by K.M. Weiland

If we sift foreshadowing down to its simplest form, we could say that it prepares readers for what will happen later in the story.

At first glance, this may seem counter-intuitive. Why would we want readers to know what’s going to happen later in the story? If they know how the book turns out, they’ll have no reason to read on.

True enough. So let me reiterate. The point of foreshadowing is to prepare readers for what happens later in the story. Not tell them, just prepare them.

Foreshadowing’s great strength lies in its ability to create a cohesive and plausible story. If readers understand that it’s possible that someone in your story may be murdered, they won’t be completely shocked when the sidekick gets axed down the road. If, however, you failed to properly foreshadow this unhappy event, readers would be jarred. They would feel you had cheated them out of the story they thought they were reading. They would think you had, in essence, lied to them so you could trick them with this big shocker.

Readers and viewers don’t like to be cheated, lied to, or tricked. And that’s where foreshadowing comes into play.

The point of foreshadowing is to prepare readers for what happens later in the story.

Foreshadowing, Part 1: The Plant

We can break foreshadowing down into two parts. The first is the plant. This is the part where you hint to readers that something surprising and/or important is going to happen later in the book.

If the bad guy is going to kidnap the good guy’s son, your plant might be the moment when your hero notices a creepy dude hanging around the playground. If your heroine is going to be left standing at the altar, your plant might be her fiancé’s ambivalence toward the wedding preparations.

Depending on what you’re foreshadowing, the plant can be blatant or subtle. Subtle is almost always better, since you don’t want to give away your plot twists. But, at the same time, your hints have to be obvious enough that readers will remember them later on.

Usually, the earlier you can foreshadow an event, the stronger and more cohesive an effect you will create. The bigger the event, the more important it is to foreshadow it early. As editor Jeff Gerke puts it in The First 50 Pages:

“Basically, you need to let us in on the rules. If the climax of your book is going to consist of getting into a time machine and jumping away to safety, we had better have known in the first fifty pages that time travel is possible in the world of your story.”

Subtle is almost always better.

Foreshadowing, Part 2: The Payoff

Once you’ve got your plant in place, all that’s left is to bring the payoff on stage. If you planted hints about kidnapping, jilting, or time travelling, this is the part where you now get to let these important scenes play out.

As long as you’ve done your job right with the plant, you probably won’t even need to reference your hints from earlier. In fact, you’re likely to create a more solid effect by letting readers put the pieces together themselves.

But you’ll also find moments, usually of smaller events that were given less obvious plants, that will benefit from a quick reference to the original hint (e.g., “George, you big meanie! Now I understand why you wouldn’t choose between the scarlet and the crimson for the bridesmaids’ dresses!”)

The most important thing to remember about the payoff is that it always needs to happen. If you plant hints, pay them off. Just as readers will be confused by an unforeshadowed plot twist, they’ll also be frustrated by foreshadowing that excites them and then leads nowhere.

If you plant hints, pay them off.

Foreshadowing vs. Telegraphing

The trick to good foreshadowing is preparing your readers on a subconscious level for what’s coming without allowing them to guess the ins and outs of the plot twist. You don’t want your hints to be so obvious that they remove all suspense. In her October 2012 Writer’s Digest article “Making the Ordinary Menacing: 5 Ways,” Hallie Ephron calls this “telegraphing”:

“When you insert a hint of what’s to come, look at it critically and decide whether it’s something the reader will glide right by but remember later with an Aha! That’s foreshadowing. If instead the reader groans and guesses what’s coming, you’ve telegraphed.”

Some clever readers will undoubtedly be able to interpret your hints, no matter how cagey you are. But if you can fool most of the readers most of the time, you can’t ask for more than that.

Foreshadowing vs. Foreboding

Foreboding—that skin-prickling feeling that something horrible is going to happen—can be a useful facet of foreshadowing. By itself, foreboding isn’t specific enough to be foreshadowing.

Unlike the plants used for foreshadowing, foreboding is just an ambiguous aura of suspense. Jordan E. Rosenfeld describes it in Make a Scene:

“Foreshadowing … hints at actual plot events to come, [but] foreboding is purely about mood-setting. It heightens the feeling of tension in a scene but doesn’t necessarily indicate that something bad really will happen.”

