All novels are about the price of keeping secrets. A provocative thought offered by Amanda Eyre Ward in an article for CrimeReads. “The fuel for every narrative engine is a disconnect between what a character is sure is true and what might also (or even better: instead) be true,” Ward says. “The answer is conjuring liars and those who believe them. The answer to how to write a novel is secrets.”
In her crime thriller, The Lifeguards, Ward ensured that every suspect and their moms (literally), the victim, and the cop had a secret. Some were small, some were embarrassing, some dangerous, and some nefarious. “I, alone, understood the ultimate secret of how all the rest of the secrets played out,” Ward says. “Even the twist at the end is a bit of a secret.”
The key is that we don’t really know one another, Ward says. “This is the ultimate secret and the one we can’t accept, no matter how hard we try,” she writes. “As I get older, I begin to realize all the people I thought were wrong or mean just had (or still have) a different narrative going on.” A bad person might be a trouble person keeping a painful secret. “Keeping a secret might drive you to do anything, to murder,” Ward says. “One person’s murder might be another person’s saving their life, or saving their child’s life.”
You’ve probably built secrets into your characters, perhaps without realizing it. When you begin developing your character, you likely start with physical qualities and personality quirks, but soon you delve into backstory, their wounds…their secrets.
Ward suggests a process for developing a character’s secrets, using your own:
- Ask yourself: what secret are you keeping right at this very moment?
- Write down your secret.
- Write down who can never know this secret.
- Write down what—be honest with yourself, truly—would you do to keep this secret?
- Ask yourself: would you do anything?
- Is your secret that you would do anything?
- Is your secret what you’ve already done? (Pro tip: Best case scenario is both.)
- Repeat.
