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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34522
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think it is a mistake to think of your story as a set of reveals. A story has a shape and the reader remains interested if they sense that the story is making progress. Tension is not created by mysteries but by anticipation. Consider a romance. We all know what the resolution will be. We all know who the right guy is for the heroine and that she will eventually choose him over the wrong guy. We are along for the ride because we want to see and experience this eternal story happening in a new pair of lives.

If your readers are wanting more information sooner it is because they do not feel like the story is making progress. If you are withholding information to set up a "reveal" this is almost certainly going to create a sense that progress is not being made. It is the literary equivalent of sitting in a traffic jam. Yes, you will eventually get to see the accident scene that caused the jam, but anticipation of that happy event does not in any way make sitting in the jam an enjoyable experience.

In Star Wars, which follows the hero's journey like a textbook, the droid delivering the appeal from the princess (the call to adventure) comes at exactly the prescribed moment. It moves the story forward into its next stage (crossing the threshold). The reader is not impatient to know what the princess's message means because they are bowling down the road with the wind in their hair. The story is moving. It is making progress. Yipee!

EDIT TO ADDRESS ADDED EXAMPLES: The example seems to me a perfect illustration that sometimes you should tell, not show. One shows in order to let the reader draw their own conclusions about an event. But here the conclusion to be drawn is simple and straightforward. The key no longer worked. There is no room for interpretation here, but by going through the motions of jiggling and trying etc, you force the reader to reach the conclusion for themselves, which suggests to them that there is some ambiguity about this. But there isn't. The key does not work. This is a mere mechanical and material fact. Don't make me work it out. Don't suggest that there is something to work out. Just tell me.

Further to this, it is the fact of the key not working which is the most significant point in this scene. It is what matters to move the story forward. So all the pantomime around showing that it does not work is actually a traffic jam that is holding up progress in the story.

If the point of the scene was that your hero was frazzled of anxious, the pantomime with the key might serve to show it, but it's not the point. The point is that she is not in Kansas anymore. On that note, read the section of the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy lands in Oz and look at how straightforward and matter-of-fact the prose is.

In short, if you have marvels to relate, relate the marvels. Keep the story moving forward.

Original score: 12