This is probably the most basic way to bury a clue. It doesn’t require any smoke and mirrors to distract the readers while you talk as fast as you can to misdirect their attention. No, to use sentence sequencing, you just keep talking. Same tone, same pitch, just making sure that you don’t end on something important—namely, a clue.

Generally, we want to put the most important or highest impact element in a sentence or paragraph at the end. There, it carries a little extra resonance, and gives the reader a mental “blip” to commit that element to memory.

The second best place for the high impact element in a sentence is the beginning. Here, you still have very good reader recall, but because the sentence or paragraph continues rambling downhill after that, you undercut the impact of that element.

The serial position effect suggests that humans best recall elements at the beginning and end of lists. The first item (primacy effect) actually shows a slightly higher recall rate than the last item (recency effect).

To me, both these effects have some useful applications. We can use the beginning of scenes and paragraphs (and perhaps even sentences) for elements that we want our readers to remember throughout the passage: scene goals, for example. We can use the ends of scenes, paragraphs and sentences for words and thoughts with the most impact.

Which leaves the middle: the best place for things we want our readers to notice but not place too much significance upon. Theresa Stevens at edittorrent has called this the “Mystery Clue Effect.” It’s nothing more than sticking the important item in the middle of a list, sentence, paragraph or even scene, and moving on to something else with a natural flow.

What do you think? How do you hide clues with sequencing?

Photo by NoiseJammer