In a new post, Tiffany Yates Martin shares advice for successful foreshadowing. “Foreshadowing offers hints and clues of events and story developments to come, and it’s a powerful tool for heightening reader engagement, raising stakes, increasing suspense and tension, and developing cohesive characters and plots,” she says. “The finesse of foreshadowing is knowing how much to use, and when.”
If you use too much, your readers will see every plot turn coming, but if you use too little, events and character development may seem to come from nowhere. Yates Martin examines the pitfalls and solutions:
- Giving away the farm. Writers sometimes insert too much narrative voice into their stories. The cliché “little did she know…” is a prime example of the writer signaling the reader that something unexpected is coming.
- Hammering the reader. “Too many iterations or repetitions of what you’re trying to foreshadow can weary readers with repetition; too obvious foreshadowing can telegraph what’s to come and defuse suspense,” Yates Martin says. Foreshadowing should provide hints, not a road sign. Heavy-handed symbolism, such as blood-red skies or dark clouds, can also feel like too much.
- Clunky foreshadowing. If a gun goes missing, don’t have a character announce this loudly to the room. Again, avoid phrases like “Little did she know…” or “Unbeknownst to him…”
- Cryptic or confusing hints. Because you know what’s going to happen, you may go too light on the foreshadowing. What’s obvious to you, though, might not be obvious to the reader. “I think of effective foreshadowing as offering readers enough pieces of a puzzle to understand the picture that’s forming, while holding back just one or two key pieces,” Yates Martin writes. “Orient readers with enough context and specifics so they have a clearer picture, and then hint at what might be depicted on that one crucial interlocking piece.”
- Deus ex machina. Without some foreshadowing, character development and plot twists may seem to come out of nowhere. Leave some breadcrumbs for the reader. You don’t need to do this in your first draft. In fact, it’s likely that you’ll develop your foreshadowing after you’ve finished your first draft.
- Overly “quiet” scenes. “Scenes that lack suspense or stakes can feel flat and stall momentum—but sometimes they’re necessary, for instance in the setup chapters of certain stories that establish the character’s status quo or starting point, their comfortable existence that’s changed by events to come,” Yates Martin says. She recommends using these quiet seeds to foreshadow what a protagonist has to lose or other stakes, or even elements of your plot.
