Comments on: The Power of a Secret

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:53:10 +0000

Go for it.

By: Barrie Summy

Barrie Summy — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:42:02 +0000

That’s it. Now, I have to read The Miles Between. I must know the secret.

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:51:17 +0000

Thanks, Martha. I’m digging more deeply for my MC’s secret, trying to get closer to what it is for her. Or if it’s one that she has to find out from someone else.

By: Plot Whisperer

Plot Whisperer — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:38:01 +0000

A terrific example of a protagonist with a secret is Renee in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. The secret revealed at the end makes every scene and every utterance made by Renee much more powerful. I never once suspected she had a secret. The reader believes Renee when she tells us how she feels and why, without a hint of something much, much deeper.

A secret is the final element in the 10 point Character profile I ask writers to fill out for both the MC and the villain (if there is one) and any significant secondary characters.

As I say in just about every plot workshop I give, we all have secrets. Every single one of us. (For some, the deep, dark secret that has haunted for years can ultimately cause an illness. So, for gosh’s sake, tell someone and release it from your body!)

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:30:56 +0000

Shevi, I think I know what you mean–when the secret is just kind of a gimmick. I’m not happy with those either. In both of Mary’s books (and it’s what I’d like to achieve in mine), the secret is at the root of the MC’s conflict. They’re not going to get to resolution until the face/learn/deal with that secret. It’s very tied into the character’s arc.

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:26:54 +0000

I think you’ll like it, Jeannine. I’m enjoying it a lot.

Yes, it’s cooled off some–nice and pleasant!

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:26:22 +0000

If you liked this, I think you’d really like Jenna. And I’m a few more pages into The Miles & it’s getting more intense, so…

I’ll put this on my list, too. Thanks!

By: Shevi

Shevi — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:11:38 +0000

I actually hate it when the MC has a secret. Hate it.

This is the way I see it. When the MC has a secret, it feels like I’m playing a game with someone who is playing by a different set of rules than I am. The deck is stacked in the writer and the MC’s favor. They’re hiding their cards. They both know what cards they have, and they’re showing them to each other and laughing at me because they know something I don’t know. And I don’t know it, because they’re the ones making the rules, and their rules say I can’t know this “big secret,” which is apparently a secret only to me.

I find this particularly annoying when the book seems to be about nothing other than the secret. It’s the sort of thing that can get me to close a book within the first few pages. The writer has to show me all of his or her cards. If not, I’m going to find another writer who will.

I’m okay if the MC’s secret is one the MC doesn’t know, for example, if the MC is in denial. That’s okay. I get to see all the cards the MC can see, and that means the rules of the game are fair.

The best thing to keep me hooked, though, isn’t a secret at all: it’s the need to find out how the MC will resolve his or her conflict.

Make me invested in the MC. Make me want what the MC wants as much as the MC wants it, and make me need to find out how the MC does or doesn’t get it. That’s all a writer needs to keep me hooked.

By: Jeannine Atkins

Jeannine Atkins — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:12:17 +0000

Thanks for giving me a lot to think about! And one more reason to read Mary’s new book!

Have a great weekend (is it getting any cooler?)

By: trudyj65

trudyj65 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:05:47 +0000

Best example I know of is Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I don’t know if it’s so much that the main character has a secret — she does, but she doesn’t remember it — as that people around her are keeping a secret from her. As it plays out, it’s an absolute shocker (well, it was for me anyway) when the reader starts to piece it together, a little before the character does. The clues are so brilliantly sown, I had to go back and reread it immediately to see where they were and what I’d missed the first time.