Context: What Your Audience Needs to Know vs. What You Want Them to Know

Pre-Relevance

Giving the audience information before it’s relevant can have a powerful affect on the storytelling experience. This is a great way to build up tension and suspense. It’s a classic way to create dramatic irony. It can also help you deliver story moments more effectively.

Sometimes you want the audience to know that something is going to happen. In some cases, you can’t avoid it. For example, the film “Titanic” takes place on a ship that famously sank in the ocean. Everyone watching the movie knows that the ship is going to sink at some point in the story. James Cameron uses this to his advantage. Because we know that the Titanic will sink, the drama now becomes a matter of wondering what will happen to these characters when it does. The sinking of the boat won’t be a surprise, but what the characters choose to do, what happens to them, and how they’re affected by it will be.

This same idea can work for any detail in your story. Letting your audience know something before it becomes relevant can build up anticipation, dread, suspense, and tension. Picture a scene of two people talking at a dinner table. Now picture that same scene, but this time you know that there is a bomb under the table that could go off at any moment. Alfred Hitchcock uses this example when talking about how he mastered the art of suspense. The audience is going to hang on every word, just waiting for the bomb to go off.. What if your favorite character leaves the table? What if they come back?

Sometimes you want the audience know a secret before your characters do. That’s a classic way to create dramatic irony. It can add a layer of drama to every scene. The same goes for secrets about your character(s). A murder mystery can be just as interesting if you let the audience know who the killer is before the detective finds out. What is typically a surprise at the end of the story, can become an opportunity to show off how smart your detective is as they put clues together and/or how clever your killer is as they outsmart your detective.

Later in your story, you may want to let a scene play out without having explain anything. If you want to make sure the scene works, you may need to provide necessary information the audience ahead of time. That way they are following along without skipping a beat. You can think of this as doing yourself a favor. Take the time to set the scene with everything you want the audience to know ahead of time, so you don’t waste time explaining anything or leaving anyone confused later.

As it’s Relevant

Sometimes the best time to give your audience information is in the moment. This is can pragmatic, but it can also be intentional. It’s perfectly valid to explain as you go, but things get really interesting if you intentionally wait to tell the audience something until it becomes relevant.

You may want to surprise the audience by intentionally omitting information earlier in the story. You can then drop information on them in the moment. This is a great way to create a twist in the narrative. For example; (SPOILER ALERT) Darth Vader has always been Luke Skywalker’s father. It was true the entire time, but George Lucas didn’t tell us this until half way through the second Star Wars film. Why wait? It’s all about the audience experience.

Lucas wants the audience to share with Luke’s feelings about taking down the empire. Lucas wants the audience to view Darth Vader as tyrannical, father-killing menace. When it’s revealed that Darth Vader didn’t kill Luke’s father, but is Luke’s father, the audience’s opinions immediately change. Luke had been fighting to avenge his father, but now realizes that he has been lied to. He is the same brood as the big bad guy. What does this mean for Luke? His intentions and motivations change in this moment of realization. The audience connects with Luke because they too are realizing the same thing at the same time.

Along those same lines, you can build up mystery by intentionally keeping something from the audience. The key here is that the audience knows something is missing and will have to continue following the story to learn the answer. The show Dallas had viewers wondering “Who shot JR?” for decades. People are curious creatures and you can use that curiosity to your advantage. Bane famously says “Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask” in The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Audiences will chase a mystery and continue following your story to learn the answer.

Post-Relevance

If you want to take surprises, twists, and mystery to next level, then you can play the long game. Sometimes a twist is so big, that you hold onto it until the bitter end. This is usually reserved for twists that would ruin the experience if people knew ahead of time, or completely change the way that people see the story once they know.

You get to decide what experience you want the audience to have while they follow your story. You can decide which characters they love, and which characters they hate. You decide if an event in your story is good, bad, or ugly. Sometimes that experience only works because the audience doesn’t know something. By manipulating the context, you can decide when that experience changes. Sometimes you don’t want it to change. Maybe you want to hold onto to a secret for the entire story until it’s completely done. Once the experience is over, you can then drop something on the audience to shock them, surprise them, or expose their prejudices. Maybe a main character is secretly the bad guy, but you want the audience to trust that character the whole time. Maybe everything that happened in your story was just a dream. You probably want to hold onto that secret until everything is said and done. Your audience would tune out the second they know that everything that’s happening is inconsequential. If you’re going to hold on to something until the very end, then it should be something that you couldn’t reveal sooner.

For example, the film The Truman Show follows a character who’s entire life is an elaborate television show. His family, friends, neighbors, everyone he meets are all actors. He lives in a  town that was built on a soundstage. Every day is scripted and planned by a team of writers. He has no idea. The film opens with an explanation of all this. The audience knows right from the beginning that Truman is trapped in a fictional world and living in blissful ignorance. This works well because the film is story of Truman discovering this big secret and escaping the fake town. If this had been a different story, then it may not be a good idea to tell the audience about the big secret.

Let’s say we did a version in which Truman never leaves, and never learns about the television show. We could keep the secret from the audience and follow Truman in his uncanny life. We could put the audience in Truman’s shoes. The audience is going to notice that something is off, but they can’t quite put their finger on it. We could use that mystery to keep them wondering. They’ll continue following the story, trying to piece together what is going on. We could tell a story that only works if the audience doesn’t know the big secret. We want the audience to like and trust everyone in Truman’s life. We want the audience to believe what Truman believes. Then, at the end of the story we could reveal that the whole thing was an elaborate production. The second the secret is revealed, the audience loses trust in every character but Truman. They don’t believe anything that is happening, and realize it’s an elaborate lie. In this version, we don’t want that experience for audience. That’s why we’d wait until the very end to drop the big reveal.