Who Knows What, and When? Mystery, Suspense, and Dramatic Irony

Understanding these dynamics will change how you write—and read—forever.

This post is part of the Write With Me series. For more like this, check out the writing your novel page.

Though our approaches to keeping readers engaged may vary, doing so is likely a goal that we as writers share. We have many tools at our disposal to achieve this, but in this post we'll focus on invoking senses of mystery, suspense, or dramatic irony. Perhaps more importantly, we’ll drill into how to balance all three effectively.

Mystery, suspense, and dramatic irony are essentially about the relationship between two things:

• Information

• Relationship between reader and perspective character

To evaluate which tool we are putting to use, we have to ask ourselves who has what information and when do they have it relative to the other party? The two parties in question here are, of course, the reader and perspective character(s).

If we're to answer those questions, however, we'll first have to know which tool is which. With that in mind, let's explore each one and how we can put it to use.

Mystery

Character: ✅

Reader: ❌

Character to reader: “I know something you don’t know.”

A sense of mystery is created when characters have information that is withheld from readers, which leads readers to suspect there's something afoot. This imbalance of access to information can last anywhere from a sentence to the entirety of a manuscript (though be careful about pulling the proverbial rug out from under your reader by waiting until the last minute to reveal IT WAS ALL A DREAM).

One (admittedly very cliché) way to generate a sense of mystery would be to have our perspective character receive a letter or phone call to end a scene. As our character is reading the letter or has their ear pressed to the receiver, the only access the reader has to the contents of that letter or call is when our character pales and says, "Oh my God."

And that's where the scene ends.

This example provides readers with two certainties: 1) the character in question has received some sort of news, and 2) that whatever it is, it isn't good. Alternatively, if our character had responded with a message of congratulations or an expression of joy, we'd know that they received good news. Still, readers don't know exactly what the news is, and they're therefore (hopefully) compelled to read onward as a result of the mystery created.

The one caveat to using this (again, rather cliché) example is that it's a clear gimmick to get a reader to hop into the next scene. A sense of mystery need not be used in such overtly gimmicky ways, however.

Consider something like the parentage of Jon Snow in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Going all the way back to the first book, we readers know that Ned Stark knows who Jon's mother is, but several books later we still don't have official confirmation of who that woman might be. That's a mystery that readers can get behind, one that's not hastily thrown into scene-ending after scene-ending in an attempt to lure readers to turn the page. It is, however, an example of mystery being put to use to effectively keep readers interested in an impactful way.

Now that we've examined mystery, let's move on to suspense.

Suspense

Character and Reader: ✅✅ or ❌❌

“We both know what’s up. Or, well, just kidding: neither of us do.”

Mystery and suspense differ in that the latter requires readers to be on the metaphorical same page as the perspective character. That is to say, suspense exists when the character and reader find themselves with (or without) access to the same information at the same time.

Let's work with the letter-opening example from the mystery section above, but tweak it so that both the reader and character receive the same information. In our new version of the scene, our reader sees our character open a letter that reads, "On the nineteenth at dawn, we end with the fawn."

What does that mean, exactly? If neither the reader nor character know, then we have a mystery to solve, but it will be solved with a sense of suspense surrounding it. See the difference? Again, we're focusing on the relationship between information and the character-reader bond to evaluate this.

For further clarification, remember we're looking exclusively at information—who has access to it, who doesn't, and when. If reader and character have the same information (or lack thereof) at the same time, we're working with a sense of suspense. If only the character has it, we're working with a sense of mystery.

Let's return again to our example from A Song of Ice and Fire. When it comes to Jon Snow's parentage, we readers may have a relationship of mystery between ourselves and Ned, but when we have chapters from the perspective of Jon Snow, we have a relationship based on suspense—we only know what he knows where his parentage is concerned.

See the difference?

If not, all of this may be put in perspective best after exploring our third tool: namely, dramatic irony.