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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40061
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Characters should view the narrative from the present, a good way to keep the reader in the dark about the future of the story is to present a first person narrative and have the reader only know what the character does about the situation. This may not keep the reader from predicting the plot but it will keep the reader from knowing the _details_ too early in the proceedings.

But you don't _need_ an unpredictable plot, it's about the journey not the destination, you can tell a highly compelling story even if the shape of the story is evident from the very beginning, and in fact pointed out repeatedly throughout the narrative. I'm rereading _[The Sword of the Lady](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_the_Lady)_ at the moment, it's part of a seven book series with the same protagonist. The plot is laid out _before_ the first book starts in the epilogue of the final book of the preceding trilogy and reiterated repeatedly in each of the seven novels and yet the story is hard to put down all the same.

Also remember that as much as you might try you can never hide everything from everyone, humans are really good at initiative leaps. People can and do put very little evidence together to make surprisingly accurate pictures of the whole story. Trying to hide the plot of the story can in fact put people off reading the tale as a whole if it feels like you are deliberately twisting an otherwise straightforward tale.

As a note "Obviously all readers expect the good guy to win and the conflict to be resolved. That goes without saying." No, just **no** , don't insult your audience with that kind of thinking; there are many narratives where the "good guys" lose, or turn out to be the bad guys and win anyway and many more where there is no actual resolution, and certainly nothing so straightforward.

Original score: 1