Literary Devices: Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary element in which the author provides the reader with subtle hints about events to come later on in the story. Foreshadowing is one component of developing suspense, and keeps a reader’s interest during plot development. Several methods can be utilized to foreshadow in a story.
Indirect Foreshadowing
One method of foreshadowing involves using indirect clues to the reader that indicate changes to come. Subtle clues can include changes in the weather, mood, and uncertain reactions of characters. For example:
"Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with, flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes.”
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
In this opening passage of his story, Dickens uses nasty weather to create a particular mood for his readers, which foreshadows unfortunate events to come. Beginning with nice weather would prepare the reader for a very different story.
What makes indirect foreshadowing so effective is the elusiveness. Readers prefer to be shown clues, rather than told. A detailed passage laced with imagery like the one above is more interesting than a blatant summary of events to come. You can achieve similar results in your story by consciously thinking about the main events and conflicts of your story, and planning out ways to provide your readers with hints relating to those events.
Parallel Events
Another method of foreshadowing involves introducing an event early on that parallels an important event to come later in the story. For example:
“Lennie looked sadly up at him.
"They was so little," he said apologetically. "I’d pet ‘em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead—because they was so little. I wish’t we’d get the rabbits pretty soon, George. They ain’t so little."
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
In this passage, Steinbeck uses the death of the mouse to foreshadow and hint to readers about deaths that occur later in the story. Once again, the reference is not explicitly stated, but gives readers a sense of things to come and motivates the reader to continue further into the story. The effectiveness lies in the elusiveness. You can achieve similar results in your stories by thinking about your stories’ main events, and then thinking of ways you can mimic those events on a smaller scale.
Chekhov’s Gun
Chekhov’s Gun is a particular type of foreshadowing, where something seemingly insignificant is introduced early on in the story that becomes essential by the story’s end. This technique’s name comes from playwright Anton Chekhov, who once said that you cannot hang a rifle on a wall in chapter one if you do not intend for it to go off later on in the story.
The key to achieving this technique is balancing subtleness with detail, and time. The goal of Chehov’s Gun is to surprise readers, without plot holes. In order to do this, your “gun”- whether it be a weapon or other item, a low key character or particular place- has to be explained to the reader with a fair amount of detail so that it is memorable by the end of the story. Additionally, you want narrative time to pass between the time you introduce the item, and the time it becomes significant. Your reader must “forget” about the gun in order for the ending to be a surprise. By introducing your gun early on in the story, you will allow plenty of narrative time to pass so that the reader isn’t focused on the item.
Red Herring
A Red Herring is a type of foreshadowing most commonly used in mysteries that intentionally misleads readers. Where other types of foreshadowing preview events to come, red herrings send readers down false trails and build suspense as the real conclusion is reached.
To use a red herring effectively requires a bit of clever thinking. Your red herring should have these essential parts:
-
Logic
While your “clue” to the reader will be false, it still has to make sense in the context of the story so the reader will believe it. -
An Alibi
By nature, a red herring is false, and eventually your reader has to understand why. For example, if your entire story is centered around pinning a murder on a red herring character, at some point the reader has to see why that character is innocent, or your story will have a plot hole. -
An Alternative
When writing a red herring, it’s important to have the truth in mind, so your alternative seems viable and makes sense in the context of the story.
There are several ways to create a red herring, using different parts of a story.
Characters
A character is the most frequent type of red herring. When used in the context of a mystery, providing characters with motives is often the way to shape them into a red herring. If several characters all have believable motives for committing a crime, your reader will be engaged and interested to find out the truth. Aside from motive, placing characters in incriminating situations or providing them with opportunities can also create red herrings.
Objects
Objects can be used as red herrings in almost any type of story. When writing a scene, consider the relevance of each item you describe in the setting, and imagine the ways in which your reader will interpret them. Equally as important, think of objects you could intentionally exclude the reader may expect to build interest. Instead of finding a knife at a crime scene, you may describe cuts on a wooden table, leading your reader to anticipate a particular item to appear later that may be erroneous.