What is Your Character Hiding: The Power of Secrets
By David Corbett | August 12, 2022 |
In Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News? Joanna Hunter, whose mother, sister, and baby brother were murdered by a lunatic when she was six years old, explains to a police officer why she tells no one about this: “People look at you differently when they know you’ve been through something terrible. It’s the thing about you that they find most interesting.”
Most people, however—and characters—do not harbors secrets out of fear of being “interesting.” On the contrary, what we choose to keep hidden, and why we do so, says a great deal about what we fear, if exposed, will undermine or even destroy our standing among our friends and family, community and peers. That fear may be unreasonable, out of all proportion, but that’s far less important than that it exists—especially for writers.
Secrets provide writers with an intrinsically valuable way of conjuring depth in a character—there is automatically an inside and an outside, what is concealed and what is revealed. And the tension created by the character’s decision to conceal something about themselves provides an immediate dramatic payoff—we can’t help wondering what they’re hiding, why they’re hiding it, and what will happen if the secret is revealed.
Secrets also provide an economical way to depict vulnerability—the very fact a secret is being kept means the character fears being exposed.
That threat—of being exposed or “found out,” and therefore ostracized or abandoned—is one of the key dreads of existence. In a sense, our secrets hint at the isolation we associate with death, and our keeping them hidden is part of the magical thinking we perpetuate as part of the ritual of life.
The mask we call our ego or persona is crafted on the premise of concealing our fears, our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities—our secrets. Instead we display to the world our confident, competent selves—with some allowances for self-effacing humor and sociable humility.
A great deal of modern drama is premised upon the peeling away of the mask concealing our secret selves, and the struggle to summon the courage and honesty to deal with the consequences of being known more authentically, more completely.
It may be that there is no such thing as living without a mask, and that the stripping away of one simply predicates the donning of another. It may be that what I think of as my honest self is really just a different one: slightly less dishonest, defensive, deluded. But it remains true that whatever mask I wear, its purpose isn’t mere concealment; it’s also protection.
Secrecy vs. Repression
Although there is a diagnostic distinction between secrets, which are consciously concealed, and repressed traits or behaviors, from a dramatic perspective they reflect more a difference in degree than kind.
Repression, from a writer’s point of view, is simply what happens when the concealment of a secret has been rendered habitual by years of effort. It’s fear of exposure that makes what’s hidden dramatically interesting, and for both secrets and repressed desires or traits, that fear is fundamentally the same. What’s at stake is our public identity, the person others believe us to be, and all we have built by assuming that role.
Both repressed traits and secrets can be uncovered straightforwardly by exploring the character’s backstory—whether they’ve been buried for a moment or a lifetime. What is the character afraid of or ashamed of, what does she feel guilty about, what has she done or said that could be used against her? And remember that these past incidents almost always involve other people, and thus can be conceived in scenic terms.
Examples of Characters Harboring Secrets
- Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman conceals from his family not just the loss of his job but his plans for suicide. Indeed, his devastating sense of failure, in contrast to his constant insistence he’s a success because he’s well-liked, is the secret at the heart of his tragedy.
- In House of Sand and Fog, Kathy Nicolo lies to her mother about her husband’s leaving, the loss of their house to back taxes, and even her return to smoking; she does this to protect herself from the onslaught of disapproval, judgment, and shame she knows these admissions would invite. Meanwhile former Imperial Iranian Army colonel Massoud Amir Behrani, who fled his homeland with his family, works multiple menial jobs to stay afloat financially, but each morning he dresses in a suit and tie to maintain the façade of a respectable businessman so as not to shame his wife Nadereh, his son Esmail, and his daughter Soraya.
- Blanche DuBois’s secret in A Streetcar Named Desire is that she lost the family home not because of understandable money troubles—she was living on a teacher’s salary—but because through drink and illicit sexual liaisons at the “Tarantula Arms” she became so emotionally and physically dissipated she lost hold of the rude realities of life—and squandered both her and her sister’s legacy, the family home known as Belle Reve.
- Beth in Citizen Vince is obliged to conceal her romantic interest in Vince, for if she makes the first move she risks being laughed at. How can a hooker presume to be “something that you wanted like that,” i.e., a girlfriend?
- In Breaking Bad, Walter White, desperate for money, turns his chemistry expertise to cooking methamphetamine, which he feverishly conceals from everyone—especially his DEA agent brother-in-law. Only his partner, Jesse Pinkman, is aware of his turn to crime.
