoenix

Surface story: Harry is pitted against Umbridge, who works for the ministry, and is wrecking havoc on the school.
Undercurrent story: Voldemort is trying to use Harry to get the prophecy from the Department of Mysteries

Half-blood Prince

Surface story: Harry is obsessed with finding out what Malfoy is doing and is sure he is a Death Eater.
Undercurrent story: Voldemort created at least seven Horcruxes and Dumbledore is hunting them.

Deathly Hallows

Surface story: Harry is hunting and destroying Horcruxes.
Undercurrent story: The Deathly Hallows themselves, particularly the fact Voldemort wants the Elder Wand.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Surface story: Newt needs to recapture all the beasts that escaped into New York.
Undercurrent story: Grindelwald is trying to get his hands on an obscurus as a weapon.

Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald

Surface story: ????? (<-- missing!)
Undercurrent story: The identity (and significance) of Credence

Often by the end of the story, the undercurrent, or at least parts of it, come to the surface. Harry stops Quirrell from getting the stone, he defeats the Horcrux in the chamber, he frees Sirius Black, learns that Moody is actually Barty Crouch Jr. etc.

But often an undercurrent story will hit the surface story in some degree in some places prior.

Yes, I made this in Paint :)

The undercurrent story is still just as "real" as the surface story. We just don't see all of it (otherwise it would be another surface story), but in your fictive world, it's an additional set of events that played out.

In some rare stories, such as "Hills like White Elephants" by Earnest Hemingway, almost nothing connects the undercurrent story to the surface story, so unless someone tells you or you've studied literature, you may read the story and finish it scratching your head. You didn't know or have access to the undercurrent story, only the surface one (which was rather uneventful).

The undercurrent isn't really hitting the surface story

I like to take this a step further, and say there are even levels within the undercurrent--how "deep" it goes.

For example, we may have an undercurrent story for one Harry Potter volume, but there is also a deeper undercurrent through the whole series.

I'm not going to review all the level concepts, but if anyone wants to learn more, they're in my undercurrent article.

The undercurrent is content that is happening in the fictive world that the audience doesn't directly see fully play out.

It makes the story feel bigger than what's on the page and also draws the audience in, because it invites them to participate instead of just spectate.

But maybe the reason "undercurrent" doesn't have its own term is because a lot of people just lump it in with "subtext." After all, isn't "subtext" everything that isn't directly on the page?

At the same time, I know I'm not the only person in this industry that criticizes the ambiguity of writing terms (like "theme" and "hook" and "plot point two" and "beat" and even "ambiguity" itself). No one polices the terms, which I think makes it more difficult to teach and learn about writing. And personally, I sometimes think we lump too many concepts to the same term, so we miss out on specifics and details. It would be like calling every type of dog a "dog," and not noticing the differences between the pug and the St. Bernard. I sometimes feel we are missing the "breed" equivalent in writing terminology. We call all dogs, "dogs." This makes it more difficult to discern and harness each breed's specialties.

Subtext

For undercurrents, I think of more of the larger fictive world, but for subtext, I think more of the actual book and getting it on the page (or rather, with subtext, implying it enough without putting it on the page directly). In that sense, in the book, the undercurrent usually manifests as subtext in some way.

Subtext is what is implied, but not stated directly on the page.

Since the undercurrent story/stories is not the surface story, then naturally, any sense of it that doesn't fully surface is going to show up as subtext.

But as I said above, an undercurrent story may come to the surface story, often at the end (though technically, it can surface elsewhere, I guess).

Which at that point, the undercurrent story is no longer using subtext, but now stated directly in the text. (This would be the point in all the Harry Potter books where Harry discovers the undercurrent story). It touched and went into the surface story. It is at the surface in that moment.

I guess, technically, you could have an undercurrent story that never appears as subtext in the book, and then suddenly comes to the surface at a point in the text. Like . . . surprise! Guess what else has been going on all along that we had no clue about? I'm trying to think of a specific example . . . It's like when a character suddenly reveals they have been taking dance lessons all year, but there were zero hints or subtext about it. A lot of times, this might manifest as a deus ex machina. However, if it's not vital to solving a plot problem, then it might not be one, just a bit of undercurrent that has surfaced.

Whew! This is getting technical. :)

I guess I think of subtext as more of the highway the undercurrent may take. But maybe the term "subtext" is still too ambiguous in the writing industry. Maybe like the word "theme" it actually has two or more components. The technique of subtext. And the content of subtext. But like "theme," we all point at it and just say, "nice subtext" (guilty).

In my article on subtext, I titled it "How to Write What's not Written," and it's largely about the technique of subtext. The actually process of getting it on the page indirectly.

