Percy’s Six Elements of Story: Delay Gratification and Withhold Information

[This is the sixth and final part in a series of posts started on December 2, 2020. We’re exploring Benjamin Percy’s foundational elements of story as found in the opening of his book Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction.]

Delay Gratification and Withhold Information

You’re several drafts in and your story is starting to pop. You’ve established the narrative goal. Your protagonist is acting with unwavering urgency, meeting obstacles that are building her resolve, while also creating tension for your reader. You’ve got most of the lower-order goals in each scene working and a ticking clock has been put in place.

So why hold back? Why not give your reader everything at once?

In the opening pages of Burden of Proof by DiAnn Mills, a female FBI agent stands in line at a store when a woman, also in line, her tells the agent she can’t care for her baby anymore and thrusts the child into her arms before walking out. A beat later a man approaches the agent and tells the agent that he’s the father. The child responds to her father’s voice. The father proceeds to ask the agent why she kidnapped his daughter.

There is a lot of information withheld from us as we read that scene. But this doesn’t stall the momentum. Instead it draws us in. Makes us turn the page.

Such withholding of information and delaying the gratification of a reveal can be done on a grand scale, such as when the solve comes at the end of a 300-page gauntlet, or on a scene-by-scene level as details are held back to drive up the reader’s wonder.

Your reader, whether they realize it or not, doesn’t really want to know what happens next––yet. This is the joy of story, the desire to discover. Discovering what’s next isn’t the joy; the joy is the desire to discover what’s next.