Foretelling pisses me off...

HeronW · Dec 6, 2008

Reading 'A Darker Place' by Laurie R. King.

Most POV is 3rd by Anne Waverly, a 45 year old PhD in religious studies who does investigations of cults for the FBI.

Ms King is good, Anne is an excellent study and very much alive between the pages.

I don't mind foreshadowing in books... ex: 'Anne felt that things weren't quite right at the farm.'

But these lines 20 or so pages from the end scream out:
THE AUTHOR WANTS YOU TO SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE!!!

'She could not know that Glen [FBI contact] would be too preoccupied to check the Abner email until it was too late to make a difference...'

and

"...blessedly unaware that there would be no tomorrow.'

If Anne doesn't know then why, oh Muses of Creativity, drop this in like a pile of steaming fresh dog crap to CLUE ME IN that there's a dog around? I can tell from the large water dish, the nylabone, the shed hairs...

Why put these in? Am I stupid? Do I think that there's not going to be a massive drama taking place at the end? Ms King just lost any credibility as a writer for me.

Okay...done ranting...

Books we read also teach us what not to do...

I'm so tempted to chuck the book. Fortunately it was a freebie so there's no money wasted.

NeuroFizz · Dec 6, 2008

It's kind of funny you brought this up, H. I'm reading The Shack by Wm. Paul Young (on recommendation from Mrs. Fizzy). I'm not far into it--just finished chapter four. And here is the last line of that chapter:

Yes, Mack wanted more, and he was about to get much more than he bargained for.

It's a different kind of foretelling, but one of the worst kinds of amateurish hook-tricks. And it's a shame because the author has generated enough interest to avoid such pathetic "wait, you haven't seen anything yet" statements.

Maryn · Dec 6, 2008

That kind of crap is why I can't read the "Bones" novels by Kathy what's-her-name. I gave her two chances and she used them both all up with narrative voices which knew the future, and utterly stupid page-turning chapter ends which seemed to introduce peril but simply led to the equivalent of the cat knocking something over in a horror movie.

Maryn, rereading Catch-22, which is freakin' brilliant

James D. Macdonald · Dec 6, 2008

This is the dread "Had She But Known...!" (Sometimes abbreviated HSBK or HHBK.)

It is a sin against POV.

tehuti88 · Dec 6, 2008

I don't much mind the lesser foreshadowings (like the "more than he bargained for" one that NeuroFizz mentioned), but I must admit, the two quoted in the original post are way too omniscient and...well, I can't think of a word, but they give far too much away. Spoilery, that's it. Foreshadowing is supposed to hint, not hit us over the head with what exactly is going to happen.

More than he bargained for? It might be hokey sounding to some but at least the reader can't tell WHAT that "more" will be. There will be no tomorrow? Well, thanks for giving it all away!

James D. Macdonald said:
This is the dread "Had She But Known...!" (Sometimes abbreviated HSBK or HHBK.)

It is a sin against POV.

What if the POV is omniscient?

(I'm not defending the entire practice, but thought I'd play devil's advocate.

)

James D. Macdonald · Dec 6, 2008

Maryn said:
...utterly stupid page-turning chapter ends which seemed to introduce peril but simply led to the equivalent of the cat knocking something over in a horror movie.

And that is what I call the "False Arrrgh!" It's very Hardy-Boys.

End of chapter:

Suddenly, a shot rang out!

Beginning of next chapter:

"Silly me," said Chet Morton, "I stepped on another dry stick!"

Prawn · Dec 6, 2008

HeronW said:
Foretelling pisses me off

I knew you were going to say that.

Aschenbach · Dec 6, 2008

James D. says it very well; foreshadowing is (usually) a POV breaker. It is the writer stepping out of the wings to add some pointless commentary explaining stuff that should be apparent from the action.

But I have read books where foreshadowing works. Usually books that start in media res, then restart from the beginning. You know that crisis is looming and keep looking over your shoulder for signs of it. Maybe a bit cheap, but it creates suspense effectively.

JRTurner · Dec 6, 2008

I think Juie Garwood's historicals have the best darn foreshadowing in the romance genre. She never breaks POV, but she establishes a pattern that makes the reader grin before they even turn the page. I don't have time to grab one, but here's a quick example off the top of my head:

Last line of chapter:

When they got to the castle tomorrow, she was determined to keep her chin up and not shed a tear.