You could say that the concept of undercurrent and the concept of subtext content largely overlap. Which is probably why me talking about each of them can be confusing. Like a lot of writing topics, it kind of gets down to how you want to categorize them (unfortunately). For example, in my series on story structure, I talked about how a lot of "story structures" are similar, but have different names and terms for the same concepts and different approaches to how to slice and dice the story. In a Hero's Journey, the "Call to Action" is essentially the "inciting incident."

The subtext content, I guess, in a sense, is in the undercurrent, because it's not stated plainly on the page. But I'm not sure that all subtext content is attached to an undercurrent story.

If one character hates broccoli, but that's never stated directly on the page, just implied, and it's never really connected to anything else in the book, then I'd probably just call it subtext content, not an undercurrent story. Maybe the fact she hates broccoli has no story behind it; it's just the way she was born.

However, in a scene, it may be subtext content and manifest on the page through subtext technique.

Let's try thinking of this and breaking this down a different way.

Subtext content is still "under" the surface, but it may not be connected to anything really. It may not have a cause and effect or tell a story or have any significance.

But an undercurrent story, which is also "under" the surface, does.

So maybe, from this perspective, I'm using "undercurrent" too ambiguously. Because subtext content is still in the "undercurrent" floating around, but may not always be connected to anything significant overall. It's in the current of the river, but not necessarily following the currents.

Still, subtext content and undercurrent story can overlap and be the same element in some scenes, but since I don't think all subtext content is part of an undercurrent story, to me, they are two different things.

(Anyone confused yet? 😆😅)

If you are confused, no worries, you do not need to see stories the same way I do to be successful! But, for me, seeing these as different concepts, helps me be able to use them better (and helps me know what I am doing).

It's also possible to have lots of subtext content in the under part of storytelling, without having an actual undercurrent story. It is just subtext content manifested through subtext technique, that doesn't connect to an "under" plot.

Every successful story needs subtext content. Similar to what I said in the section above, subtext content also invites the reader to be a participator instead of just a spectator. And it also gives the impression that there is more to the story than what is on the page.

But I would argue that many of the most satisfying stories, and certainly the stories with some of the greatest re-read value, don't just have subtext content, but undercurrent stories--subtext content that connects to something bigger and greater (and more rewarding).

Note: Looking back, I've realized that in other places I've referred to "subtext content" as "subtext subject"--great, now I'm being ambiguous with my own terms 🤪 I might have to go through later and try to make that more cohesive.

Theme

Okay, so how does theme fit into this crazy?

Well, theme is kind of its own thing, but in storytelling, everything is interconnected, so in a lot of ways, basically nothing is its own thing. 😅

But lets not confuse ourselves more than we already have today.

The main two flaws with theme you want to watch out for, are:

1. you don't want to swing the thematic statement at everything from beginning, through middle, and to the end, and
2. you don't want to over-simplify opposing views and alternate experiences with the theme topic.

The thematic statement is meant to be the answer, the resolution, to the characters' struggles concerning the theme topic. If you are throwing the thematic statement (the "answer") all around throughout the story, it will probably be heavy-handed and preachy. Over-simplifying other perspectives and experiences only makes this worse, and actually weakens, not strengthens, the theme.

Elements of theme are often handled through subtext (both as subtext content and (obviously) subtext technique), and they can relate to undercurrent stories. Being more subtle (by using them this way), can also help you avoid problem #1 (though may not solve it completely).

For theme, I feel that undercurrent stories and subtext are just more ways to render it effectively in the narrative.

Throughout the course of a story, theme may seem to play out similar to an undercurrent story--where the theme topic is touched on in the surface story again and again, until finally the thematic statement comes to the surface at the end. But honestly, trying to look at it this way seems to muddy it more to me, and not all undercurrent stories surface.

Also, some elements of theme may be addressed directly on the surface of the text, and therefore not be subtext or undercurrent story.

For me, I like to think of theme more as its own thing.

Anyway, I hope this all hasn't been too overwhelming! And by all means, don't feel like you need to think about stories the same way I do. Take what is helpful to your writing.

Next week I'll be back with a simpler subject.

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5 Types of Surprises

Last time I talked about the differences between surprise and suspense, saying that we should actually try to use both in our writing. I don't see enough articles that speak to how to write surprises and how to write them well. So I've broken down the element of surprise into five categories that may help.

Out of the Blue

The out-of-the-blue surprise is what it sounds like--it comes out of the blue. It isn't foreshadowed or expected in any way. In some ways, this can be the hardest surprise to pull off. Not because it's difficult to write, but because if you do it wrong the audience will feel cheated or disappointed.

One of the most important aspects of writing surprises is that the surprise isn't a disappointment. You want to make sure it doesn't undermine or cheat the reader. You don't want that being the surprise. If the out-of-the-blue surprise isn't a disappointment, it can be a fun one to throw into the story simply because the audience won't be expecting it.

