A Novel Peek-Preview: Foreshadowing

Long ago movie makers learned that previews increase viewers’ anticipation of an upcoming film. Before long they began offering sneak-peeks which allowed some favored viewers to see the movie ahead of time. Again the goal was to heighten audience expectation.

A novelist uses foreshadowing in the same way—either to alert readers to what is coming or to increase tension by revealing the potential for disaster. Furthermore, foreshadowing can strengthen a story’s theme.

Foreshadowing can be subtle or overt, depending on what the author wants to accomplish.

Readers need to know what is coming to a certain extent. Some foreshadowing prepares them for what’s up ahead.

I’ll never forget this one novel–the characters were in a flight-or-die struggle. As they ran across the field, with the villains moments behind, they dove into the barn to hide. Uh, what barn? We were crossing a field, no mention of any structures.

The scene could easily have been set earlier with the mention of rickety outbuildings silhouetted by the setting sun. Readers would then not have been surprised when one of these rickety buildings cropped up at an appropriate time.

Foreshadowing can also create tension.

As the couple set of across the Atlantic, their sail snapped in a surprisingly brisk gale. No weather reports indicated trouble, and this was the most favorable time of the year for an ocean crossing, but there had been numerous reports of out-of season storms. In fact the store clerk who sold them their life vests mentioned a ship that was lost just last year about this time.

And the scene is set. Readers are now expecting something big blowing on that wind.

A third purpose for foreshadowing is to suggest the theme of the book. One of my favorite illustration of this is in Kathryn Fitzmaurice’s middle grade novel The Year The Swallows Came Early. In the story, Ms. Fitzmaurice used candy to symbolize the main character’s life. From the beginning, then, little Groovy makes the comparison that proves to be of utmost significance:

I told my best friend, Frankie, that it was hard to tell what something was like on the inside just by looking at the outside. And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard like undercooked white rice.

An author can create foreshadowing in a variety of ways.

The most obvious method of foreshadowing is by stating, through narrative or dialogue, what is about to happen. Gone with the Wind begins with Scarlet O’Hara preparing to attend an engagement party where she plans to profess her love to Ashley Wilkes, the man about to be engaged. No surprise, then, when this scene takes place.

No surprise, but plenty of suspense has now built up. Will he respond to Scarlet and dump the plain Melanie to be with this startling beauty that all the other men in the county would die for?

A second way to foreshadow is to create in miniature what will soon happen to a larger extent. The men entered the cave to look for treasure. A rock tumbles from the ceiling. Dust flies. “Don’t worry,” the main character says, “we don’t have much farther.” Ah, the reader says, you may not be worrying, but I am! And sure enough, within pages, the cave-in seals the entrance.

Another foreshadowing device is a character’s unreasoned emotion. If someone is obsessing about germs, chances are, there is a deadly disease that may well come into play. If a parent stresses over a teen driver fastening his seat belt, chances are an accident is brewing.

A fourth way to foreshadow is to show the reader an object, as if by happenstance. The main character steps into the garage for a moment and sees the tire iron that should be in the trunk. Or perhaps it’s the spare tire, but oh well, she’s in a hurry, and what are the chances of getting a flat tire?

The object could be anything that will later have significance–a shopping bag, the garage opener, a fishing pole. The object might even be one that’s supposed to be there but is missing. The car seat or a credit card or cell phone.

Lastly, foreshadowing can be created with symbols, as the illustration from The Year The Swallows Came Early showed. The symbol may be common and easily recognized–a bank of clouds, an albatross, a rose bud. Or it can be something the author infuses with meaning as Ms. Fitzmaurice did with the See’s candy.

Foreshadowing is a powerful tool. It prepares the way for events to take place, it creates suspense, and it may help reinforce a story’s theme.

What are your thoughts? Is foreshadowing mostly invisible to you? Do you realize after the fact what the author has done? Do you have any examples of great foreshadowing or stories that needed a good dose of foreshadowing to make a plot point work?

See Harvey Chapman‘s “Five Examples of Foreshadowing in Fiction” for further illustrations.

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This article first appeared here in July 2012.

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Weaving Themes Into Stories

I’ve written from time to time about incorporating themes into stories, but I realized recently that most of my posts on the subject have been an apologetic–explaining the legitimacy, even the necessity of putting themes into stories intentionally. One of my repeated cries has been the need for authors to weave their theme naturally into the fabric of the story rather than tacking it on as an after thought or neglecting it completely in the belief that what the author holds to be dear is bound to seep through somewhere, somehow.

