“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne
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As we all know, stories are the recollection of events that happen through time. In January, I posted an article on flashbacks in story-telling. Today, I’d like to go in the other direction with foreshadowing.
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To begin, let’s look at the difference between flash forward and foreshadowing.
A flash forward takes the reader to a point in the future. A good example is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge is taken into the future by a ghost to show him what will happen after his death if he doesn’t change his ways.
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But foreshadowing is different, and despite what Hawthorne said, a shadow may indicate events to come.
According to masterclass.com,
“Foreshadowing is a literary device used to give an indication or hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing is useful for creating suspense, a feeling of unease, a sense of curiosity, or a mark that things may not be as they seem.”
Foreshadowing may be direct or indirect.
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Direct Foreshadowing overtly states an upcoming event or twist in the story.
For example, the prologue of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet specifically states that the two lovers will die in the story:
“From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
Another example of this straight-forward form of foreshadowing is when the author simply makes a statement about the future.
I recently read the novel Tom Lake by Ann Patchett where the first-person narrator recounts to her three daughters the story of her love affair with a famous actor. Late in the book, the narrator explains to the reader that she has told all of her past to her children – well, almost all. “And I am done, except for this: I saw Duke one other time, and of that time I will say nothing to my girls.” So the reader knows that an event which is explained in detail to the reader will not be related to other characters in the book. (Sort of a negative foreshadowing.)
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Indirect Foreshadowing is a more subtle way of hinting at future events or outcomes in the story.
“If you say in the first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it absolutely must go off.” –Anton Chekhov
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus talks to Jem about courage after the death of Mrs. Dubose.
“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
That conversation foreshadowed Atticus’s own courage in defending Tom Robinson.
In an early chapter of Tom Lake, the first-person narrator betrays her best friend by stealing the other girl’s boyfriend. That event foreshadows a similar betrayal later in the book when the same thing happens to the protagonist.
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So TKZers: Do you think foreshadowing is a useful device in novel writing? Have you used foreshadowing in your novels? Can you think of any examples in stories you’ve read?
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Private pilot Cassie Deakin declares her distrust of handsome men in the first paragraph of Lacey’s Star. That statement foreshadows her flawed decisions on trust throughout the book and almost gets her killed.
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I especially love indirect foreshadowing as a reader. It makes the reading experience richer and just more fun. I recently read Mercy Will Follow Me by Sarah Hanks. I knew because of a … well, I can’t say (spoilers), but yeah, there are a couple of indirect foreshadows!
Good morning, Priscilla.
I am also a fan of indirect foreshadowing. It adds complexity to the story. I especially liked the example of Atticus explaining the meaning of courage that foreshadows his own behavior later on.
Have a great week.
Good discussion of foreshadowing, Kay. It’s an essential element of the mystery/suspense/thriller genre. Readers like to pick out foreshadowing clues as they try to guess what’s going to happen next, e.g. “I knew when the house burned down, a body would be found in the basement.” .
Sometimes during rewrites, I intend to insert foreshadowing and find a pleasant surprise. Back in the first draft, my subconscious had already left a breadcrumb that provides exactly the hint I can build on to foreshadow. Love when that happens.
And you’ve echoed my reply (which somehow disappeared), but since you’ve already brought up the points I was going to make, I’m not going to try to recreate what I wrote.
Good morning, Debbie and Terry.
Yes. I love it when the sleuth stumbles on something that seems unimportant but turns out to foreshadow the thing that solves the crime. And I also love it when my subconscious innocently drops a breadcrumb here or there.
Have a good week.
Ha, there are several “versions” of Chekhov’s gun out there, but it was always about playwriting. Whoever mangled this quote to make it the second or third CHAPTER (I trust not you, Kay!) misleads young writers. Checkhov meant the second or third ACT. You need some distance for it to be true foreshadowing.
For me this is best done on the second draft, because I know the whole story and, esp., the ending. I often put in what I think would be a good visual or line of dialogue in the ending, then go back and plant that eariler in the book.
Thanks for the correction, Jim! I’ve read that quote a hundred times, but obviously copied and pasted a version that was wrong. (I just changed it in the post.)
Appreciate that. I find misquotes all the time, especially poor Hemingway, who NEVER said you sit a the typewriter and bleed; or “Write drunk, edit sober.”
The girls in the attic are great at creating foreshadowing! And for reminding me when I haven’t.
Hi Patricia.
I’m so grateful for those girls in the attic. They often know things about my stories before I do.
Have a good week.
Good morning, Kay! This is a helpful look at foreshadowing. I strongly agree with Debbie that foreshadowing is a crucial element of mysteries and thrillers. All fiction writing has an aspect of four dimensional chess to it, especially mysteries and thrillers, with the story that came before the story, the pre-story and the shadow stories as JSB has noted, one for the hero, the other for the villain, but also with foreshadowing, which sets up future events, including clues.
I’m fond of indirect foreshadowing, and in fact, had a lot of fun in Book Drop Dead with what I dubbed “Chekov’s Wig,” both initially showing a garish 80s wig and then in metaphorically firing it.
Thanks for another great post! Hope you have a wonderful week filled with words.