For example, it could turn out in the story that the protagonist's cousin and close friend is actually working with the antagonist. If this was not foreshadowed and the audience was not prepared for this revelation in any way, it's an out-of-the-blue surprise. However, if your audience knows the cousin character well and this revelation seems to go against all that she is and what they believe of her, you run the risk of unbelievability. It may not sit well with them. In some cases, the audience may feel that the writer threw it in there for shock or in an effort to try to make the story more interesting.

But, if the revelation comes and it fits the character in some way (though not foreshadowed), it will be a big surprise, and while shocking, will still be believable.

The out-of-the-blue surprise is probably the easiest to write but the most difficult for the audience to accept.

Foreshadowed Surprise

A foreshadowed surprise is--yup, you guessed it--a surprise that has been foreshadowed. Now in order for it to actually be a surprise, you can't be heavy-handed with the foreshadowing. When you are heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, the audience guesses the outcome before it happens, so it's not actually a surprise.

To be successful at this, the foreshadowing is there, but it's subtle. If we use the example from the last section, we might give hints earlier in the story that the cousin character is working with the antagonist character, without actually revealing that fact outright, until the proper moment.

When you subtly foreshadow, and then the surprise happens, the audience thinks back and says, "Oh yeah, that makes sense. I see that now."

A foreshadowed surprise takes a bit more skill to write, but it's easier for the audience to accept, because it makes sense with what came prior.

A good example of a foreshadowed surprise in Harry Potter is **spoiler** that Harry is a Horcrux. There is enough foreshadowing in the seven books, but it's very subtle. So when we find out, it's a big surprise, but it all fits. 

The Twist

People love a good twist. It's almost its own thing. But in order to pull off a good twist, it needs an element of surprise. It belongs in the surprise, not suspense, category.

I've talked about this in other posts, but a twist works off a shift in context. Sure, of course there is foreshadowing, but we actually move beyond subtle foreshadowing. We give the audience much more context for how to interpret the information they are receiving.

Last time I mentioned the movie the Sixth Sense, which is famous because of its twist. In the Sixth Sense, the audience is given context for everything that is happening with and to Bruce Willis's character. For example, the reason his wife won't talk to him is because they're having marriage problems.

A twist shifts the context. The content is the same it's been (i.e. Bruce Willis's wife won't talk to him), but our interpretation and understanding of it changes with new information or a new revelation about the information we already have (we find out Bruce Willis is dead).

This is what makes a twist so powerful. The content was there in front of us the whole time. We had even interpreted it. But the reality was actually different than we'd assumed.

A twist is probably the most difficult surprise to pull off, but it's the easiest for the audience to believe--they've been staring at the evidence the whole time. They just didn't see it that way. They may say things like, "I can't believe Bruce Willis was dead!" But this comes from surprise and shock, rather than them disbelieving the story to be authentic. They have a hard time taking in the new information--it's not that it ruins their suspension of disbelief, it's that they are so surprised.

Exceeding Expectations

You can surprise your audience by exceeding expectations. You may have heard the concept that if you show a gun hanging on the wall in a story that that gun needs to go off by the end of the story (Chekhov's gun). The audience expects the gun to go off. So you surprise them by not having it go off once, but three, four, five times at the end.

That's the simple way to explain it. Of course, there are other facets in play and things you can do wrong--I mean, if you are writing a cozy story, then having the gun go off and kill five people probably wouldn't fit the tone. However, having it go off five times and hit other things, maybe even humorously, might work.

But it's the idea that you surprise the audience by moving beyond what they expect. You not only give them what they expect, but you take it much further to something they didn't even imagine.

That's surprising.

The Trope Twist

If you aren't familiar with the term "trope," then I highly suggest checking out tvtropes.org, where you can learn more than you ever wanted to about them. A trope is a storytelling technique that has been used enough for the audience to recognize (consciously, or more often, subconsciously). It's a pattern in storytelling. It can be about plot, character, story structure, and just about any number of things. For more about what at trope is, read this page.

Here are some quick examples:

Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World (Story type)

Tsundere (Character type)

Taking the Bullet (Micro-plot element)

It Sucks to be the Chosen One (Story/character element)

Be Yourself (Theme)

The Call Knows Where You Live (Plot element)


Basically, a trope is any thing that is done regularly in storytelling. Some people get a little disheartened learning and exploring tropes for the first time, because tropes may seem to oversimplify their amazing story (not to mention that tvtropes.org uses a witty tone in most all their entries (that is admittedly very entertaining)). But tropes aren't bad, and every story has them. They're only bad when they are handled poorly. And they get annoying if the same tropes seem to keep cropping up in the same ways. For example, after Harry Potter got big, I swear, almost every book had the prophecy trope in it. It was annoying.

That's where surprises come in.

I bring up this example a lot, but one of the reasons I love Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy is because he took familiar tropes and twisted them in unexpected ways, so that even though we as the audience are familiar with the concept of "the chosen one," we couldn't guess the ways Brandon Sanderson ended up twisted them. So we were surprised.