The natural question that arises, however is, how does a writer go about weaving a theme into the story?

There are several ways that come to mind. One is to use symbols. In the article “Symbolism, Part 5 – Final Thoughts”, I used the debut middle grade novel by Kathryn Fitzmaurice, The Year The Swallows Came Early, as an example of the use of symbols. Throughout candy, particularly chocolate which hides what’s underneath, symbolizes how people appear on the outside, with the candy filling showing the way things are on the inside.

The novel begins with the chapter entitled “Coconut Flakes” and this:

And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard, like undercooked white rice.

It ends with the chapter entitled “Caramel” and this line:

Because even though he’d picked that chocolate by pure chance, it just so happened that when I bit into it, I tasted soft easy-going caramel, and no coconut flakes.

A second way to weave a theme into a story is to show character development. Often times the events of a story have an impact on the protagonist, to the point that she changes in some significant way. The story may not continue on for the reader to see the change played out, but the character should take some action that demonstrates a new outlook or a change in commitment. Whatever has caused the change in the character is the key to the theme.

One of the saddest stories, I believe, is Gone with the Wind. The main character, Scarlet, lives for years with the delusion that she is in love with a man who married someone else. Through all the pain and suffering of the civil war and the recovery she experienced, doing (and marrying) all she could to stay alive and keep her household together, Scarlet ended up alone because she killed the love of the one person still alive who knew her and had loved her anyway. She woke up to reality too late.

But her character development, her ability to finally see her relationships as they really were, comes through all the more poignantly and leaves an indelible impression on the reader, even as Scarlet repeats her mantra and prepares to return to her family estate, the one love to which she has been faithful.

A third way to build a theme into a story is to pit the worldview of the protagonist with the worldview of the antagonist and show in the end which of those two competing outlooks is the most desirable. In some cases the outlook that wins is clearly the most desirable, but in some stories the one that loses is shown to be the most noble, the most appealing. These stories are infrequent, and yet they exist.

One such was an old movie I saw on TV, I think called Remember the Alamo. In the end, as it happened in real life, all the soldiers defending the Alamo died, but the movie showed their deaths to be noble, even heroic. Consequently, though they lost their lives, their worldview still “won” in that story.

Braveheart is another such movie as is Camelot. In the former, the protagonist is sentenced to death but shouts “Freedom” before his beheading. Those who continue the fight do so in his memory. He lost, but his worldview won. The latter is similar. King Arthur’s round table is broken apart, his desire for a unified England in tatters, but a young boy shows him that the ideal will live on after him. The worldview he fought for, believed in, wins, even though he doesn’t.

Other stories show the triumph of the protagonist over the antagonist which validates his worldview. The Harry Potter series shows this kind of victory. Though for a time all seems lost, in the end, the protagonist makes the last great sacrifice and brings victory. His way of viewing the world wins, validating in the mind of the reader that grasping for power and ruling as a demigod is not the right way to live, while sacrifice and service and friendship and love are stronger in the end.

Symbolism, character development, a winning worldview all serve to embed a theme into a story. You might have other ways. If so, I’d love to hear your ideas.

Foreshadowing: A Novel’s Peek Preview

Long ago movie makers learned that previews increase viewers’ anticipation of an upcoming film. Before long they began offering sneak-peeks which allowed some favored viewers to see the movie ahead of time. Again the goal was to heighten audience expectation.

A novelist uses foreshadowing in the same way–either to alert readers to what is coming or to increase tension by revealing the potential for disaster. Furthermore, foreshadowing can strengthen a story’s theme.

Foreshadowing can be subtle or overt, depending on what the author wants to accomplish.

Readers need to know what is coming to a certain extent. Some foreshadowing prepares them for what’s up ahead.

I’ll never forget this one novel–the characters were in a flight-or-die struggle. As they ran across the field, with the villains moments behind, they dove into the barn to hide. Uh, what barn? We were crossing a field, no mention of any structures.

The scene could easily have been set earlier with the mention of rickety outbuildings silhouetted by the setting sun. Readers would then not have been surprised when one of these rickety buildings cropped up at an appropriate time.

Foreshadowing can also create tension.