It is not just protagonists and other main characters who benefit from harboring—or revealing—a secret. In the film Tumbleweeds, the libertine mother, Mary Jo, and her wise-beyond-her-years daughter, Ava, provide the core of the drama. But at their most recent stop on their parade of misbegotten landings, they encounter a man named Dan, who possesses a kindliness tinged with sorrow. We gradually learn he is a widower, but that still seems to get us only so far. We see him tutor Ava, who is preparing for a Shakespearean role for her high school drama class, and he shows her that the rhythm of iambic pentameter mimics the pulsations of the human heart. He also offers Mary Jo and Ava use of a camper he keeps parked outside his house. He and his late wife had bought the camper in preparation for a cross-country trek they’d planned for some time. Their friends threw a lavish going-away party the night before the couple was going to head off. “It was a great party,” Dan says with slightly more wistfulness than usual. Then: “I shouldn’t have been driving.”
The fact that Dan was responsible for his wife’s death comes as a thunderbolt. We now see in his kindness not just sadness, but a guilt for which he can never atone.
This demonstrates not just that even secondary characters can benefit from secrets, but that timing is crucial in their revelation. Since secrets automatically provide suspense, don’t disclose them until necessary—usually not until well into the story, and as close to the end as possible if they lie at the heart of the conflict.
For example, in the Mike Nichols film Regarding Henry, the protagonist is a prominent lawyer prone to arrogant indifference to the havoc he creates in others’ lives. It is a life he embraces with absolute gusto, until the night he interrupts a robbery at a convenience store near his home and is shot twice. His wounds result in both cardiac arrest and serious brain damage—specifically, severe memory impairment—and a long, slow process of rehab begins, during which he also reconsiders his values, his relationships, and his reason for living. Specifically, he discovers a letter suggesting his wife, Sarah, was having an affair with a former colleague. After learning this he angrily storms out of their shared home—only to be confronted by another colleague, Linda, who informs him that she and he had been romantically involved as well, and he had planned to leave Sarah.
These two secrets are revealed at a crucial moment late in the second half of the story as the full measure of Henry’s misbegotten former life has become undeniably obvious. The sheer accumulation of evidence proving how badly he’d treated others, crowned by these two devastating secrets, makes him realize he hates the man he used to be, hates being a lawyer, and never truly appreciated his wife or their marriage—and it’s time to rectify all that.
As valuable as secrets can be, they are not essential for a portrayal. For example, in True Grit, Charles Portis uses contradictions rather than secrets to make each character uniquely fascinating: Despite Mattie’s youth, she is indomitable and savvy in business. LaBoeuf is courageous despite a foppish concern for appearance. Cogburn, the one-eyed drunken fat man, is relentless, cunning, and, in the end, valiant. But if your main characters do harbor secrets, readers will expect those secrets to be divulged—with dramatically significant consequences. If not, you better exceed that expectation with something better.
If you’re going to use a secret, don’t think small, unless you’re trying for comic or ironic effect. Imagine something deep and fiercely protected—the thing that, if known by others, would change forever your character’s life as she knows it. Even people she loves and who love her would recoil in disgust or fear or condemnation if they knew.
Take two characters from a piece you’re currently writing and identify whether they possess any secrets. If so, how do those secrets affect their behavior vis-à- vis the other characters? Are any of the characters actively trying to unearth another’s secret? Why or why not? What would happen if one character were to disclose her secret to one of the other characters? (If nothing of import happens, choose a more damning, shameful, or devastating secret.)
Analyze the secrets you developed in your response to the previous questions. How long has the character been hiding this secret? How habitual is the concealment? Has that concealment become second nature? If so, what might force it back into consciousness? Whose “finding out” would change the character’s life?
[Note: I will be in Norway when this post goes up. Given the time difference and other issues I may not be able to respond promptly to comments, but I will do my best to follow up as soon as possible.]
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
David, this is so helpful and timely for me because I am working on a novel where several of my characters have secrets they are protecting. And the secrets are related to the plot action and conclusion. I am wondering though, can you advise on how best to reveal secrets? Secrets revealed by a character “telling” the truth sometimes come off as dull and anticlimactic (like Miss Marple gathering the suspects in the library to explain who the murderer is and why), or stumbling upon the truth comes off as weak and cliche. What are the different ways to reveal secrets as the story progresses? Thanks so much. I love your posts!
Well, let’s look at some of the examples I cited.
Willy Loman’s secret to commit suicide is discovered by his son who finds his “suicide kit” behind the water heater.
Blanche divulges her own secret about losing Belle Reve in her first scene with Stella, but promptly deflects, blaming Stella for accusing her when she wasn’t around as all the relatives died one by one–and death is expensive. This turns ot to be untrue–which Stanley discovers when he learns from a salesman friend whose territory includes Belle Reve and he fills Stanley in on Blanche’s sordid past.