When you twist a trope, you take something familiar to storytelling, and you do something atypical with it.

These work doubly well for writing twists in general. Because the audience knows the trope, they have an expectation (interpretation, context) already for the outcome in a story. But if you do something different, they'll be surprised. They'll say things like, "I didn't see that coming." Well, that's because that trope usually doesn't end that way. You, the writer, did something uncommon with it.

You can twist tropes in a number of ways. You can deviate from expectation. You can also move the expectation up, so that it happens and is dealt with much sooner than is typical. For example, "the chosen one" dies before Mistborn even starts. What a clever way to start a story. What happens when the supposed chosen one dies trying to defeat the ultimate villain? What's next? When you read the back cover of Mistborn, it's surprising. You can twist typical character roles. You can twist typical character tropes. You can twist typical plot outcomes.

When you mess around with tropes, you can come up with something surprising.

However, you can also, like the other surprises, end up with a worse story, if you don't do it right. Which leads me to the next important point.

Where Surprises Go Wrong

Surprises work off doing something the audience doesn't expect. But as I mentioned earlier, they can go wrong when that something is a disappointment or "lesser" than what is expected. The audience will feel cheated or shortchanged. You need to keep your promises to the audience. Whatever the surprise is, it should either be just as good as what the audience expected from the story, or better.

Surprises can alter the overall outcome of the story.

Or they add to the overall story.

But they should not takeaway from the overall story.

You don't want to "cheat" the audience by promising them vanilla ice cream and then giving them broccoli by the end. You can surprise them by promising vanilla ice cream and then giving them chocolate ice cream instead (assuming they like chocolate as much as vanilla, so the exchange is equal). And you can surprise them by promising broccoli and then giving them ice cream instead (something they like even better). And you can surprise them by promising them broccoli, delivering that dish, and also vanilla and chocolate ice cream (exceeding expectations).

But you should definitely not promise food and serve them nothing.

(I understand that people will grumble different dissents to my metaphor because they don't like ice cream or whatever the case, but it's to illustrate my point, all right?)

So, go forth and surprise me.

Related Posts

Crafting a Killer Undercurrent for Your Story 
The Mechanics of Rendering Mysteries and Undercurrents
How to Write What's Not Written (Subtext)
Vague vs. Ambiguous: Which are You Writing
Context vs. Subtext (Context Should Not Become Subtext)
Surprise vs. Suspense--Which is Better?
Validating the Reader's Concerns
Hiding What the Main Character Knows from the Reader

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Hiding What the Main Character Knows from the Reader

I recently got a question from a follower about how to write a story where a very valuable piece of information about the protagonist is kept hidden from the reader until much later in the story, probably at the climax for a nice twist or reveal.

Surprisingly this sort of question comes up somewhat often (especially by new writers), which is why I decided to talk about it in its own post (and in order to do that, this post will be quite long). The writer may want to write a murder mystery where it turns out that the protagonist is the murderer. Or perhaps they go through the whole story believing that the protagonist is human, but then at the end, it's revealed he's another creature pertinent to the story. Or maybe at the end, it's revealed that he's actually dead.

I love those sorts of reveals. Some of my all-time favorite shows use them.

But they are extremely difficult, if not impossible to do in a written story.

In fact, many writers will tell you that they can't be done at all. In reading, the audience gets very close to the main character. Because we almost always are experiencing the story from their viewpoint, it's like we put on their mind and body. We are connected to their senses--what they see, smell, taste, touch, hear--because good writing (almost always) must appeal to the senses powerfully. Furthermore, if your protagonist is intentionally leaving something important out from the reader, the reader usually notices and feel cheated--like he's being played. Another problem is that it keeps the reader from identifying closely and bonding with the protagonist--another element usually needed to write a good story.

I, myself, have spent a good amount of time thinking about this question, as I've had it before too, have heard others ask it enough, and have witnessed other professionals address it.

Can you hide something important about your protagonist from the audience?

Many people will tell you that you cannot. You cannot do that and write a successful story. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Of course, I'm skeptical whenever someone in the writing world says something can never be done. "You can't teach writing." "Writers are born, and if you don't have IT, you can't become one." "You can't write anything that hasn't already been thought of." "You can't use passive voice." "You can't use alternative dialogue tags." "You can't use to-be verbs." "You can't use adverbs." "You can't apply point of view penetration to first-person." "You can't learn how to write humor."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Those who say something can't be done, don't know how to do it.

And the moment we believe something can't be done, we put a ceiling and a limitation on ourselves and the writing world at large.

Can you write a book where the protagonist keeps something important from the audience until much later? Yes.

Do people know how to do it successfully AND how to teach others to do it successfully?

No one that I know of.

