There’s a book by Roger Rosenblatt, I believe, and he talks about how it’s really important to spill the beans as a writer, meaning let out the critical information.
As a reader, I can tell from a mile away when a writer is trying to hold all the important information and keep it from me, and I feel like there’s something there that I distrust, I feel manipulated.
So the point that this writer makes is that when you spill the beans and you let the reader know all the stuff that you figured out, then that’s how more beans get created.
Like in stories or books that really work, sometimes when I can see something coming down the pipe, the best thing that can happen in that book is for me to get that thing instead of waiting around for it. Then as soon as I get that thing, then I’m interested to see what’s going to happen next. Once the book sort of delivers that thing and then goes forward, then I’m really intrigued.
A good example of that is Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. There’s a crime, there’s a murder. The OP goes to this town, finds out early on who committed the crime or the murder – it’s in the first quarter or the first third of the book.
Then as a reader you have no idea what’s going to happen next, so that’s when it gets really exciting.
(And they shoot up the whole town, which is awesome).
