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Q&A Preserve "The Reveal" vs lying to the reader

My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning. It sets u...

2 answers  ·  posted 8y ago by colmde‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T05:16:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/22107
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar colmde‭ · 2019-12-08T05:16:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning.

It sets up what all the characters know (or at least think they know) about the last few years of a journey they have been on, during which events have happened unbeknownst to (most of) the characters, and other things didn't happen the way the characters believe they did. But the chapter is a summary to explain all this to the reader.

The story itself starts three years into the journey.

The problem is this. I want the reader to have similar knowledge to the characters, so they will be surprised by the reveal.

But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader, or leave out vital information that would obviously appear in a "how we got here" summary without it being silly or feeling contrived.

(e.g. it would be like in a novelisation of _The Sixth Sense_, the author describing in detail Bruce Willis'

> operation after he was shot and heavily implying that it was a success.

)

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2016-05-24T12:03:55Z (over 8 years ago)
Original score: 6