Have I listed every passage that bears on my largest reveal, with a first and a second reading for each?
Is there a passage that only the second reading explains, or that the reveal makes false on the narration’s own authority?
Are the clues spread through the book, and is at least one early clue strong enough to be pointed to afterwards?
Have I cut every if she had known and every phrase that announces a secret?
The withholding
What keeps the truth from the reader: a character who does not know, a teller with a motive, or the order of telling?
If a character who knows is followed by the narration, where is her attention instead, and does the book show it?
If the reveal falsifies anything, is it inside a teller’s account, and does the reveal name the teller and the reason?
The timing
Does the reader learn each withheld fact with the characters, ahead of them or after, and did I choose that?
For a reveal before the end, what question replaces the one it answers, and is the second half built on it?
Does any scene give the reader two new disclosures at once?
If the book declines to reveal something, is the question kept visibly open to the end?
The arrival
Is the truth received by a character, in scene, in an act?
Does someone act differently because of it, or does the ending mean something it would not otherwise?
Does the disclosure come from inside the book’s causal system, by a character’s choice?
Is the explanation after the recognition, short, and as far as possible left to the reader?
Exercises
The double-reading table. For your book’s largest reveal, list every passage that bears on it, with its position as a percentage, its first reading and its second. Mark each row that has only one reading. Rewrite one such row as an equivocation, a sentence true under both.
The disclosure map. Make a table with a row for each fact your book withholds and a column for the reader and for each major character. Enter the position at which each learns each fact. Find one fact the reader learns alone that a character could learn with her, and rewrite the scene so that they learn it together.
The withholder’s reason. Name the withholder of your largest reveal. If it is a character’s ignorance, write one sentence, placed before the reveal, that gives the ignorance a reason the reader can see. If it is a teller, write the sentence in which the teller, after the reveal, says why.
The successor question. If your book has a reveal before its last quarter, write beneath it the question the reader now holds. Write the same for the question it answered. If the new question is weaker, either move the reveal later or write the decision that the reveal forces on a character, and place it within a chapter of the disclosure.
The recognition without explanation. Rewrite your reveal scene so that no character explains the truth and the narration does not summarise it. Keep only what is found and what someone does about it. If the reader can no longer tell what has been revealed, the preparation is too thin; if she can, cut the explanation from your draft.