Yes, spoilers!
Look, as someone who, along with their friends, watches a number of shows, I can appreciate the idea that it’s important to have surprises in our life. I mean, who wasn’t surprised that Snape killed Dumbledore, or that Soylent Green was people? oops.
As an editor, on the other hand, I can appreciate the storytelling technique called foreshadowing. And I can appreciate even more a technique I like to call “fiveshadowing.” Both of these techniques let you know what’s coming long before it happens and, used effectively, they can change the whole mood of a story.
Foreshadowing
In foreshadowing, you give the reader glimpses of what’s ahead. The trick is, though, that they’re glimpses. If you’re too obvious, the entire house of cards tumbles down, and the reader knows that Alice is just dreaming after all.
Love it
- Try using objects or images that the reader will see later in the story to change the mood.
- Use contrasts between what is and what’s to come.
- Look up the meaning of flowers, birds, or similar things and use those throughout the early parts of the story. Use a lily for death, a rose for a story that will have a plot twist about love.
- Subtle hints that things aren’t what they seem.
- Things that are only obvious in hindsight, when the reader reviews the story.
Leave it
- “Little did they know that…”
- Don’t foreshadow trivial events. You’ll sound like a soap opera.
- Hints in the early part of the story that don’t connect to anything that actually happens (it’s easy to edit things out; make sure you catch the foreshadowing when you do it).
- Ominous dreams. Everyone’s done this; at this point it’s only useful for comedic effect.
Fiveshadowing
The obvious pun for foreshadowing is fiveshadowing, right? It’s a sort of heavy-handed foreshadowing that doesn’t leave the reader guessing at all. But it can be useful as a literary device. Let’s look at how:
The early reveal
The early reveal gives you the end of the story first. This is most effective as a plot device when most of the story is in sharp contrast to the beginning parts. For example, I just finished editing a biography where the subject ends up in prison. The author began the book by describing what it took to get into prison to see the subject. Then he described the subject’s early life in such a way that the reader really ended up rooting for the subject to make good… even though everyone already knew that he would end up in prison. That’s a super effective use of the early reveal.
The cliffhanger
In this “fiveshadowing” technique, you don’t actually see the denouement of the story at the beginning. Set it up like you would an early reveal, but with a twist: you don’t know the outcome.
To create a cliffhanger, the author of the biography might have started the book with the trial, and ended Chapter One while the jury was still out. Then he would have gone back through the subject’s early life, so that the reader was really invested in the trial having a positive outcome, because the subject had genuinely been trying to do the right thing. In the last chapter, the jury would come back with the verdict: guilty.
The cliffhanger works best, in my opinion, when you include subtle foreshadowing that hints at the outcome opposite of what your final reveal will be. That’s how you build dramatic tension and reward – um, “reward” – your reader’s commitment.
Spoilers
So foreshadowing – and even foreshadowing that gives away the end of the story – is a good thing, right?
Not always.
Here are a few things to avoid:
- Don’t give away a happy – or even neutral – ending with foreshadowing. Your reader will stop being invested.
- Don’t be heavy-handed. Clues shouldn’t be obvious on the first readthrough.
- Don’t give the reader so much more information than the participants in the story that they can’t share in the action.
- Don’t foreshadow things that ultimately don’t matter to your narrative.
- Don’t use big foreshadowing for small events – you’ll disappoint your reader.
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