But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

I'm going to take a stab on some of my own theories on the subject that I've been developing, but keep in mind, this is an ongoing thing I haven't completely nailed down yet. Here are some ways to deal with this, but first I'll address the answer I usually hear.

Easy Out: Change Your Viewpoint Character (But it Changes the Story)

Often when I hear this question posed, I hear professional writers answer by having the person consider changing who their main character or viewpoint character is.

This doesn't tell you how to hide important info from the audience, but it does give you an alternative that is much easier to deal with.

Instead of writing about a main character keeping a secret, you can write about someone else who knows the person and then have them discover the secret. This probably means changing who your protagonist is to the character's friend, neighbor, love interest, coworker, or whatever.

However, sometimes you can simply change the viewpoint character. As I've mention before, the protagonist is not necessarily the viewpoint character, thought almost always they are the same person. Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most famous example of this. Watson is the viewpoint characters. Holmes is the protagonist.

By changing your viewpoint character, you maneuver your way out of this problem.

Keep What's Hidden Away From the Main Focus and/or Main Plot

If you are trying to keep something hidden from the audiences, and that something is very relevant to the main plot or focus of the story, most likely your audience is going to notice and be annoyed. This is one of the most common problems I see with new writers trying to include a mystery. In the structure of their sentences and scene, they focus on what's being withheld, or the fact that something is being withheld. For example, there might be a whole paragraph about dads, with the protagonist thinking about her dad, and a sentence like "She never wanted to remember what her dad had done to her 15 years ago."

Now, the sentence itself might actually work in a different structure, but the problem is, since we spent a whole paragraph talking about dads and her dad, dads became the main focus of the story, so when information about what Dad did 15 years ago is withheld, it's annoying and noticeable.

 I talked about this in my post Please Don't Write this Sentence in Your Opening:

One of the problems . . . is that you are drawing attention to the fact that you are withholding important, possibly traumatic, information about your protagonist, and alerting to the reader that "Hey, this is going to be an important backstory that's kind of mysterious and I'm going to tell you about it later."

It feels a lot less mysterious when the writer is advertising the mystery.

The best mysteries are ones where the audience is a participator. And the audience notices themselves that there is something off, or strange, or mysterious in what is going on, not when the narrator advertises it to them.

This can be a problem with just about any mystery, but it tends to be an even more common problem if the protagonist is the one not divulging information.

To pull this sort of thing off, you need to make sure that whatever the protagonist is hiding is not the main focus of the story--that it stays on the sidelines until the perfect moment. It doesn't mean that the info isn't pertinent to the main plot. It's just that when the main focus is something else, this information can be passed over.

I recently edited a story where the writer handled this masterfully in the opening chapter. In fact, it was jaw-dropping. The protagonist manages to keep important information from the reader--and the reader even becomes aware that this is happening--for the whole first chapter, but to be honest, if the story was structured differently, it could have been kept from us until the climax.

How did this person do it? By making something else the focus of the story. And better yet, making something happening in the here and now that demands immediate attention, that demands focus. We notice we are missing important information, or that something is off, but the task at hand is so much more important and demands present action.

For example, say that your main character is a dragon, but the kind that can have a human form (if you've seen those in stories.) It can manifest itself and live as a human, but is really a dragon in disguise. Say we want to keep the fact the protagonist is a dragon hidden until later. The first chapter opens up with a fire in a building, and the protagonist is involved, maybe as a firefighter (beautiful irony to play with there and opportunity for character complexity and depth) or as a passing citizen, or a renter of the an apartment in the building. Maybe he is trying to rescue a child he knows personally trapped on an upper floor.

This is a set-up that demands present action--it demands the story's main focus.

So, we have this protagonist focused on trying to save this child--that's the surface of the story. However, in the process, because the protagonist is our viewpoint character, we notice that in passing he thinks a few unusual things about fire. Nothing way out there or that gives his true nature away, just something slightly unique or off. Maybe he thinks about a personal relationship he has with fire, but doesn't go on to explain what.

It's very important these thoughts are not bunched together. None of them make a full paragraph length. They are very brief and spread apart, sprinkled in here and there. When they are long and bunched together, they became a main focus, which we don't want.

Now, how you word those thoughts depends on what kind of effect you are going for. As I mentioned in my post The Mechanics of Rendering Mysteries and Undercurrent, you can have a conscious mystery, a subconscious mystery, or a full undercurrent ("I didn't see that coming"). If you want a conscious mystery, you make the fact that those thoughts seem slightly off, a tad more obvious. If you want a subconscious mystery, you make it less. If you want it as a full undercurrent, you word those thoughts in a way that gives them a double meaning--they make sense in the moment, but they'll have a double meaning and make more sense when we have the context that he is a dragon.