Foreboding is useful in setting readers’ emotions on edge without giving them any blatant hints. But when it comes time to foreshadow important events, always back up your foreboding by planting some specific clues.

Most authors have so intrinsic an understanding of foreshadowing that they plant it and pay it off without even fully realizing that’s what they’re doing. But the better you understand the technique, the better you can wield it. Using this basic approach to foreshadowing, you can strengthen your story and your readers’ experience of it.

-K.M. Weiland

K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn.

She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

Photo Credits: Stock XChng, Graphic Stock, K.M. Weiland

Jamie Campbell

Jamie Campbell is an author, screenwriter, and television addict.

Jamie is proud to be an Editor for The Story Department.

Her latest series Project Integrate is out now.

jamiecampbell.com.au

The ‘setup’ is often a complete sequence in which we see the ‘Ordinary World’, the protagonist’s ‘normal life’, an area of the story that by its name and nature risks to be a dull stretch. We see the life of the main character before the overwhelming event that marks the real start of story.

For the solution, we go back to a lesson from Alfred Hitchcock.

Remember the difference between surprise and suspense? Surprise is when a bomb suddenly explodes. Suspense is when we know there is a bomb, and it can explode any moment.

The Inciting Incident is our first story explosion.

How do we make our audience hang in there until it explodes? By foreshadowing the Inciting Incident. By creating anticipation.

Create strong anticipation during the story setup by foreshadowing the Inciting Incident.

DIE HARD: While John McClane argues with his ex, we see bad guy Gruber et al. preparing their actions. Worse is yet to come for John.
JAWS: Swimmer Chrissie is crab meat by the time we meet with hero Chief Brody. We know the reported ‘missing person’ won’t be seen again.
TOUCH OF EVIL: In the classic opening shot we see a bomb planted on a car, it ends on the explosion. This marks Vargas’ (Heston) call to action.
OMAGH: Terrorists from the Real IRA plant the bomb that will later cause carnage in the Northern Irish town, and kill the hero’s son.
E.T.: In the opening scene, an alien is left behind on earth, 12mins later it will disturb the life of little Elliott.
THE UNTOUCHABLES: Capone’s hitmen bomb a pub and kill a girl. In the I.I., her mother calls on Eliot Ness to stop the violence.
BLADE RUNNER: At the end of the Voigt-Kampf test and before we meet with Deckard, we see replicant Leon shoot his interviewer.

Note that these examples show the foreshadowing of an Inciting Incident of such a magnitude that it would not just disturb the hero’s life, but anyone’s under the circumstances. In other words, we don’t really need a lot of exposition or setup to understand that this Inciting Incident will stir the pot.

This approach may not work with just any story.

Most stories will still need you to first set up the protagonist’s character before introducing the Inciting Incident, just because the impact of the Inciting Incident is specific to that particular character.

First we are fully immersed in the life and world of Truman Burbank in The Truman Show before the appearance of his father on the street will be seen as a major event.

We need to know the character – and flaw – of Stu Sheppard in Phonebooth before we fully get how important it is when some stranger seems to know all those secrets he has been carefully hiding.

Even in most of the seven examples above, between the foreshadowing near the opening of the movie and the actual Inciting Incident, the screenwriters make sure they build on the gravity of the I.I.’s impact:

– in Jaws, Chief Brody is relatively new in Amity so he may only have limited authority when he asks to close the beaches.
– in Touch of Evil we learn that Mr. and Mrs. Vargas are still honeymooning, so Mike is not really prepared to take on a case.
– in Omagh we see how close father and son Gallagher really are, before the son dies in the bomb attack.
– In The Untouchables, the domestic scene at the Ness home shows a dedicated father Eliot, so he is the right person to respond to the distraught mother later on.

Karel FG Segers

Karel Segers wrote his first produced screenplay at age 17. Today he is a story analyst with experience in acquisition, development and production. He has trained students worldwide, and worked with half a dozen Academy Award nominees. Karel speaks more European languages than he has fingers on his left hand, which he is still trying to find a use for in his hometown of Sydney, Australia. The languages, not the fingers.

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