Foreshadowing

Don't want much, do ya?

Foreshadowing is giving a hint about something that will happen later in a story. Nothing obvious, or you ruin the whole thing, but some niblet that the reader will (maybe) remember later on when It happens.

How? Many are the ways. A character may say something that gives the MC a spine-chill for no apparent reason. Any minor parallel event can be a foreshadowing.

We do it to give the reader the thrill of saying "Aha!" and to keep the plot tied nicely together.

Look at something like the 6th Sense. There were clues throughout the movie that told viewers Bruce Willis' character was actually dead.

• No one ever spoke to him
• the kid was the only one who interacted with him
• he could hear the voices of the dead on his tape recorder
• No one really even looked at him as though they acknowledged his presence
• The kid was always creeped out when he was around

All of those are clues that are put there on purpose to build toward the ultimate pay-off at the end when everyone realizes he's been dead the whole time. You might notice it, you might not, but if you go back through and watch it knowing the ending, you'll see how well it was set up.

That's foreshadowing.

Cyia, that's the best example I think you could possibly give. Lol.

I have nothing to add to that.

Cyia really nailed it there.

Related topic: you also need to look up motifs, plants, and pay-offs.

-Derek

Cyia said:

Look at something like the 6th Sense. There were clues throughout the movie that told viewers Bruce Willis' character was actually dead.

• No one ever spoke to him
• the kid was the only one who interacted with him
• he could hear the voices of the dead on his tape recorder
• No one really even looked at him as though they acknowledged his presence
• The kid was always creeped out when he was around

All of those are clues that are put there on purpose to build toward the ultimate pay-off at the end when everyone realizes he's been dead the whole time. You might notice it, you might not, but if you go back through and watch it knowing the ending, you'll see how well it was set up.

That's foreshadowing.

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I'll see your 6th Sense and raise you Darth Vader is Luke's father.

• Vader had an incredible curiosity about getting to Luke
• Obi-Wan had trained Vader
• Obi-Wan acted funny when talking about Luke's father
• Owen Lars (Luke's uncle) made the comment "that's what I'm afraid of" when Beru (his wife) said Luke was just like his father

More clues that build toward a pay-off without giving away the plot.

Foreshadowing is like dropping hints -- sometimes it's also called bread-crumbs. They're usually subtle, or at least a minor plot element or information that seems irrelevant at the time, but later becomes obviously important.

Speaking of the Empire Strikes Back, it's a great movie/script to study plot devices such as foreshadows, mirrors, motifs, etc.

Shawshank Redemption:

beautiful female posters
small pick axe to presumably whittle and sculpt small stones
the bank book
the shoes

what's so brilliant is that you see Andy breaking a chunk off the wall in the beginning of the movie but your mind skips over it - it doesn't click until later in the movie.

Mela said:

what's so brilliant is that you see Andy breaking a chunk off the wall in the beginning of the movie

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Not to go offtopic, but you don't actually see the part where the chunk falls from the wall in the beginning. You see him carving his name in the beginning, but you don't see the chunk fall until the end.

Still, good example.

James81 said:

Not to go offtopic, but you don't actually see the part where the chunk falls from the wall in the beginning. You see him carving his name in the beginning, but you don't see the chunk fall until the end.

Still, good example.

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ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....
you're right

the movie has become so damn ubiquitous on TV that the mind starts to do its own foreshadowing

Just to add a bit - foreshadowing can be thematic as well as plot-clues. Suppose you have two characters who start out as friends, and early on they have a cellphone conversation where one can't hear the other. Later in the book, one makes assumptions, doesn't listen to his friend, and the poor communication destroys the friendship. The cellphone foreshadows the end of the friendship, even though that conversation may have been friendly.

Films do this visually - seeing someone through a curtain may foreshadow that they'll die later in the story (curtain = shroud), or a young character walking in front of an older character may take the older one's place later.
-Barbara

Difference in terms

batgirl said:

Just to add a bit - foreshadowing can be thematic as well as plot-clues. Suppose you have two characters who start out as friends, and early on they have a cellphone conversation where one can't hear the other. Later in the book, one makes assumptions, doesn't listen to his friend, and the poor communication destroys the friendship. The cellphone foreshadows the end of the friendship, even though that conversation may have been friendly.