So in this dragon story, the fact he is a dragon may be pertinent, but it doesn't become a main focus until near the time you reveal he's actually a dragon. Then, if you want, you can let it become the main focus--having longer dragon-related thoughts, having more of those thoughts closer together. Or you can just reveal it and let those pieces fall in place in the reader's mind. Depends on your own story and how it's handled up to that point.

Make it Unimportant to the Story at Hand

This may seem similar to the last section, but it's different. See, in our dragon example, our protagonist was working with fire, so for a dragon, that's directly relevant to what we are hiding from the audience.

In this method, what is kept hidden does not seem relevant to the main story hardly at all. Therefore, the protagonist never naturally brings it up, or if she does (indirectly), it doesn't seem connected at all to what is happening in the story.

The reality is, we can't tell our readers every-thing about our protagonist--it's just not relevant to the story. For example, I don't know exactly what Harry Potter's 6th birthday was like, I don't know what Frodo's favorite color is, and I don't if Katniss aced a language arts exam in school. And I don't need to know, because it's not important.

So in this method, the information that the protagonist keeps hidden is simply kept hidden because it seemed irrelevant.

In college, I got this idea for a middle grade fantasy story I wanted to write, that played with the "Chosen One" trope. In it, a young boy is collected by a magical guardian and taken to a fantasy world, where in the story, it's revealed he's the "Chosen One." However, in that pivotal moment in the climax where the Chosen One does his amazing thing, it doesn't work. The guardian and another mentor character can't figure out why it's not working--they are retracing their steps and thought processes. They are saying it doesn't make sense because the protagonist is part of this special bloodline, and they tracked down his parents to find him, and so it should all work.

The protagonist reveals he's adopted.

The other two characters are shocked. Since he's not of that bloodline, he's not the Chosen One.

Then the next installment would include them trying to find out if his parents had any other unknown children, and the protagonist (still deeply involved in other ways) would be looking for the real Chosen One.

So, the fact he is adopted is kept hidden through the whole story. The protagonist knew the whole time he was adopted, he just didn't bring it up because he didn't think it was relevant.

That's another way you can handle this sort of thing you can try.

Mess with Your Character's Memory

I know some people read that section heading and probably groaned, because they've seen this handled in poor ways or in cliche ways. But just keep reading. You'll learn something new probably.

Many a new writer will deal with this sort of thing by starting with a character who has some form of amnesia--she doesn't remember who she is, where she is, or what she did. Therefore, the reader can't know either. So as the protagonist works on getting this information, the audience is also part of the mystery. This opening is used so much, that people automatically think it's bad or disregard it. But the reality is, the concept can be handled in many ways, and you can deal with your character's memory in other ways than just amnesia.

One of the reasons this technique gets groaned at is because of the way it's often introduced in a story's opening. But it's entirely possible to start a story years after your character got his amnesia, have him established in a new life with new conflicts and focused on other things. You can reveal he has minor amnesia much later, maybe even in passing. You don't make the fact he has amnesia the central focus of the story, but keep it on the sidelines. A 90's show I grew up on Trigun, does this sort of thing (in addition to the first technique I outlined). We don't know until several episodes in that the protagonist doesn't remember anything that happened during an important event. To top it off, he's a character who struggles with facing legitimate problems directly, so he doesn't necessarily want to go digging to find out what happened. He just wants to live a new and obscure life.

But you can do more than play with legit amnesia. You can play with false memories, blocked memories, or inaccurate memories. The character may truly know these things, but she just doesn't remember them very well or very much or in the same way. And let's be honest, amnesia is a bit of an indirect way of answering this question--because you aren't hiding what the protagonist knows, but what the protagonist had known at some point.

So let's get to some of the other options. Season four of Sherlock is a good example of the alternatives. If you haven't watched it yet, skip the next paragraph.

Throughout the whole show, there have been references to Redbeard and also references to an East Wind.  Redbeard was a dog Sherlock had as a child, and East Wind is from a story Mycroft used to tell him. However, in season four, we discover that Redbeard wasn't actually a dog at all, but a pretend pirate name for Sherlock's best friend. And East Wind isn't the name of a destructive wind that destroys everything in its path, but what the name "Eurus" means, and Eurus is Sherlock's forgotten sister. And because of the tragic things that happened with these people, Sherlock developed inaccurate and false memories (with Mycroft's help of course; he worked to reprogram Sherlock's memories). So it's not so much that Sherlock has amnesia, it's just that his memories are wrong. He knows about Redbeard and the East Wind, but the way he remembers them is incorrect.

In the short story "The Armor Embrace" by Doug C. Souza, the protagonist is wired into a mech suit, and runs off from his military operation to see his daughter. This is so important to him, to see his daughter. But at the end of the story, we realize he isn't who we thinks he is. His memory has been captured or stored in the mech's computer, and the real him is actually dead.

So you can mess around with memories too, just be careful of not being too cliche.