Kathy Nicolo can’t keep her secrets hidden once she loses the house–and she handles the stress by reverting to alcohol and drugs (which becomes a new secret).
Beth’s secret is hardly a secret–she thinks she’s hiding it but Vince (and the reader) are only too aware b the way she behaves around Vince.
And Walt’s secret in Breaking Bad is obvious early on–it’s his need to conceal it that creates the tension.
So the first thing to ask, I guess, is how and why are your characters hiding something. The “how” will give you some idea regarding he manner in which they might be found out. Why will tell you how fiercely they protect the secret.
And if you have multiple people hiding sectets, one or more of them may try to protect themselves by looking for the others’ secrets and exposing them first.
Basically, secrets are discovered either because the secret-holder can no longer bear the strain of harboring the secret (perhaps because she at last finds someone she believes she can trust); she trips up (or creates a situation that reveals the secret); or some other character, motivated (for whatever reason) to find the truth, digs it up.
You may want to have one or more character’s secrets revealed to the reader but not the other characters, which will create tension–will they be found out? Maybe one or more of the others characters have secrets not revealed until much later. But whatever secret is exposed last has to be the most explosive and consequential. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to have each secret’s revelation be more devastating than the last so the revelations build in dramatic effect.
Does that help at all?
Yes, this is exactly the direction I needed. Thank you so much, David.
Thank you for this Q&A, Paula and David. It’s a very helpful addition to your blog, David, as I look at the secrets within my story. Two of my characters are actively hiding their secrets, each dealing with their secrets in differing ways. Another has a past that she just doesn’t bother to disclose, but which will come out by the end of the story.
On several occasions I have held back on a subject in the actual post anticipating it will come up in the comments. Timing is one such topic.
The character who doesn’t bother to disclose her past makes me think of Joanne Hunter, the character I mentioned at the top of the post. She doesn’t bother to mention it because she knows it will automatically become the one and only thing people think of when they encounter her. What’s your character’s reason?
She’s an East Prussian junker. Why let her personal history bother or pain the current generation in her family? Or cause pity? She loves the present moment, and the past can’t be changed.
Her past contains hurts–grief for family presumed dead who’d sent her ahead to safety, discovery of what it means to not have money or status, a shift from pride in her heritage to reticence then hiding it out of concern for her and baby niece’s safety, and the inability to go back to her homeland after the war ends and Germans are expelled. When the prejudice against Germans recedes, it doesn’t seem worth her time or energy to share her past.
So her putting her past aside is a symptom of her strength, not a weakness (inability to handle it). I like that, and it gives her an admirably stoic quality true of many survivors.
BTW: No sooner than my wife and I arrive at our home in Norway for the first time together since Covid hit in 2020, than my poor, beautiful bride comes down with the damn thing. (Evryone we know who’s been on a plane of late has gotten sick with it.) I’ve already had it, despite being double vaxxed, double boosted, so fingers crossed on my end, but I may be a bit slower than usual in responding to your comments, given caretaker duties.
I’m so sorry to hear this, David. Might I suggest ivermectin to the rescue? It works at all stages of covid infection and can be taken prophylactically as well. It might be the biggest secret that was kept from the public in 2020 but Indian doctors have been using it with great success. I hope you and your wife will have a wonderful stay in Norway. And thank you for a great lesson in secrets. I’m beginning to think that all my stories have elements of secrets and lies.
Thank you, Vijaya. I assume you mean well, but Ivermectin is only approved for veterinary use in Norway, except for a cream meant for the treatment of rosacea.
Indeed, so many stories possess elements of secrets and lies. You are not alone there.
A magically gifted daughter who discovers that that she’s not entirely human and a mother who purports to hate magic but secretly wishes she had it. Both fear rejection, but for wildly different reasons. What I loved discovering here is how for all their differences, they are the same. Thought-provoking essay! thank you, and safe travels.
Thanks, Susan. Stories where apparent opposites discover their core similarity are some of the most gratifying to read. Good luck!
Such a brilliant post, Dave! I’m seeing it as the companion to another brilliant post of yours about backstory (and why we don’t need to give it a lot of space on the page). Because “secrets” are about things that happened in the past. However, as you advise us, that doesn’t mean we have to write a giant backstory or dramatic flashback to give them their place in the story. Their place is in the front story, the present …
To your “why” and “how” the secret is hidden, I would add: “when” it is revealed to the reader. Katherine Center does this masterfully, for example,, in Things You Save in a Fire. The reader has already figured out what the Big Secret is, but it is the protagonist’s act of telling her secret—to the least likely person—that serves as the catalyst for her emotional transformation. I.e., when and how and to whom the secret is exposed.
