(*the author apologizes for his terrible pun)

On a case I worked recently we found a key, but we didn’t know what it was to. This got me thinking about the unknown and its power in story. You have a key, whose lock could be anywhere in the world, and then on top of that, what is closed up behind that lock could be anything at all. It’s a mystery on top of a mystery and it’s the kind of thing that gets the imagination racing.

This is exactly what you want to do in a good story. You want to get your audience’s imagination racing - you want to get them thinking for themselves. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand about story. Most people think it is passive – the author tells the audience something while they listen. In fact, being an audience member is much more active than that.

You show an audience a key, and they aren’t going to wait for you to tell them what it is to, they are going to start guessing. Is it to a safety deposit box? A treasure chest? A chastity belt? (Although I suppose those last two are the same thing – wink wink) As a writer, it’s your challenge to keep fueling that fire and to eventually come out on top. You want your reader’s mind to be cycling rapidly through different ways the story could turn out and then in the end you want to deliver something even more special than they imagined.

That’s one of the hardest things about writing. People are smart and staying ahead of them is a challenge, but it’s even harder to have it all lead to something worthwhile. So, in lieu of delivering a satisfying ending, I’ve seen writers focus all of their energy on the build up which can get them into a bind. You have a key that leads to a box, and inside of the box there is a map, which leads to a deserted town, where there is an old man who tells you a riddle, and the riddle leads to a cave and inside the cave there is... a teddy bear!

Wait, a teddy bear? Seriously? That’s it?

I call this the Ponzi scheme of storytelling. In a Ponzi scheme the manager will pay off old investors with money from new investors. But eventually they’ll run out of new investors and when people come to collect, they see there’s not real money there. Here you pay off old mysteries, with new mysteries, but eventually your audience is going to collect, and you’re not going to have anything to give them. ** cough ** cough ** LOST ** cough **

So use the key – it can be a very valuable tool – but use it wisely. You have to know what the key opens, and what’s inside has to be rewarding to the audience, so that they feel like the trip was worth it. You want to entertain your audience along the way, and you want to keep them invested and get them thinking for themselves, but you also want to have something for them in the end, or you will be letting them down.