Isn't it frustrating when you're watching a TV show and you realize they're simply NEVER going to come to the point and tell you what's what? Like Lost or Alias, which strings the viewer out forever. Or even some of the shows I love. (just what WAS the preacher's mysterious background? What kind of background could Book possibly be running from--was he an assassin? A soldier?)
I once wrote a book where one of the crucial pieces of information was that the bad guy was the good guy's brother. I just never told anybody, though. Not even the reader. It was subtle. It was between the lines. It was a joy to write.
It never made sense to anybody else.
It was a work of art, all right. And a complete muddle to everybody who read it, who didn't understand what was going on, why there were all these mixed feelings, why it was so bittersweet. Why the whole thing was falling apart.
In a book that had nothing else subtle about it, this subtle stroke was much too much. Would a revelatory scene at the end fix it? I doubt it! Then you'd be left feeling as if you needed to reread it to understand it, and it was so dry and boring nobody would want that.
So I'm rewriting it with the reveal in the middle, and significant foreshadowing. That's a lot better, a lot easier to take. A lot easier to read.
How much is too much? Some more thoughts on this later.
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