Updated: Jun 18, 2018

Writing your story’s secrets is hard. Here’s a book that nails it and keeps you turning pages. #writingadvice #writingtips #writingsecrets

I love a book that grabs me from the first lines and doesn’t let me go. THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO by Patrick Ness is over 500 pages long and I read it in three days. I am a very busy person, but I couldn’t put down.

The Story:

This book starts twenty years after the interspace migration of a sect of orthodox Amish-like people. They land on a unique planet that looks a lot like Earth except two things: everyone on it, even the newcomers, are infected with a virus that makes their thoughts audible, and all animals can talk.

The newcomers call it Noise. Thoughts are everywhere, floating around and filling one another’s heads. It is constant and inescapable. Except this symptom of the virus only affects the men. There is no women Noise.

Our protagonist, Todd, is about to turn thirteen—the age of man in Prentisstown. All his life he’s been told that the virus killed all the women, including his own mother. In the first chapter we see Todd talking to his dog (literally) and hearing Noise around him until he comes upon the place of pure silence. It’s a girl. And Prentisstown wants her. She and Todd are forced by Todd’s guardians to escape, chased by men whose Noise promises untold terrible things if they are caught.

Why I love it:

Patrick Ness shows an incredible ability to pack a story with secrets. He gives just enough information to keep the reader interested, but not so much that it kills the tension. It is a tough balance as a creator of stories and one that we all struggle with in our own writing. How much should I show? If I show too much will my big reveal at the end be too obvious?

The craft–writing secrets:

So how does the author do it? Secrets are especially hard when writing in a deeper POV, as this one is. Sure, most of the time Todd doesn’t know the secrets but this is a world of telepathy! How do you keep secrets in a world where you can hear the thoughts of every man? Here is a scene in which Todd’s guardian tries to tell Todd the town’s secret:

And [Ben] closes his eyes and opens up his Noise for me.

One Month’s time is the first thing it says—

And here comes my birthday—

The day I’ll become a man—

And—

And—

And there it all is—

What happens—

What the other boys did who became men—

All alone—

All by themselves—

How every last bit of boyhood is killed off—

And—

And—

And what actually happened to the people who—

Holy crap—

And I don’t want to say no more about it.

And I can’t say at all how it makes me feel.

I look at Ben and he’s a different man than he always was, he’s a different man than the one I’ve always known.

Knowledge is dangerous.

(pg. 52-53)

In this example, Todd is looking into his guardian’s Noise and finds out THE secret, or at least part of it. But he doesn’t show us. He wants to shut it out and not think about it, and in doing so he keeps it from the reader. This secret isn’t fully revealed until the last scene in the book.

Why this works:

If there were pages and pages of this, the reader would very quickly get frustrated. But this is just one page and right after it, the action picks right up. Todd’s being chased by the leaders of Prentisstown and Ben is trying to get Todd to leave as quickly as possible. There is no time in the action to sit and think about it. And for the rest of the book, the action keeps going.

This also works because there is more than one secret going on. This is the big one: how a boy becomes a man in this weird town. But there is also the secret of what happened to the women, the secret of where the girl he finds is from (she’s just crash-landed from a new ship of settlers on this planet), the new experience of being around a Noise-less girl for the first time, and the high-tension problem of what the men from Prentisstown will do if they catch up them.

Finally, this works because the plot and the secrets are perfectly tied together. The plot is their escape, which brings them to other settlements along the way to the city with all the answers: Haven. In each town they hear just a bit more about the secrets. Everyone knows about the “cursed” Prentisstown. As the plot moves forward, so do the secrets. This is vital to creating a fast-pasted story filled with secrets.

Take a look at THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO for how Patrick Ness juggles secrets and action and let us know how fast you read the book!

Bonus:

This book also excels at deep POV and character voice, the use of metaphor (the knife), and character development. Here are a few more quotes for your reading pleasure:

“I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who’s licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr. Prentiss Jr. kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from when Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog—my dog—went after a man with a machete to save me and who’s right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget.” (pg. 333)

“As long as I hold it, as long as I use it, the knife lives, lives in order to take life, but it has to be commanded, it has to have me to tell it to kill, and it wants to, it wants to plunge and thrust and cut and stab and gouge, but I have to want it to as well, my will has to join with its will.” (pg. 340)

And here are the first lines of the first chapter (you can see from the earlier quote that he really comes to love that ruddy dog).

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything.

“Need a poo, Todd.”

“Shut up, Manchee.”

“Poo. Poo, Todd.”

“I said shut it.”

**Be sure to have Book 2 (THE ASK AND THE ANSWER) on hand, you’ll want to pick it up right after this one!

Find it on Amazon or add it to your bookshelf of Goodreads.

*A movie based on the series is coming out March 2019 starring Tom Holland (Todd) and Daisy Ridley (Viola) screenplay by Charlie Kaufman.