“All fiction writing has an aspect of four dimensional chess to it, especially mysteries and thrillers” I like your comparison to four dimensional chess, Dale. Such complexity is hard to understand, but seeing the mystery puzzle come together always gives a sense of satisfaction.
I love your “Chekhov’s wig” idea!
Hi Kay. Good subject.
I absolutely think foreshadowing is useful. Keeps the reader turning pages, IMHO.
I have used it. In No Tomorrows, foreshadowing happens in the very beginning, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th sentences:
Now the woman in the mirror was a frightening shadow, right index finger outstretched, pinning her to guilt. Of course. It was Thursday.
Hopefully, the reader will keep reading to find out what’s up with Thursdays in Annie Lee’s world.
Hope you all have a great week! 🙂
Morning, Deb.
Now the woman in the mirror was a frightening shadow, right index finger outstretched, pinning her to guilt. Of course. It was Thursday.
Great example of using foreshadowing to build suspense. I want to know what was going on with Thursday.
This is an interesting discussion.
Being largely self taught I never realized that what I do in my stories is foreshadow. It seems as if you give the reader a little taste of what’s to come but when you think about it it is a natural thing. “I shoulda saw that coming” is how it looks to me.
I’d never really understood Chekhov’s gun before and what it signifies. So much better to be able to put a name to something.
Hi Robert.
I know what you mean. Like you, I wrote my first book not thinking about possible foreshadowing, but when I look back at that story now, there are early indications of problems that occur in later scenes.
Have a good week.
The direct foreshadowing can be so marked that you know exactly what’s going to happen at the end of the story. Like that perfect example of Romeo and Juliet, you know from the prologue that the lovers are going to die, but you’re still curious how it’s going to be.
Shakespeare explored this trope a lot. In Julius Caesar, different people gave premonitions and prophecies about Caesar’s death. We know from the beginning of Macbeth that he’s going to murder his king. Hamlet gives us a hint from the beginning of the play of his plan to avenge his father’s death.
But those are classical plays. I believe this kind of foreshadowing gives off a lot of information about the story’s direction. But I love it best when speckles of information are dropped here and there about what’s going to happen in the story, like ‘a rifle hangin on the wall.’ It makes it more fun if the hint is almost inconsequential that it is easily missed by a reader. Only for them to see the full gist later and remember that it was actually mentioned at the beginning.
Hi Stephen.
Thanks for those insightful examples of Shakespeare’s use of direct foreshadowing. Like you, I prefer the feeling you get when you reach the end of a story and realize there was a little omen at the beginning that set it all up.
Have a great week.
In EVERY scene I write in the Pride’s Children trilogy, when filling out the prompts, I consider how Donald Maass’ The Fire in Fiction asks me to find microtension in foreshadowing. And I answer myself IN WRITING by thinking about exactly what might create that element specially in this scene. (It’s #13 on my list.)
The advantage of my piecemeal way of dealing with all these prompts is that everything gets a little bit of my attention without having to compete with anything else, and if there is something that works in that scene, I’m going to find it and figured out how to implement it. The execution comes later, when I organize what has survived the culling into beats, and actually write it.
In addition, each volume has a tiny prologue, part of a longer story in The New Yorker ABOUT the story, which has a big slice of foreshadowing – to keep the readers hooked, and because I think they will forget it consciously. Example is the Prothalamion (in honor of Dorothy L. Sayers) for vol. one, PURGATORY – 145 words:
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DEPT. OF CELEBRITIES
MIXED-UP MARRIAGE?
Schadenfreude: knickers in a twist—publicly?
By D. Liebja Hunter
THE WORLD WAS SHOCKED, nay, stunned, by the recent revelation that, even as his pregnant fiancée, America’s Sweetheart Bianca Doyle, lay supine in a hospital bed at the California Regional Women’s Hospital in Burbank, on complete bed-rest to forestall the premature birth of his twin daughters, Irish Megastar Andrew O’Connell, seen last March dedicating his winning statuette at the Academy Awards to Ms. Doyle, was secretly married to best-selling author K. Beth Winter, many years his senior.
The happy couple met in February 2005 here in New York on the set of NIGHT TALK, with Dana…
The New Yorker, October 23, 2006
Ehrhardt, Alicia Butcher. PRIDE’S CHILDREN: PURGATORY (Book 1 of the Trilogy) . Trilka Press. Kindle Edition.
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And then you won’t hear about a lot of this for a very long time – but maybe it lodges deep in your brain while you find out who these people are – and what the heck is going on.
Being an extreme plotter works for me, because all the meta level items (the three prologues for the volumes, and a bit of the Epilogue give you the story seen by the mainstream press, and supposedly explained in a long New Yorker article (we’re all read those)) make their own little story – and if you’ve read the trilogy you will know, at the end, what is true, and what is PR and expediency and misdirection, and be one of the few people who know ‘the real story.’ The WHOLE story.
I love Foreshadowing.
Alicia, I admire your ability to plot at that level, and I love the idea of the prologues that make up their own little story. Very clever. The prologue you provided would certainly stay with me through the series.
I need to re-read The Fire in Fiction.