Writing characters with secrets

Everyone is hiding something. Is that true for your characters as well?

Secrets are one of the most efficient ways to build tension in a story. They drive conflict, create stakes, reveal character, and force choices.

Whether it's something huge—like a past crime—or something tiny—like a lie about where they were last night—what matters is this: someone knows something they shouldn't. Or they don’t know something they should.

A secret makes things unstable. And unstable things are fun to write.

Why secrets work

Every story needs friction. Secrets create that instantly, because they introduce imbalance. The reader knows something that one character doesn’t. Or one character knows something that the others don’t. Either way, you’ve split the room.

You don’t need melodrama for this to work. A character might hide that they’re applying for a new job. That they lied in a relationship. That they’re terminally ill but don’t want to be pitied. These don’t need explosions or car chases. They need real people!

A secret can build pressure. The more it matters, the more it warps the story around it. People lie to protect it. They misdirect. They act out of character. And all of that generates plot.

Who knows what, and when?

One of the most powerful structural tools in fiction is the control of information. That includes what the reader knows, what the characters know, and how those things change.

If the reader knows something before the characters, you get suspense. If a character knows something the others don’t, you get tension. If everyone is in the dark, you get mystery. If everyone knows something they shouldn’t but pretends not to, you get a beautiful chaos.

The point is, you can plan secrets not just as character traits, but as structural levers. Time their reveals. Pair them with reversals. Let one character’s secret blow up another’s life.

Small secrets are gold dust

Writers often assume secrets need to be huge to matter. A double life. A murder. A hidden sibling. And sure, those can work and repeatedly do.

But secrets are often small. Think little secrets like: A priest who no longer believes in God. A married couple who never actually filed the paperwork. A teenager who pretends to hate musicals but listens to Les Mis on repeat in secret.

These are silly little examples, but the point is that it’s not about the scale. It’s about the emotional weight. If the character would do something extreme to keep their secret hidden, you give the reader a reason to invest in them.

Small secrets often tend to be more plausible, too. Readers can sniff out a secret added just to juice the plot. But something intimate and specific? That can feel more real.

How to reveal a secret without killing tension