Context Shifts

Similarly, you can also have a character who knows information pertaining to the big reveal, but just not in the right context.

In the short story "A Glamour in Black" by Sylvia Ann Hiven, the main character had to have a parasite put into her back years ago, in order to save her life. It's a parasite that gives her magical abilities. Her hope is to one day have enough money to safely have the parasite taken out again. However, after a few great plot twists and the parasite gets taken out, what our viewpoint character can see, hear, and experience (or the lack thereof) totally changes--it turns out, she was the parasite, and similar to "The Armor Embrace," she (or the real soul of the body) actually died in her accident, and the parasite has just been living in her body, having reanimated it.

While this example does relate to what I touched on in the last section, I'm convinced it can be pulled off on its own--the shift in context. The information itself the character knows and is a part of, but then something happens that puts it in a new perspective or context he didn't realize before.

For another example, I just finished a show that dealt with time travel and parallel worlds. The main character has the ability to detect when the timeline (a.k.a. world line) he's in shifts. He experienced it when ten years old, but he didn't have the context for what it was until he saw it through a certain perspective.

Now, in that example, the character experiences the context shift himself, but you could also do a context shift that only involves the reader, so that the viewpoint character always had the right context, but the reader didn't. This can overlap or relate with the next section in some ways.

The viewpoint character does not think she is hiding anything from the reader, isn't trying to hide anything intentionally (though maybe she is subconsciously), but information is relayed in a way that gives the reader inaccurate context, and therefore a slightly inaccurate conclusion or understanding about it.

Then, when the true context/info is revealed, it's not that the reader feels like it was fully hidden from him, but rather that he had misunderstood its meaning.

Finally, you can also play with context (or the lack thereof) in teasers. Usually this is done in a prologue, which I know people in the writing world hate, but I actually like them, and you can find them all over the bookshelves in stores today. Teasers work by giving us glimpses or flashes or snippets (for books, this is almost always a single scene, because it's much harder to do multiple scenes like this in the written word as opposed to visual storytelling), that make us feel a certain way or that make promises to us.

The thing that is always true about teasers though, is that they don't give us the full context. That's why they are teasers. We have to read the rest of the story or watch the movie to get the context of what we saw in it. It's possible to do a teaser that has the hidden information, but lacks the context for us to understand it. Then when we read the whole story, we can go back and realize we did have the information, or part of it, but we just didn't know what we were looking at.

In these cases, it's the context that's kept most hidden. When we finally have the full context for the content, we get the true meaning, the true information that was hidden.

Have the Viewpoint Character Think and Speak as If the Audience Already Knows the Secret

Another way to try to pull this off, is to have the story written in a way that the narrator has assumed that the reader already knows what's hidden. The novel I recently edited and mentioned earlier did this sort of thing. The viewpoint character kept bringing up something that happened in a fire, but never told us what exactly. But she referenced it and talked about it like it didn't need explaining.

Now, this is one of those approaches that can blow up in your face if you don't remember to present the clues as info or in passing, instead of something you are dangling in front of the reader, like a carrot on a stick. The way it's written should not try to draw attention to it. The writer just lets it be because it already naturally draws attention because it brings to mind questions, in the reader. It's just stated and the story moves on.

This sort of thing is done sometimes with what I'll call "Big Narrators"--these are the sorts of narrators that are loaded with personality. Lemony Snicket is a perfect example. Throughout the Series of Unfortunate Events, he makes reference to things that happened in the past with VFD, but not necessarily in a way that explains them, rather he talks as though the reader already knows about them, such as his references to the sugar bowl and the incident with it. Now, the series ended up shaping into something else, but if the writer had wanted to, the incident with the sugar bowl could have been a huge revelation pertinent to the plot.

You don't need to have a "Big Narrator" or colorful narrator to do this though. If you're clever, you can get away with it with a typical viewpoint character.

Use an Unreliable Narrator

If your narrator or viewpoint character is intentionally leaving things out from the reader, you're probably working with an unreliable narrator. These guys can be tricky sometimes, but if this hidden information is going to be really important to the story, you almost always want to establish that the narrator is unreliable from early on.

This is done by using subtext. It can be really hard and tricky, but the idea is to word things, and present ideas and conclusions that don't quite add up, or that seem a bit off to the reader. One thing I'd recommend if trying to craft an unreliable narrator is to get Ackerman and Puglisi's Emotion Thesaurus, which not only talks about how emotions are manifested, but also how suppressed emotions are manifested. Which is often essentially what you are dealing with. Your narrator is suppressing thoughts and emotions from the reader.

For this sort of set-up, this often means, that the narrator is suggesting (maybe subtly, maybe more strongly (but almost never heavy-handedly)) that the reader come to certain conclusions about things--what the narrator wants others/the audience to think about him or her and the events.