First line of next chapter:

She bawled like a baby and every servant offered their handkerchief as she greeted them.

Stuff like that, once the reader begins to expect the contradiction, can be just as page-turning as ending in the middle of action. It's foreshadowing in that the reader knows the exact opposite is about to be shown, and that it will be so much better than what the character is promising, vowing, or thinking will happen.

Just thought I'd toss in one of my favorite author's techniques

Warmly,
Jenny

IceCreamEmpress · Dec 6, 2008

Good foreshadowing works retrospectively: you get farther along in the book, and you think "Ah! So that's why Joan couldn't find the manuscript: Bob had hidden it." If it's done right, it comes off as just another detail at the time (Bob slipping an envelope into his briefcase as Joan enters the room) and the payoff comes later.

Clumsy foreshadowing makes you groan as you're reading it, "Oh, now I suppose Joan's going to go looking for the manuscript and humiliate herself in front of the detective."

Had I but known is a sin against writing, and makes the baby Gutenberg cry.

HeronW · Dec 6, 2008

Foreshadowing with that hair-raising on the back of your neck feeling --I love-- creep me out with panache, but insert Omni POV when 99.999% is 3rd and it's a WTF moment.

Charlie Horse · Dec 6, 2008

HeronW said:
Foreshadowing with that hair-raising on the back of your neck feeling --I love-- creep me out with panache, but insert Omni POV when 99.999% is 3rd and it's a WTF moment.

I was just thinking about this as well, as I noticed going through my 2nd draft that I've mixed 3rd limited and omni in a few places. No foreshadowing (I don't think), just commentary of sorts, maybe a little background. I'm not sure whether or not I'll change it, I may, but my thought when I realized what I was doing was, that under the right circumstances when done well, there's nothing wrong with mixing those two POVs.

Stock comment no. 363: Anything can work if it's done well, although foreshadowing in the sense you're describing is near impossible to pull off without sounding ultra-corny.

maestrowork · Dec 6, 2008

NeuroFizz said:
It's a different kind of foretelling, but one of the worst kinds of amateurish hook-tricks. And it's a shame because the author has generated enough interest to avoid such pathetic "wait, you haven't seen anything yet" statements.

Dan Brown does that a lot. The "little did he know" cheap hook-tricks, what I call the "I know something, but I'm not going to tell you now, so you'll just have to wait. But I'm telling you now that I know something." To me, it's not just a tease, but an arrogant, intrusive way of doing so, and also a sign of amateur storytelling. You can't foreshadow? You have to specifically foretell and then hold back the information for another three chapters?

maestrowork · Dec 6, 2008

tehuti88 said:
What if the POV is omniscient?

It's not a POV violation, per se, since omniscient narrator knows everything, but it's still a cheap trick to go off POV. Right now the narrator is following some characters, focusing on them, telling us what they're doing, thinking, feeling, etc. then suddenly "had she but known..." So suddenly we jump to another place/time that is relevant to her future but no, she doesn't know! It's like you suddenly have an out of body experience. What's worse would be the "little did she know ____ would happen three minutes later...." crap. Uh, I know the narrator is god, but a time warp?

maestrowork · Dec 6, 2008

JRTurner said:
Last line of chapter:

When they got to the castle tomorrow, she was determined to keep her chin up and not shed a tear.

First line of next chapter:

She bawled like a baby and every servant offered their handkerchief as she greeted them.

Contradictions are such fun. But this kind of "set up" is very different than foretelling, because the effect is only evident at the point of reveal, that is, the opening of the following chapter, not the end of the the previous one. And they're great.

Imagine the opening of the second chapter as "She walked through the door and was amazed by the grandeur of the castle..." Nothing is lost. The set up was fine, even though the "payload" was different.

(We see the contradiction stuff in movies all the time. At the end of one scene the character might be saying "The place is really safe. Don't worry!" and the next scene opens with the character on a tree fighting off a lion -- these are classic examples of contractions done well. But again, the effect is not evident until the next scene)

The same can't be said about "a shot rang out." Then if the next chapter didn't start with an explanation of what it was, it'd be a cheap trick. The literary equivalence of saying, "Abracadabra..."

FennelGiraffe · Dec 6, 2008

maestrowork said:
Uh, I know the narrator is god, but a time warp?