As the couple set of across the Atlantic, their sail snapped in a surprisingly brisk gale. No weather reports indicated trouble, and this was the most favorable time of the year for an ocean crossing, but there had been numerous reports of out-of season storms. In fact the store clerk who sold them their life vests mentioned a ship that was lost just last year about this time.

And the scene is set. Readers are now expecting something big blowing on that wind.

A third purpose for foreshadowing is to suggest the theme of the book. One of my favorite illustration of this is in Kathryn Fitzmaurice’s middle grade novel The Year The Swallows Came Early. In the story, Ms. Fitzmaurice used candy to symbolize the main character’s life. From the beginning, then, little Groovy makes the comparison that proves to be of utmost significance:

I told my best friend, Frankie, that it was hard to tell what something was like on the inside just by looking at the outside. And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard like undercooked white rice.

An author can create foreshadowing in a variety of ways.

The most obvious method of foreshadowing is by stating, through narrative or dialogue, what is about to happen. Gone with the Wind begins with Scarlet O’Hara preparing to attend an engagement party where she plans to profess her love to Ashley Wilkes, the man about to be engaged. No surprise, then, when this scene takes place.

No surprise, but plenty of suspense has now built up. Will he respond to Scarlet and dump the plain Melanie to be with this startling beauty that all the other men in the county would die for?

A second way to foreshadow is to create in miniature what will soon happen to a larger extent. The men entered the cave to look for treasure. A rock tumbles from the ceiling. Dust flies. “Don’t worry,” the main character says, “we don’t have much farther.” Ah, the reader says, you may not be worrying, but I am! And sure enough, within pages, the cave-in seals the entrance.

Another foreshadowing device is a character’s unreasoned emotion. If someone is obsessing about germs, chances are, there is a deadly disease that may well come into play. If a parent stresses over a teen driver fastening his seat belt, chances are an accident is brewing.

A fourth way to foreshadow is to show the reader an object, as if by happenstance. The main character steps into the garage for a moment and sees the tire iron that should be in the trunk. Or perhaps it’s the spare tire, but oh well, she’s in a hurry, and what are the chances of getting a flat tire?

The object could be anything that will later have significance–a shopping bag, the garage opener, a fishing pole. The object might even be one that’s supposed to be there but is missing. The car seat or a credit card or cell phone.

Lastly, foreshadowing can be created with symbols, as the illustration from The Year The Swallows Came Early showed. The symbol may be common and easily recognized–a bank of clouds, an albatross, a rose bud. Or it can be something the author infuses with meaning as Ms. Fitzmaurice did with the See’s candy.

Foreshadowing is a powerful tool. It prepares the way for events to take place, it creates suspense, and it may help reinforce a story’s theme.

What are your thoughts? Is foreshadowing mostly invisible to you? Do you realize after the fact what the author has done? Do you have any examples of great foreshadowing or stories that needed a good dose of foreshadowing to make a plot point work?

See Harvey Chapman‘s “Five Examples of Foreshadowing in Fiction” for further illustrations.

Compelling Books – Inner Conflict

A quiet book, my friend said, and yet something makes you want to keep reading. She was speaking of the new middle grade novel, A Diamond In The Desert by Kathryn Fitzmaurice. Last night I discovered for myself just how compelling this book is. Yes, last night, because I began reading after 8:00 and devoured all 242 pages before I had my morning coffee. (OK, it is middle grade and there is a significant amount of white space, but for this slow reader, finishing so quickly is notable!)

Yesterday I started using Donald Maass’s excellent Writing The Breakout Novel Workbook in my own work, and came upon the element I believe is the key to Kathryn’s writing: creating inner conflict. I’ve studied Maass’s Workbook before, but I don’t think I realized how true and powerful inner conflict can be until I read A Diamond In The Desert, with Donald Maass’s words fresh in mind.

He defines inner conflict as a character with

two goals, needs, wants, longings, yearnings, or desires that are in direct opposition to each other. Wanting two things that are mutually exclusive means having inner conflict, being torn in two directions, and that is what makes a character truly memorable. (p. 19)

In Kathryn’s book, the main character, a teenager held in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, comes to a point of crisis when he wants to play baseball, the only semblance of “normal” from his life before the camp and a great love, but at the same time must care for his little sister, who he also loves, while his mother is at work.

Two things the character wants — one a passion, the other a responsibility. And he takes his responsibilities seriously, especially because the family has been separated from their father. The struggle doesn’t last long. The character must make a choice. But the resulting consequences drive the action from that point on. The decision may be a done deal, but the character must learn to live with it.