But again, there are some things that seem off or that don't quite add up to the reader, or maybe the reader picks up on the suppressed emotions.

Ready for it to get trickier?

The goal is to make the reader aware that the viewpoint character is somewhat unreliable, without giving away from the beginning exactly what the character is hiding. You can't have the audience be blindsided, having trusted the viewpoint character, and then feeling cheated they didn't know about this info, but you can't have it so obvious that they figure out the info long before the reveal.

Whew, no wonder this is so difficult.

Now, if the information is more in the background, and other things on the surface of the story demand present attention, then you can be vague.

But if the hidden information is more relevant to the story and what's at hand and close to the focus of the story, you need to be ambiguous--giving the reader multiple ways to interpret what's going on, until the reveal.

Have Readers Come to the Wrong Conclusion

This one relates both to context shifts and unreliable narrators in particular, and many other things as well, but I put it in its own category so that you can visualize it as its own thing, instead of one that must be attached to a specific method.

To do this method, you must have the clues and hints about the hidden information, but delve them out in the story in a way that leads the reader to misunderstand or misinterpret it and come to the wrong conclusion.

This is a significant method to include, because it's sometimes very much the route a certain story needs to take. Rather than have your audience wondering and wondering and wondering through a whole story, you let them come to a conclusion, and get a level of false closure, thinking they understand and have figured it out, when actually they don't.

When the true info and understanding is revealed, it still fits the clues and hints, but in a somewhat unforeseen way.

Closing Thoughts

Whew, that's a lot to think about and consider, and like I said, these are my thoughts and theories in progress. Regardless of them, I'm sure there are many people who will say that these things and methods are "cheating."

I loved in a podcast of Writing Excuses, where Brandon Sanderson admits to keeping information his viewpoint character, Kelsier, knows from the audience in his novel Mistborn, and says "I cheated."

What struck me in particular about this, is that Brandon Sanderson was aware that he'd done something other people considered "cheating," but he chose to do it anyway because he wanted to.

I'm going to do a post on that sort of thing someday in the future. In some cases, the pros of cheating just outweigh the cons, ultimately making a better story, if still an imperfect one.

And all in all, the reader's experience should take precedence over writers' "rules."

So can you write a story where something the main character knows is kept from the reader? Yes!

Can it be done well? Yes!

Does that mean it's easy? Definitely not.

This is super advanced craft and takes a lot of talent to pull off well. But let's stop teaching people it can't be done, so that we can actually get some great writers in the world who can do it.

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The Mechanics of Rendering Mysteries and Undercurrents—How to Withhold Info from the Reader Right

For months (years?) I've been saying I'm going to post the mechanics of writing mysteries. And today it's finally here! I'm a huge fan of stories that include a good mystery--if not as a main focus, as a side line. Last month, I did a whole post on crafting killer undercurrents. It's worth noting that the techniques needed to render mystery are the same techniques needed to create a strong undercurrent! Win-win!

In the future, I will be doing a post that argues that you absolutely can withhold important information from the reader (even if the viewpoint character knows it)--as long as you do it the right way. That article will reference this one for techniques.

Selecting the Experience You Want for Your Reader

Conscious Mysteries vs. Subconscious Mysteries (works for Undercurrents too)

There are different types of mysteries. A conscious mystery is one that (as you may have guessed) the reader is aware of. In whodunnit stories, the mystery comes from the reader (and protagonist) trying to figure out who the murderer is. It's on the page. The reader is very aware of it, and trying to solve it with the character. In the Harry Potter series, Harry trying to figure out who opened the Chamber of Secrets, who put his name in the Goblet of Fire, and what Malfoy is up to, are all conscious mysteries. The reader is actively looking for clues and hints in the text to find answers.

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Crafting a Killer Undercurrent for Your Story

Sometimes I imagine the plot of a story like a cross stitch, with the front of the stitch being what the reader actually sees; it's the surface of the story. Everything is nice and neat and clear and nearly perfect. But then there's the back of it, where you can see the real work beneath the surface. I like to call that stuff the "undercurrent"--which I guess implies that I also see the plot of a novel like a body of water. There's the surface. And there's the undercurrent.

The undercurrent can be big or small, but it should always be there. In your story, the true plot should be bigger, with more knots and underworkings, than what we see on the surface, otherwise it will feel flat, get boring, and worst of all, leave a reader feeling uninvested in the book.

I see this happen in unpublished stories from time to time. There is no undercurrent. It's a tiny, tiny surface stream of a story. Everything is just as it seems. Everything is straightforward. Everything is visible the first time through. Sometimes with stories like this, readers can't tell exactly what's wrong, but they just know they don't want to read more. They aren't interested. They don't care what happens next.

Every great story has some size of an undercurrent--the backside of the cross stitch, the bottom of the iceberg--or whatever metaphor you prefer. But there is a whole spectrum of sizes.

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