Secret rooms in movies and books promise excitement. How does one find the room? How does one enter? What could be hidden in this mysterious vault?
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is introduced to readers as being the result of an amazing find, a secret cache tucked away in the dusty, forgotten second floor of the custom house where Hawthorne worked for a while.
Here’s how he creates excitement for his narrator’s find and, therefore, the story:
But one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to make a discovery . . . [p]oking and burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in a corner; unfolding one and another document . . . I chanced to lay my hand on a small package, carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow parchment. . . . [I]n the mysterious package was a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded. . . . It was the capital letter A. . . . I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me, —the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word, —it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.
What a great way to hook readers. Not only does the narrator find something intriguing but he also experiences something strange and burning when he comes in contact with it. You can almost see him crying out and dropping the letter, surprise and pain on his face.
Now it’s your turn: Create a secret place—attic, basement, cubby-hole, forgotten room, garden, secret panel, priest’s hole, and so forth. Then put yourself or a character there to discover it. What will you find there? How will it impact you or your character?
