Ah, foreshadowing, the bane of all students of English literature! If you hate foreshadowing, or think you do, I’m hoping my handy beginner’s guide to foreshadowing can change your mind. And if you’re here because you like it, and want to know how to do it effectively, read on!
What is foreshadowing? And what’s the point?
Foreshadowing is a technique that gives the reader a little hint of what’s coming later in your story. There are a range of ways to do that (we’ll get to those in a second), and a few different reasons you might want to.
You might want to use it to create suspense in your story, or make your readers feel uneasy. You may want to lay some subtle groundwork for a big twist or reveal. Depending on your motivation, you’ll want your foreshadowing to be more or less subtle.
Subtlety of foreshadowing
Foreshadowing exists on a spectrum from veiled, or subtle, to completely explicit. Explicit foreshadowing gives the reader a pretty clear idea of what’s coming, maybe even telling them outright. With more subtle versions, readers might not even make the connection between the foreshadowing and the event until later.
If your aim is to create a certain mood, you’ll want to be explicit enough that readers pick up on it. If building up to an important reveal, you may want a combination of smaller hints that jump out in hindsight.
As the author, it can be difficult to accurately gauge the subtlety of your foreshadowing! You know what’s going to happen, so certain moments or lines of dialogue might seem like obvious clues to you. A reader going in blind though might not join those dots together at all. Or, even if they do, they may combine them to come to a completely different conclusion!
To help with that, we’re going to look at some different tools you can use to introduce foreshadowing to your stories. We’ll talk about which tend to stand out more to readers, and how to dial the obviousness up or down.
Methods
Significant object
This one draws on the old Chekhov’s gun principle. In essence, if you highlight a particular object, it needs to play a role in the plot sooner or later. Naturally, readers will also draw certain conclusions from the nature of the object. If you make a point of describing a gun in great detail, that’s going to suggest upcoming violence. On the other hand, picking out a beautiful family heirloom to give significance to creates a very different atmosphere!
If your point of view character is detail-oriented, you can get away with a certain amount of description before it becomes obvious that you’re singling out one object in particular. Same goes for if your narrative style involves a lot of description. Of course, if you want readers to notice that this item is significant, you can play that up.
Dialogue
Not only is character dialogue a good way to foreshadow future plot points, it’s easy to tweak depending on how much attention you want to draw. An off-hand joke or comment that doesn’t get followed up could give you some subtle foreshadowing. On the other hand, you can emphasise the importance of a conversation by having a character dwell more on what is said.
Internal monologue
This functions similarly to dialogue. If your narration is first-person or close third-person you can use a character’s thoughts or observations to foreshadow. Readers tend to pay more attention to things that characters observe, but make a point of not commenting on. You can use this to place additional emphasis on details that you want to be significant later.
For more on the advantages and disadvantages of different narrative perspectives, check out this post!
Prophecies and omens
One of the less subtle means of foreshadowing! This also only works in certain stories, but if your genre involves fantasy elements it might be worth using. Same goes for some flavours of speculative fiction. Prophecies and omens are great for creating a certain atmosphere, and there’s also the fun of working out how literal it might be. I’ve talked in more detail about prophecy in another post, if you’re interested in reading more!
Narrative structure
You can use the structure of your story to send a message to readers about what might happen later down the line. Stories where different chapters are occurring at different times, for example, can give the reader insights into where certain plotlines are heading before they get there. You can choose how much to reveal in the different timelines to affect how explicit the foreshadowing is.
Narrator statement
When the narrator just straight-up tells the reader that something is coming, that’s the narrative statement form of foreshadowing! This is the easiest one to do, in some ways, but only works in certain stories. You need to be writing with a third-person omniscient narrator, which can be a tricky style in other ways. On the plus side, you can choose exactly how specific you want the narrator to be!
How do you feel about foreshadowing in stories?
So, that was my beginner’s guide to foreshadowing! What do you think of stories that use this device? Do you enjoy reading it, or do you prefer to go through the plot with minimal hints about what the future holds?
I love foreshadowing when it’s done well. I don’t like to know too much but I love to have some hints that make me start to piece together potential avenues that the plot will go down. I think it’s a great way to keep readers engaged. And sometimes you want to continue to figure out why it’s relevant even if you’re not finding it the greatest read ever x
Sophie