What do I know vs. what do you know?

I've been giving this question lots of thought lately.

Kim Harrison once said something like if Rachel knew as much about herself as Kim did, she wouldn't have been dabbling in demon magic. [The Rachel in question is Rachel Morgan, her main character, and if you needed me to clarify that for you than you need to make an immediate, emergency purchase of Dead Witch Walking at your favorite bookseller.] No doubt I've butchered that quote, but the point is that Kim knows MUCH more about Rachel than the readers or--to her point--even Rachel, herself, does.

It got me thinking. What do I know about my characters and storyline that should be different from what my readers know or what my characters know? I've always been a detail-oriented person. I like to know all the whys, wheres, whats and hows behind everything. But I'm not sure that makes for good writing. Certainly *I* still need to know all the info, but how do I decide how much to put into the story and when? I think the general rule to follow is to keep the readers informed on a need-to-know basis. But what does that really mean? How does that translate to all the info I have in my head about my world, my characters and my story and the blinking cursor in front of me?

I finished reading Keri Arthur's latest Riley Jenson novel, EMBRACED BY DARKNESS yesterday. I love Keri's work. It's reliably fast paced and well plotted with engaging characters. I can always count on her for a great, satisfying read. At the end of this book, instead of a preview of the next Riley novel there is a snippet from a new series Keri is doing. The basic premise is that a woman wakes up on a beach next to a dead man with no memory, a strange tattoo and powers that let her know she's definitely not human. (That's me paraphrasing from memory. I'm sure it was written much more elegantly in the back of the book.) Since the main character, Destiny McCrae, has no memory of who or what she is, Keri knows a LOT more than the reader does. In fact, more than even the character does. What an interesting writing challenge! In the excerpt provided in Embraced by Darkness, Keri sprinkled in slippery little partial memories that faded away if Destiny started thinking about them too much. Obviously they are all significant, otherwise Keri wouldn't have put them in there but she writes it in such a way that leaves the reader--and poor Destiny!--almost more confused and frustrated, holding only bits and pieces of hints and clues to who she is and what's happened to her. I can't wait to read it and unravel the mystery. But I mention it here as an example of writing that, more than ever, calls for the author to have a masterful understanding of what the author knows vs. what the characters know vs. what the readers know.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic and/or any links you may have to other writers who have discussed similar ideas.

In other news, I continue to struggle with my writing schedule. Oh, wait. That's not new. *sigh* I've discovered an immutable truth: I will not work on Friday nights. I'm just plain done on Friday nights. While this means I now have one less writing day during the week, it also means I understand a little more about my own cycles and can at least plan around it. I spent some time working on The Gatherer today but I need to almost completely rewrite an earlier chapter, which means my writing session started with a word count of -2,017. Rock on!! Needless to say, Zokutou is banned from this blog until I have positive word count progress to show. This rewrite, while a complete pain in the ass, is really good for the story. I'm excited to have realized it early--one of those moments where I go "huh, maybe I'm cut out for this stuff after all." I also need to do it now (vs. in 2nd draft edits) because it will affect what's happening later in the story.

But damn it's hard to go back and chop words when I've been so focused on moving forward and piling words onto the word count.

The day job has been hellish this past week and promises to be so again this next week and perhaps even part of the week after, so my blogging may be a little scarce. But I'm still here, still working and still loving it. :)