Films do this visually - seeing someone through a curtain may foreshadow that they'll die later in the story (curtain = shroud), or a young character walking in front of an older character may take the older one's place later.
-Barbara

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Yes, this is what foreshadowing means to me too.

I think we maybe have a slight language difference in this thread. The 'clues' described in other posts (and like maestrowork I'd sometimes call these 'breadcrumbs') are what in the UK I've usually heard described as 'seeding'. It's a form of 'set-up' scattered lightly and hopefully invisibly through the story, as seeds which will later grow into a full fledged revelation.

For me, foreshadowing is usually an atmospheric thing, and often doom-laden, ie a shadow of what's to come hanging menacingly over the narrative.

Sometimes it's actually overtly stated to make sure the reader/viewer gets it and sees everything that happens through that shaded glass. An example would be William Goldman's 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid', which has two clearly plonked ones - the sherrif saying 'It's over. You're going to die bloody, and all you can do is choose where', and later Etta saying she'll 'skip that scene' when they're cornered at last.

But Goldman also does an absolutely beautiful piece of thematic foreshadowing in the opening sequence, where Butch walks into the bank and sees all the new technology, the grills and safes and huge great bolts. He says 'What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful'. The clerk replies 'People kept robbing it'. Butch says 'Small price to pay for beauty' - and that's the theme of the whole movie, encapsulated right there.

Films often do it in the soundtrack as well as the visuals - it's the dark thread woven through the music ready to burst into major storm effects later. In novels or plays the same thing can be done with imagery - Dickens does it a lot, eg the bird images used throughout for Edith balancing the cat imagery used for Carker in Little Dorrit, foreshadowing the way the relationship between them will play out. Another popular technique is dramatic irony which an alert reader will usually immediately see as A Bad Sign - eg the moment a character says 'I feel safe here', you know it's time to bolt the doors and load the gun.

I don't think the different use of terms matters much - they're arguably all different kinds of foreshadowing. But I thought I'd better raise it in case the OP was after an explanation of a different kind.

Louise

The way I last used it was to have a character take up a task that he'd have to succeed at, or die trying. He was blessed by a priest as part of this deal and despite the fact that he gets sick every autumn, he states confidently that he won't get sick that year because of the blessing. He gets sick anyway and some time later dies trying to complete the task.

Not as subtle as some, but I think it does the job?

Exactly

Classic example, MetalDog.

Depressing, but classic.

Louise

And then again...

We're in the dark here, without any response from the OP to indicate the context or purpose of his question, but thinking about it overnight (sad or what?) I suspect there are circumstances when we do need to differentiate between the different descriptions, and those arise whenever we try to answer the last question - ie why do writers do this?

The kind of build-up described in The Sixth Sense (which to some might be "foreshadowing") doesn't really require an answer to the 'why'. This is basic plot mechanics, making sure your 'pay-off' has been 'set-up'. The writer has no choice but to do this, there's no 'why' involved at all - if we don't set up a plot twist and it comes out of nowhere in total contradiction to everything that's preceded it, that's just 'cheating' and thoroughly bad writing. Put it this way - would TSS work if the MC had been audible to other characters? No - it would be a very bad story that didn't make sense.

The build-up in The Shawshank Redemption is different, because it's used for the purpose of intrigue. Plot-seeding (like The Sixth Sense) deliberately tries to disguise itself from the reader because you don't want them to guess the twist before you play it. Foreshadowing is stuff you do want the reader to spot, because it enhances his enjoyment. TSR doesn't blow the plot, it's cleverly hidden so as not to spoil what the pay-off is going to be, but it's out there, and you're expected to notice. The reader/viewer should be asking why are we seeing this, what's he up to, what's going on? Intrigue is one of the best ways to sustain narrative drive - it keep the reader turning pages to find out what it's all about. That's why we do it...

