My situation right now is, I have foreshadowing, but I don't want to include so much as to having the equivalence of me coming out and saying "Hey something bad is going to happen!!!" But I also don't want to mislead the reader into the "wrong" sort of foreshadowing. Right now, I feel like maybe I'm leading the reader to think there's going to be some kind of final encounter between protag and antag that may not turn out well for protag. In a way, that's the case, but it's in a sort of roundabout way. And the roundabout way involves killing someone completely innocent, which is why I HAVE to have foreshadowing or otherwise I'll probably make every reader throw the book across the room, then proceed to burn it. So, how much foreshadowing do you need to have? How do you know when you have enough? Is "wrong" foreshadowing a real thing that I need to worry about?
Hi, I imagine that this may be something that can only properly be assessed at the beta reading stage, when your novel can be viewed as a whole. I like foreshadowing, and when done well it really adds to a story. For me, good foreshadowing is giving the reader little pieces of information that allow their mind to race ahead and anticipate what might happen. Sometimes they are right, and think, yeah, I could see that coming. It is not always a bad thing as it rewards the reader for paying attention to the smaller details. It is a balance as it could completely ruin your wonderful plot twist, or make the novel too predictable. Foreshadowing can also allow the reader to leap ahead to an incorrect conclusion of what is about to happen. Again, I think that this can be done well, or not well at all. Done badly, the reader feels the writer has lied to them for the sole purpose of hiding their great big plot twist (Ah ha! You didn’t see my clever ending coming, did you? Because I bullshitted you...). Done well, the reader enjoys the subversion of expectation and, looking back, can see how they missunderstood the subtle signs but doesn’t feel lied to; the new information adds to what they previously knew and they go, of course, now it all makes sense. Dave
About four ounces. Always use a measuring cup. When your reader has got whatever you wanted foreshadowed. If you describe somebody planning to booby-trap a door with a bucket of water over it, and that door looks very much like the door to the MC's house, then the reader will expect a bit of a disaster when MC comes home because he'll be drenched as he walks in. That's enough foreshadowing. If you only show somebody buying a bucket, then that won't be enough foreshadowing since the reader won't know it's for a booby-trap (it may as well be for mopping the floor). Sure. Writers do wrong things all the time . But you don't have to worry about. You can call it "a red herring".
I don't know about "wrong" foreshadowing, but I like my foreshadowing to be subtle enough it wouldn't have to be foreshadowing, but it is. The other thing I like to do is plant foreshadowing even before I know what I'm foreshadowing. I'm a pantser. I would have a much harder time trying to fit it in after the fact. I would go to the place you think you want the foreshadowing and reread it very carefully to find where you can fit it in the most naturally.
I find it very easy to add foreshadowing later. The best foreshadowing is subtle, some little detail, there's always room to add one of those. If you add too many foreshadowings that get forgotten later, that may lead to a "Lost" type plot with too many loose ends and the reader may feel they've been cheated. Or, you end up with a twisty Dan Brown plot where the reader can't make heads or tails until the very last page: "those are good guys" - three pages later - "no, they are bad guys" - next chapter - "no, actually, they are good guys" - next page - "tricked ya again, they are the bad guys!" . That can end up being heavy handed and annoying. And if you pepper random foreshadowings as you go, then wouldn't those make your plot head for random places, since you have to follow what was foreshadowed? So, there you go, the many ways foreshadowing can go bad.
My pantser-placed foreshadowing doesn't plan out the plot or story at all. I've got a good piece of foreshadowing in my novel in progress. I don't know what it's really going to mean yet, but it's very telling about a certain character, and now we know something is going to happen at some point that brings this back up with reason and explanation. It doesn't make me plot or plan so much as it makes me more invested in the story and characters. With foreshadowing comes more layers to a story. But I do agree that too much foreshadowing looses its potency and forgotten foreshadowing should probably be cut in the editing phase. I think foreshadowing is a fun tool to play with. I like doing it my way where I foreshadow something before I know what that something is going to be. It keeps the story moving.
I agree that foreshadowing should be subtle. The point is that the reader should feel it coming, but not actually see it, imho. An unknown, unsettling presence watching the victim-to-be, maybe. A shadow falling on them or a storm ruining a happy scene. Bad dreams and omens, a warning that isn't heard in time, something very important that gets postponed, stuff like that.
One thing I've noticed when watching TV shows or horror films with other people, or even talking in between episodes with friends, and maybe this is just me, but i feel like EVERYONE wants to predict what is going to happen, based on the information available, and i would imagine the same is happening with books (ASOIAF in particular is a good example) . What i've noticed off the back of that is that more writers are deliberately trying to throw "curveballs" in to make it harder for readers to guess endings and twists. My advice is either decide whether to have accurate foreshadowing or false/incorrect and then stick to whichever you feel best suits the story. It's the ending itself that is important, not whether or not your reader has worked it out in advance. Predictable doesn't always mean bad. There's a scene in Of Mice and Men that i knew was coming and it still didn't stop me from breaking my heart when i read it. Same with Ravenheart by David Gemmell.
I think when it comes to foreshadowing, red herrings are good to utilize. Especially nowadays where everyone and their mother wants to predict a twist or ending. As @Christopher Mullin mentioned, shows and other mediums are throwing curveballs at the audience to throw them off a bit, so it would make sense if you added a few red herrings here and there alongside the foreshadowings. My two cents.
Like lots of other things, words can have different meanings to different individuals. For me, 'foreshadowing' in a story is a deliberate tease that the writer has put there, to get the reader thinking ahead. You want the reader to think 'uh-oh,' and be on the lookout for certain things happening. Whether this leads to what they actually expect or not isn't really the issue. The crux of foreshadowing is that you put this stuff into the story because you want the reader to start thinking ahead. Maybe you want to make the reader realise that a situation isn't going to end well—despite the way it looks at the moment—or that a certain person isn't all they seem to be. Foreshadowing is a warning bell that alerts the reader to look beneath the surface. This is different from setting something up that you DON'T want the reader to see coming. In that instance, you get your ducks in a row so the surprise or climax you're planning will be plausible, but you don't reveal your hand. In essence, you're doing the opposite of foreshadowing. You're giving the reader the information they'll need later, but you don't want them to see it as important to the plot. You do want them to remember it, though, for when its importance to the plot becomes clear. For example, you can disguise information that puts a character in a certain time or place, by making the reader think it's just part of the character's development. The reader will focus on the character's personality, but assume the location isn't important. However, later, when it turns out that character's location WAS important to the outcome, nobody can say you've cheated the reader in any way. What you want to do is get the reader to look at something from the wrong perspective. Foreshadowing is a different game, I reckon.
