Good Storytelling: Foreshadowing

With the recent episode of Game of Thrones, the topic of foreshadowing has popped up, in regards to a certain character doing certain things. I won’t go into specifics, since I’m only on season 2 and some people (*cough*me*cough*) might not have seen the episode yet, but I’m going to talk about foreshadowing and how it relates to good storytelling.

Foreshadowing is one of the most exciting parts about writing, when done correctly. Too much spoon-feeding, and you run the risk of turning your audience away. Good foreshadowing happens when a reader exclaims “OH!” at the pieces falling into place. When they recognize a small point mentioned earlier on, and can connect the dots. It can even work well when it takes a second read-through to recognize the bit of foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is not when you throw together pieces of information in a desperate attempt to explain a character’s actions. You have to plant the seed early enough to make it plausible and understandable.

Here’s an example: In the first Harry Potter book, the readers are introduced to the fact that Harry can, in some sense, speak to snakes when the Dursleys go to the zoo. As readers, we already know Harry is a wizard, so this fact doesn’t really strike us as odd. Yet. It’s not until the second book, when Harry’s ability to speak Parsletongue is revealed, that we realize the significance and understand his connection to Voldemort.

Foreshadowing is not paralleling. Similar actions and events can draw parallels in order to understand larger themes (Harry and Voldemort both being able to speak Parsletongue), but foreshadowing is how those events or actions are set up earlier in the story (Harry speaking to the snake at the zoo). One thing to be careful of when foreshadowing is to make sure you don’t drift into foretelling — the act of telling your audience what is going to happen before it happens. This lessens the excitement of reading your story and makes it boring to continue.

Here are a few ways to foreshadow without making it boring to your readers:

Use Dialogue

I don’t mean have a prophetic character tell everyone’s future, and have that come true. Sprinkle hints through your characters’ words that are revealed to come true at some point. What makes this fun is that Character A can say something about Character B that actually happens but Character A isn’t even involved.

Here’s an example from a scrapped version of my novel, The Fallen Star:

Tara is getting frustrated with two characters, Loran and Trystan, and says something along the lines of, “I will disembowel you while your brother watches before cutting him up into tiny pieces and leaving him for the wolves.” 

This is very in-character for Tara to say, but probably not something she would follow through on. Much later in the story, Nova sees the bodies of Loran and Trystan, killed in the exact same way Tara described. Only, it wasn’t Tara who killed them. At that point, Tara doesn’t even know that’s how they died. But her little bit of angry dialogue described their future gruesome deaths.

The line between prophecy and foreshadowing in dialogue is a thin one. If your character makes a flippant remark that comes true (like Tara above), you want to make sure your readers don’t assume the character is prophetic. Draw the line early enough to avoid confusion.

Use Objects

Chekhov’s Gun is a huge indication of foreshadowing. It’s a literary technique that means nothing is decoration, accredited to playwright Anton Chekhov. Simply put, if there is a gun in a scene, that gun must be used at some point. Think about the mockingjay pin Katniss gets from the marketplace. It’s cute, whimsical even, but it becomes the symbol of the rebellion as the story progresses. Katniss becomes the mockingjay itself.

If you have an object that is meant to play a large role in your story, focus on it just enough that it leaves an impression in your readers’ minds. Imagine the scene as a movie: a quick close-up, memorable details that will be immediately recognizable later on. Don’t go overboard, though. Too much detail will make it too obvious, and foreshadowing is all about the subtleties.

(I can’t help but think about this article when The 100 Season 6 premiered, drawing attention to the motorcycle book at the beginning of the first episode. I glossed over that detail when I watched it, but this article brought it to my attention, and it seemed a curious thing to focus on. Of course, it was revealed in the second episode that the settlers on Sanctum used motorcycles as transportation and [spoilers] in the third episode, the settlers practice zen meditation. It was subtle and excellently done.)

Another example from my novel (spoilers for draft 3):

There is an anaesthetic flower the Forest kingdom uses as medicine to relax their patients. Nova slips one of these flowers into her pocket before going to meet the River King, an enemy of the Forest kingdom. It’s a curious thing to do before going to meet the enemy, and shortly after Nova arrives, the River King uses the flower on her before she has a chance to use it on him. It happens within the span of two chapters, but even I almost forgot about the flower when Nova got to the River kingdom. I’m hoping readers will forget about it and go “OH SHIT” when it appears again, because they’ll know what it can do.

Use Abstract Concepts

This one is a little harder to do well, because it tends to rely on dreams and descriptions rather than concrete things like dialogue and objects.

Dreams are tricky to pull off well in any story. It’s trope-y to have a character wake up from a nightmare at the start of a novel or chapter, but it’s also an exciting way to plant the seed because you always have to ask yourself why a character is dreaming about that in the first place. This can come off as prophetic, though, so be careful how you execute it. A character dreaming about the end of the world and then the end of the world happens in the exact same way? Boring, dull, why didn’t they try to stop it. A character dreaming about the PAST and learning something in the future that destroys everything they knew to be true? Exciting, thrilling, how can they move on from that!

At some point in my current draft, Nova had a fever dream about a tree in the middle of an emerald forest, with stairs spiralling up to the stars. Many chapters later, she finds herself in that place, and readers (I hope) will be able to make the connection between that place and the place in her dream. Similarly, she dreams about a small boy making a paper crown of stars, and in her dream, she burns the paper to ash. This will foreshadow an important event later on in the novel.

Every good story relies on a bit of foreshadowing to create tension and excitement. As readers, our heart rates spike when a line or piece of dialogue draws our attention and suspicion, and I’ll admit I get very excited when I make the connection later on in the story. Good foreshadowing is subtle, doesn’t draw too much attention to itself, and creates enough of a mystery that we want to read further. Bad foreshadowing happens when a writer applies too much detail to something and then never brings it up again; when red herrings draw us in other directions; when the “Surprise!” factor isn’t a surprise anymore.

Keep in mind when you’re planting the seeds that you should, usually, wait until the second draft. That way, you know what’s going to happen, and you can foreshadow accordingly. You can sprinkle the hints earlier. But don’t foreshadow everything, either! Let some surprises be surprises.

Happy writing!