Similar to intrigue is the use of foreshadowing to create suspense. Give a reader a clue as to what might happen later, and they're on the edge of their seats waiting for it to happen. Again, enhanced narrative drive.

The simplest, plonkiest form of foreshadowing is just to keep bums on seats. You're in the middle of a gentle character-development section of writing, and there's a risk your less patient readers will ditch the book and go to the pub instead. So you drop a hint. You try as subtly as you can to say 'stick with it just stick with it, something really great is going to happen in a minute'. Relatively inexperienced writers will plonk this out in chunks of 'Little did they know this was a big mistake' (pause for vomiting) but even that can be done well, as Chandler proved repeatedly. Phrases like 'As soon as she walked in I knew she was trouble', or 'I should have run a hundred miles before I opened that door' may be crass out of context, but they don't half keep readers in their seats wanting to know what happened next. They're best used as chapter hooks or end of section seques, but the fact is they work. In my opinion, the subtler the better - I'd rather just have a description that gives me an indefinable sense of unease than be told directly I need to feel uneasy - but they work and they sell books.

And in the end, that's why we do it. That's why we do most things. We want the reader to enjoy the read, so we need to thread that little string through the ring on his nose and lead him very gently alllllll the way...

Louise

I said exactly what my character wants, but it's by the will of another, will he agree?

I would agree that it's rather important to distinguish between fore-shadowing and set-up/seeding/bread-crumbs.

How I see it, the fore-shadowing is a thematical expression. The curtain scene was a great example. And actually, the opening credits from Fight Club, do you remember? - The camera runs through electric connections in Tyler Durdens head, focuses on the gun for a second, and then takes us on a narrated trip through the elements - this is a great example of a combination. The OC in his head are foreshadowing the extreme rapidity of his mind, the twisty twirly trip we're about to go on. And then you actually see the end of movie - it functions as a, well, rather complex, but still, set-up that makes us wonder how they get to there and why. "Ah, Flash-back humor" is a fine line.

If you want an example of the pure instrumental use of "the set-up", read The Da Vinci Code. Every chapter in itself is a text book example of how to create suspense. You can pick it apart so extremely easy and look at the parts of it. And it has a lot of little extras as well. Every chapter ends with a cliff-hanger. A term for an element that has you turning the page or move to the edge of the chair, thinking "what now, how will he survive?" (Watch cliff-hanger for a thourough introduction to that. Yes, the one with Sly.)

My point is - set-ups and cliff-hangers are instrumental terms that help the reader retrospectively construct a plot in what you wrote.

A foreshadowing is a thematical device that lets the reader get a more or less subcontious hint to what may later happen or be avoided. A hint to the theme.

Sune

jubileerocker said:

I said exactly what my character wants, but it's by the will of another, will he agree?

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Someone forced him to say ie. "Yes God Dammit, I want to take up philatelism!", is that what you mean?

It's a choice you have to make, and I'd say it depends where you are in the story. He either agrees and sets out to fulfill his destiny, or he denies he true want and struggles to keep up appearance. Two quite different stories.

S

Cyia said:

Look at something like the 6th Sense. There were clues throughout the movie that told viewers Bruce Willis' character was actually dead.

• No one ever spoke to him
• the kid was the only one who interacted with him
• he could hear the voices of the dead on his tape recorder
• No one really even looked at him as though they acknowledged his presence
• The kid was always creeped out when he was around

All of those are clues that are put there on purpose to build toward the ultimate pay-off at the end when everyone realizes he's been dead the whole time. You might notice it, you might not, but if you go back through and watch it knowing the ending, you'll see how well it was set up.

That's foreshadowing.

Click to expand...

Great example, but I also like when Cole says, "They don't know they're dead," and the camera slowly zooms in on Bruce Willis. Creepy!

see ya no thank you

see ya no thank you

Sune said:

Someone forced him to say ie. "Yes God Dammit, I want to take up philatelism!", is that what you mean?

It's a choice you have to make, and I'd say it depends where you are in the story. He either agrees and sets out to fulfill his destiny, or he denies he true want and struggles to keep up appearance. Two quite different stories.

S

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You know I never looked at it that way