Landmark, Hidden, Secret

"After now looking at four genres across three shows, my key learning is that writers will use narrative point of view, i.e. the audience's relationship to secrets and clues, way more than they use the characters' relationships to those same secrets and clues."

"There are story paradigms where all the characters are aware of all the information, and the power in that situation -- where it's the audience being behind all the characters -- is that the power comes from those moments where the audience catches up because the characters are being honest. [...] The whole show, the stakes are all mental health stakes. And it's those moments of insight and truth where everyone else around them knows what they're saying -- it's not a secret to them. But the power comes from the characters being able to acknowledge their own weaknesses or their own shortcomings or their own moments of insight, and letting their dishonesty go, letting their safety nets go, becoming vulnerable."

"Just taking away a tool from this: how do I want people to feel? Do I want them to feel like they're in a drama? At which point maybe I'm going to focus more on my characters being pushed by external events. But I'm going to make sure that there's still tension or compulsion through the secrets and the reveals to the audience. There's going to be a very different feel when my character is driving towards the thing that they're trying to uncover or achieve; [and when] there's cost to it and those costs are escalating. Those are two very different feelings, as against coming into a situation where everyone knows everything but I don't know anything - as the audience member, I'm behind. Where do my moments of power and engagement come from? It's when I get caught up."

"There is a cost to learning the information. There's another phrase from game design that I like in terms of thrillers, which is information puts players in danger and danger rewards characters with information, right? That's kind of the loop with like thriller game design."

"The way of considering your clues as you take your clue and you make it secret and you can hide it. And those are three different things. And I think being able to visualize that, like we talked about the painting and this hanging in front of the safe and then the dust that's on the painting."

"When is the information revealed to the character and when does it create danger? What are the particular skills of a character that allowed them to obtain the information? And then what is the cost of learning the information?"

"If you're writing something that's *not a mystery*: how does thinking about secrets and clues from your character's perspective help you... build plot?"

"If it's hidden, it can only be retrieved at a cost, right? If it's secret, we need some kind of skill check, right? Either way, the purpose of either of those things is to turn it into kind of a landmark to reveal the information."