This insight (which sounds obvious when I write it, but oh well) about whether a secret is exposed (without the secret-holder’s permission or choice) or offered (the secret-holder decides to expose it, for a story-related reason) is already making a huge difference as I work on the first draft of a new WIP.
Now I will go and do your exercises. Thank you!!
Thanks, Barbara. Funny you should bring up the backstory issue. Contradictions, often also based in backstory, can often remain unexplained — just let the character behave accordingly and let the reader figure it out on her own. But secrets that remain undisclosed feel a bit like cheating. Then again, if you never let the reader know there’s a secret at issue, they’ll never know you kept anything from them, and they’ll be much like contradictions — things rooted in the past that affect behavior but remain unexplained.
If you are going to disclose the secret, then you are absolutely right — when becomes a crucial decision. And though the general rule is to wait as long as possible before revealing it, I’m sure if we put our collective reader minds together we could come up with numerous counter-examples — the most obvious one being those cases where the secret is divulged to the reader but not the other characters.
That’s another interesting aspect! For sure, the reader might know something that some of the characters do not, although I do have a soft spot for times when the reader learns the secret right when the protagonist learns it, right there in-scene. That works when there is a secret that the protagonist herself doesn’t know. There are also secrets that the protagonist is keeping from the other characters, and perhaps from the reader too … as you say, lots of ways to play with it. The key, I think, is that it has to be purposeful in relation to “what is this story about.” Wow, you have definitely gotten me hopping today!
“Wow, you have definitely gotten me hopping today!”
It is my reason for being.
Awesome David. I love your examination of works I have read. YES! And a main character in my WIP has a deep dark secret that has made her who she is, a women unable to feel accepted by others, a woman whose buried anger and fear causes her to harm others. Deprived of love both physical and mental leads her to kidnap a child. Can that child who has had everything my antagonist Jude has not had, enable her to soften Jude, change her or basically endure being with her? I will be reading your post again and all the replies, Beth
Wow. Now that is a drastic form of self-help. I can only imagine the contortions of guilt, sorrow, rage, and love Jude will be going through as she tries to get beyond not only her past but deal with the fact of her crime.
Great stuff, David.
And I’m thrilled to find another fan of Regarding Henry, a film that had a major influence on my debut novel, in that they both focus on having a good man emerge from a bad one after a life-changing brain injury. I’m always attracted to do-over stories!
Me too. The Doctor’s another film in that vein, with John Hurt as a surgeon who suffers a massive stroke — and learns what dicks most doctors are from a patient’s perspective.
Hi Keith and David, Have to jump in and say how much I love, REGARDING HENRY. I’ve watched it maybe three times. All the details feel just right and the physical therapist, while not getting that much attention, is one of the best characters in the film. David, hope your wife feels better and so enjoy you both and your friendships, your words and ideas, Beth
Secrets are the driving factor in my Martiniere Legacy near-future agripunk stories.
Gabriel Martiniere hides his identity even from his beloved Ruby because he fears the consequences should his wealthy, psychopathic and powerful uncle Philip discover where he lives.
When Philip does learn where Gabe lives, he locks Gabe down using mind control techniques and nanobots so that Gabe can’t tell Ruby who he is.
When Gabe is finally able to reunite with Ruby after twenty-one years apart, he learns that Philip is actually his father.
And more…so much more.
But a particular secret also lies at the heart of my cyberpunk series, the Netwalk Sequence. Sarah Stephens knows a devastating secret about her heritage that she fears will tear her family apart–including her children. However, the consequences of hiding that secret ends up being problematic, and isn’t resolved until Sarah’s great-granddaughter Bess is an adult.
Now THAT is what I call swinging for the fences. Great examples, Joyce. Thanks.
David, excellent example pieces (I thought House of Sand and Fog was splendid work, with the interwoven stories and rising tension, secrets being a big part of it); I’ll have to try and catch Regarding Henry. Great stuff too on how the timing of secret revelation is crucial.
My best to your wife’s quick recovery.
Thanks, Tom. I thought THOSAF brilliant and poignant and devastating as well.
My supporting character caused a fire (accidentally.) He has suppressed the memory. Triggers(words or smells) cause stress, but he doesn’t know why he reacts the way he does. Does this reaction sound realistic?
The entire PTSD/repressed memory subject is a potential minefield with errors and omissions awaiting en masse. Research thoroughly, tread carefully.
Thank you, David. Is there any information you could recommend?
I would just look for the LATEST research on traumatic memory. The idea that all traumatic memories are supporessed has been prety much debunked. But there are cases when it happens. I don’t have any specific literature to cite for you, so you’ll have to do your own research on this.