As I thought about this inner struggle that made this quiet book a story I didn’t want to put down, I realized that Kathryn had also masterfully created inner conflict in her debut novel, The Year The Swallows Came Early. In that one, the protagonist loves her father and to her horror, he is arrested one day while they are walking together. Worse yet, she finds out the person who filed a complaint against him is her mother, who she also loves. Inner conflict.

In one part of Maass’s Creating Inner Conflict Exercise, he says

True inner conflict involves wanting two things that are mutually exclusive. It is most effective when it tears your protagonist, or any character, in two opposite directions. (p. 24)

Can you love both your mother and your father when one seems to be hurting the other? Can you satisfy both your passion and your responsibility? These are struggles the characters in Kathryn’s books faced, struggles which made their story compelling. What would they decide? How would it affect them?

It’s the same struggle Frodo Baggins faced in The Fellowship Of The Ring. Would he shoulder the responsibility of destroying the ring or return to his home in the Shire? As this book neared its conclusion, the conflict shifted to his facing the responsibility alone in spite of his fear or turning aside and remaining with his companions. Two things at the beginning and at the end that can’t both happen — or apparently so.

In stories that end happily, it seems authors find a way for the two to both take place, or for one to turn out not as good as it first appeared, or for one to be proper and appropriate to give up as a way of maturing. In the latter, there may be sweet sadness, the sense of necessary loss, and the story still ends on a positive note.

Quiet books are built largely on these kinds of inner conflicts. But what about adventures, thrillers, science fiction, even romance? Certainly those stories have external conflict that drives the story, but an author who also incorporates inner conflict — as J. R. R. Tolkien did — has a memorable character to go along with action-induced edge-of-the-seat tension.

Symbolism, Part 5 – Final Thoughts

One of the concerns I’ve had about symbols is the idea that readers might miss them. I found some applicable thoughts on the subject in Oakley Hall’s The Art & Craft of Novel Writing. First his quote of Flannery O’Conner (Mysteries and Manners):

The fact that these meanings are there makes the book significant. The reader may not see them but they have their effect upon him nonetheless.

And this quote of John Steinbeck (East of Eden):

About the nature of the Trasks and about their symbol meanings I leave you to find out for yourself. There is a key and there are many leads. I think you will discover the story rather quickly for all its innocent sound on these pages. Now the innocent sound and the slight concealment are not done as tricks but simply so that a man can take from this book as much as he can bring to it … Your literate and understanding man will take joy of finding the secrets hidden in this book almost as though he searched for treasure, but we must never tell anyone they are there. Let them be found by accident. [emphasis added]

And I thought I was being so original in comparing symbols to treasure! 🙂

The quote from O’Conner and the Steinbeck line I emphasized take care of my “what if they miss it” concern. Too often if I let that worry drive my writing, then I produce transparent, correlative symbols. It’s like saying I’m hiding some thing, then setting it out in plain sight. Someone expecting a challenge will be disappointed.

If I write a good story and embed it with symbols, no one will be disappointed. The reader who wants a good story will have it, and the one who wants a challenge will have that too.

I conclude that symbols only work if the story itself is strong enough to stand as though the symbols did not exist.

A good example of such a story is The Year The Swallows Came Early, a middle grade novel by Kathryn Fitzmaurice.

No one can tell if the inside holds coconut or caramel

The author used what I’ll call book-end symbols. Chapter 1 is entitled “Coconut Flakes” and the metaphor at the bottom of the first page explains it:

And that our house was like one of those See’s candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard, like undercooked white rice.

While mention of coconut occurs on several other occasions, the most memorable instance is in the last chapter entitled “Caramel”:

Because even though he’d picked that chocolate by pure chance, it just so happened that when I bit into it, I tasted soft easy-going caramel, and no coconut flakes.

So coconut pictures the hard things in life, but by looking at chocolate candies no one can tell if the inside holds coconut or caramel.

This is a great illustration of an author creating a symbol from an object that was integral to the story. The candy was first candy. But it came to represent more to the character, then through her, to the readers.

Symbols add depth. They suggest the theme of the story. They give readers more to think about. And yes, they might be missed. But in a strong story with well crafted symbols, readers with varying levels of expectation will have a satisfying reading experience.

Much of this article was originally posted as part of a series on symbolism at A Christian Worldview of Fiction