It’s no secret that I think foreshadowing is pretty great. When I was waxing on about it earlier on Twitter, I actually referred to it as my “favourite writing technique” and I am pretty sure that’s accurate*.

The thing about stories without foreshadowing is that they’re deeply unsatisfying to me as a reader. I love being surprised by endings (even more so when there’s an awesome twist), but I don’t want the surprise of the ending to be caused by WHAM! a ton of new information! that wasn’t available before just now! that is the only way for this plot line to be resolved! aren’t you surprised!

Well, yes, I am surprised. But I’m also upset.

Let me back up here.

I have enough experience in real life with getting hit on the side of the head by things that I didn’t see coming. I don’t want–or need–the fiction I read to replicate that experience. I want to have the satisfaction of putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together, and I want the delight and novelty of the final picture not being quite what I expected–but I want that in the context of finishing a puzzle of a dog, and realizing that there’s actually a kitten tucked in at the dog’s feet. I don’t want to start a puzzle of a dog, and then realize that the pieces aren’t actually a puzzle of a dog, they’re a series of obscure tokens that I can trade in at the farmer’s market for a tomato. I did not sign up for this tomato. Nothing about these puzzle pieces indicated there was a tomato coming. I can actually SEE THE DOG on the puzzle pieces, but now that I’ve hit the end, I’m being told that these dog-shaped puzzle pieces are only good if I want to redeem them for a tomato.

I do not want the tomato.

I love the re-read value that comes from good foreshadowing. I love the idea that the story is one story when you read it through the first time, and it’s still the same story on the second go-round, but now it has all these layers, all these extra asides and things that you didn’t see the first time because you were too focused on getting the dog together, but now that you know there’s a kitten in there too, you can see the things that you didn’t see the first time, like how the dog is looking down at the kitten, and how there’s a little tuft of kitten tail visible right on the bottom border of the puzzle, and it makes it seem like everything has more depth this time around.

Nobody wants to redo a puzzle of a dog where it’s actually tokens that can be traded in for a tomato. There’s nothing fulfilling that comes out of that.

So, how do I get foreshadowing into my own writing?

I revise.

Forever.

Because the thing about rarely plotting before I go is that I have no idea what I’m supposed to be foreshadowing. I have nothing. I have a vague feeling about things that I would like to happen, and then I just write and a bunch of stuff comes out that is generally drastically different from the things I anticipated.

But once I’m at the end, I take a step back, and I look at the puzzle, and I figure out what I actually want the picture to be. What kind of dog is it? What colour is the kitten? Do they look like they’re getting along, or is this picture depicting a brief silence before a massive fight?

And then I go back in my edits, and I strip out all the references to the sunflower that I thought I was going to put in at the beginning, but ended up leaving out of the narrative entirely. I make sure that I keep the kitten in mind right from the very beginning. I make sure I’m consistent about the way the dog looks.

And once I’m at the end, I step back again, and I look at it again. And I do the same thing again, and I try to put more layers into it, and I make sure I don’t tip my hand too early, and I make sure that the words are going in the direction that I want them to go.

(It’s sometime during this revision that I generally conclude that I should probably just burn the entire manuscript and start over.)

I don’t always get it. Sometimes I can’t make things work the way I want them to work. Sometimes I can’t see through what I’ve written to figure out how it should work.

But when the foreshadowing works?

Oh, that payoff is so lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

*It’s vaguely possible I’m more in love with run-on sentences than I am with foreshadowing, but I choose to believe that foreshadowing ekes out a win here.