I suspect it's worth making a distinction and deciding exactly how omniscient your narrator is. You can take it literally and assume assume he really does know everything, sitting either outside of time or far enough in the future to know how it all turns out. But you don't have to. You can decide to limit certain aspects of his omniscience.

For me at least, an omniscient narrator is a lot more readable if he's time-bound. He can be omni with regard to location, he can be omni with regard to everyone's thoughts and feelings, he can be omni with regard to the deep past, but beyond that he's limited to the story chronology.

maestrowork · Dec 6, 2008

For me, that's just a sign of lack of discipline on the writer's part. The author knows everything about the story, past, present, future, every character... but it doesn't mean the narrator could do anything he damn well please because, oh, the narrator is also the author. There should be a distinction between the two. Unfortunately, some writers can't make the distinction or know the difference. That's why omniscient can be difficult to pull off because some writers don't have the discipline.

Snowstorm · Dec 6, 2008

I've seen foreshadowing in the nonfiction book, "The Great Influenza," about the flu pandemic of the early 1900s. Things like, "It's going to get worse..." type of thing. It was really irritating. I don't understand why the writer would include that when basically we know will happen.

A minor irritation to a fantastic book.

PattiTheWicked · Dec 6, 2008

I think one of the marks of a good storyteller is that you don't recognize the foreshadowing when you see it. JK Rowling is a prime example of this. She brings up stuff in the first book that gets referenced two or four books later, where you're saying to yourself, "Oh, of course, that's what that was all about." Case in point -- the bit in HPSS when Harry goes to Ollivander's wand shop and he relates the history of the phoenix feathers in the wands.

When you first read it, it fits seamlessly into the story, when you see it referred to later, you finally realize there was some foreshadowing going on.

dclary · Dec 6, 2008

And yet several of the greatest movies of all time start with the MC's death, and go back from there.

(personally, I agree with the OP, and this is the specific reason why I detest Sunset Strip and Citizen Kane. The MC's are dead... why the hell should I care about them now?)

ORION · Dec 6, 2008

But...for example like in the brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao...
The story is narrated by a third person who was a friend of Oscar and since it's told to you - foreshadowing works...
i.e. "it was the last time he would be kissed by a girl...." etc.

It's kind of what I'm doing in my current book where a friend is telling you a story that happened in the past.
As in Somerset Maugham & the razors edge (sorry not on my spell check and my copy is buried in my forward cabin) and other books from that era...

I personally think it's a cool technique but NOT if you are 3rd limited in real time etc.
and it comes out of no where...

IceCreamEmpress · Dec 6, 2008

I agree that if the overt foreshadowing is part of a frame story being explicitly narrated by someone reminiscing about the action, as in ORION's examples, it can work well. But that's foreshadowing by one of the characters, in this case the narrator, not by the abstract authorial voice.

dclary, I think you're talking about Sunset Boulevard, yes? See, I like the frame-story structure there (for those who haven't seen the movie, it opens with a shot of a man's corpse floating in a pool, and a voiceover describing the scene briefly and revealing himself to be the {ghost of the?} corpse).

blacbird · Dec 6, 2008

This kind of thing always reminds me of the sleazy TV pitchman: "But wait . . . there's more!"

caw

HeronW · Dec 6, 2008

The, "oh, we'll be great friends" ending and further on the line, "I'm going to kill you" don't conflict for me because the first is a hope/wish and the second the reality check.

Characters can have feelings, project outcomes, speculate and all sorts of hazy future happenings without the 'If I had known I would have stayed in bed' intrusion from the author.

Ms King has won awards and this is her 4th-5th book. She could have just omitted the 'sh*t will hit the fan' and done a secondary or tertiary character's POV which she did after.

Sigh. Sometimes reading and catching stuff like this makes me hate that I know it's a flub. I hope my flubs are as easily recognizable so I can weed them out.

Claudia Gray · Dec 6, 2008

For me it all depends on the voice. Sometimes, the heavy-handed "little did he know" stuff knocks me right out of the story and looks like an author using the laziest way possible to create suspense. But I've also read it done beautifully (particularly in humor writing, sometimes). So I never say never.

I find the best thing to do if writing a "surprise" moment, though, is to start writing that scene as though it were going to end the way the characters think it's going to end -- swerving only when events demand.

Foretelling pisses me off...

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