Foreshadowing

This is for you Demon-aura!

The Art of Foreshadowing.

Okay, so I promised I would go away and think about how to do this effectively and then I'd come back and write a detailed post on it.

I would say that effective foreshadowing is a reward of a well planned story. I was thinking hard on how to describe how I do this and the only way I could think of was painting a wall. Not a mural, but just painting the wall white. You paint up, you paint down and then you paint up again - with the roller. So let me describe each one of the strokes.

Painting up - the first time.

When you are first contriving your story you come up with a rough outline - your storyboard. Often times, this isn't the most detailed of articles and actually that's a good thing. But you have to have a plan as to where your story is going. The key is that you HAVE to know the climax. The climax is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE STORY (that's why this is an upward stroke).

Painting down - the downward stroke.

Once you have the climax worked out, then as you go over the events that lead up to it (going backwards over your storyboard), you'll probably notice a few things that need to be slightly changed or corrected in order to lead the reader in the right direction - towards the climax - without interfering with what you've already decided needs to happen. These are usually changes to your storyboard.

Painting up - the last stroke.

This is when you're actually writing the story. Since you know where the story is going and you know what's going to happen along the way - VERY WELL (you should practically have the important parts engraved in your brain by now) then you will naturally add little harmless bits of information that lead the reader along the correct path. Just a word here - a sentence there. That's effective.

You see, I don't think it's enough to simply have 'an idea' of where you want to take the story as you write it. You have to KNOW EXACTLY what's going to happen and how.

You might think knowing all the secrets yourself before you start will ruin the creative process for you, but in my opinion - that's thinking like a reader who's seeking to be entertained by their own story. Those are the thoughts of a lazy author. This is hard work. The author doesn't get the same sorts of thrill out of their work as a reader. Creating a great piece of writing has a different sort of thrill to it than reading. It's a different kind of high. And creating a believable suspense/climax is not for the weak of heart. The reader gets to enjoy the outside appearance while the author stands in the back holding one of the puppet strings between her teeth and another one between her toes, because her hands were full ages ago.

I also have to point out that the longer the fiction is, than the more opportunites there are for creating suspense. The shorter the piece - the fewer options. Obviously a reader can't be clawing their eyes out wondering what's going to happen next if the piece is a one-shot and takes 20 minutes to read. So, suspense/mystery is for novels and serials.

Okay, so those are my thoughts about foreshadowing. I'm the storyboard queen in case you didn't know. I think most problems in writing can be fixed by writing a good storyboard. It prevents writers block, organizes you, gives you a timeline and gives you a good idea as to whether or not you've got steam enough to write it. If you can't make it through your storyboard - you shouldn't be writing the dang thing to begin with. Since you know how it's going to turn out and you can see the whole story for what it is - you can gage your enthusiasm. One of the perks about this is that you'll always finish your stories and you won't have unfinished garbage haunting you.

Cheers!