If I was going to tell you something vital/ important / unpleasant/ shocking ... You're pregnant/ you have AIDS/ your husband is having an affair with bi-sexual crossdressing Kangaroo from New York... I'd probably prepare the ground slightly. "Hi Fred, you're pregnant..." will probably fail to achieve breaking the momentous news in a beliveable fashion. To do that you have prime Fred about the possibility of some people being XXY and and having functional genetalia of sex they may think they don't belong to etc. It's going to take a while, and some careful explanation to get Fred to believe you (a thing which is particularly important in fiction, where, after all, it is FICTION, and you are still trying to suspend disbelief.)
This requires foreshadowing. Or if you prefer, priming the reader. Plausibility and that suspension of disbelief require that the reader is brought into the frame, and has sufficient hints (3 is the gospel, but the truth is, more is better than less, especially if you are subtly building up to horrific revelations... like the husband having an affair with... someone from New York ;-).
All storytellers foreshadow instinctively to some extent. Some of us, have a real natural flair for it. Most of us don't understand it, and do it without thinking. To readers it is all but invisible, until it isn't there. It's more than merely the mention of the shotgun on the mantlepiece, the lead character saying he likes skeet-shooting, and picking up a roll of Cherry Lifesavers to find that actually they're a shotgun cartrige. If you slipped these into your story - the denoument when the lead character siezes the shotgun and blows his head off would at least seem plausible. Otherwise... sorry, but it's not even a story. And to do it well requires SO much more.
I think it is easiest to explain in movie terms. When the background music goes all slushy and the lighting a little soft, you know that this is a romantic scene coming and the kissy bit is as inevitable as sunrise or taxation. When the music goes all eeky-squeeky and the scenes are largely black-and-little bits of light showing things that could be nasty... you know your better half will have you on their lap, and not looking any moment, because someone is going to die (or nearly die). And that happens BEFORE the kissy bit or the murder. It doesn't spoil either. BUT if you have the kissy bit without the foreshadowing it feels bare and un-natural. If you have the kissy bit with axe-murderer music... it's a disaster. So foreshadowing is partially about managing expectations, preparing the ground for events. Priming the reader for something they don't necessarily think they expect, but do. If it is done well it is near invisible.
so for example:
The boss at a small company that kept dropping hints it was 60th coming up... and on the day no-one said anything. So he worked, getting more down in the mouth all day. At last his secretary - at 5 to 5 in the afternoon - says 'what's wrong?'
He tells her how un-noticed he is by his staff, and it's his birthday and he'd thought... She's a pretty young lass and he's a plump shy old bloke... and she says, "that's terrible, but it's five o'clock, come and at least have celebratory drink with me."
So they go to a wine bar and one drink turns to two, but she keeps looking at her watch. He's flattered by the notice but thinks, well, a pretty young thing has probably got a date or something.
So after the second glass she looks at her watch again and says: "well, why don't you come back to my place. I've got some decent wine there."
They take a taxi and she lets him into her lounge and sits him down in the best comfy chair, pours him a glass of wine... and says "I think have a little present for you after all. I'll be back now." And she walks out and turns the lights out.
The trouble is by the time she walks back in and throws on the lights, with the entire office staff, all yelling "Happy Birthday!"...
He is only wearing his socks.
(and that was foreshadowing by example (if you look carefully you'll realise I was 'priming' you, and example of how nasty a surprise we REALLY don't expect can be. :-))
without foreshadowing
Nobody in the office noticed the boss's birthday, so he told his secretary, and she took out to a winebar for a couple of glasses of wine, and then to her place. She gave him a glass of wine, sat him down turned the lights off and said she had a little birthday pressie for him after all,
The trouble is by the time she walks back in and throws on the lights, with the entire office staff, all yelling "Happy Birthday!"...
and he was only wearing his socks.
_____________
the set-up here included details like their ages, appearance and his shyness, and the hints he was dropping, and her watch watching...
If a scene is well foreshadowed, even if you DIDN'T actually expect the twist, it does not feel unnatural. If a scene is not foreshadowed it simply doesn't.
So: give me some foreshadowing, gentlefolk.
I expect it.
Showing posts with label foreshadowing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foreshadowing. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Dum... da da da dum
Dum... Da da da dum...
Something wicked this way comes. Probably bouncing through the quivering forest.
Look...
I've warned you.
I've told you.
Do you think anyone of you were listening?
You call me a troublemaker. You babble-on, Babylon. Go on with your dream projects, running ever faster.
Building up. Building up and up.
There's a shadow in the doorway. It's not just one of my pranks.
And you're still all talking busily. Flying by the seat of your pants... or building by them. Which means you'll never see disaster coming your way.
Pansters! Huh.
Wake up and smell the scent of decay wafting up through the lower stories. You need to monkey about with it.
Because otherwise the next page will not be quite what your audience expected.
And it should be.
But only in retrospect.
Or it will fall...
I've talked about apeing other genres before. I've also talked about expectations and managing them. I've been writing these pieces for a while and so I've even probably talked about the mechanics of humor (just what is it that makes people laugh). Now I want to talk about something that draws on all three of those: the art of foreshadowing.
It's is probably the core skill required to write good murder-mysteries, and plays quite well in suspense of any kind. It can of course lift your fantasy or sf beyond the ordinary. It's far from easy to do well, and often requires a fair degree of sleight of hand. The key to having done it well, is that the reader DOESN'T see it coming. He sees something coming (IE. his expectations are being managed). However, when the incident happens... a head-palm-slap moment, as the reader says "OF COURSE! Why on earth didn't I see _that_ coming? Of course he was the villain / hero / lost heir, etc."
It was something I tried to do with Cap in THE FORLORN. He was a major character. Their leader. And they were undoubtedly a heroic group. Only I slowly tried to build up that Cap was a self-centered (cough)... and a few other little hints. So: hopefully when the denouement happend... it seemed plausible. In plain sight, given a slightly different interpretation of the story shown.
That's a major example woven into the full length of a novel, which I basically had to know from page 1. It's something I use almost constantly, however, at greater or lesser level, so that we change circumstances without there being a feeling of ‘oh this was getting boring so I decided to make the roof fall in.' That, sadly, is something which is all to common in pantser writing. Now, there are some great pantser writers. Some of them even do short-term foreshadow. And there are even those who long-term foreshadow. That means either their trousers have co-operated and led them instinctively to a great WHY DIDN'T I SEE THAT COMING or that they've edited their work and realized that the finale needed foreshadowing and gone back and systematically done the lead in to it (or that the ‘pantser' part merely applied to detail, and they knew where they were going throughout - ergo they had broad plot, not a detailed one).
I am of course always a plotter, although I sometimes end up as the last example of pantser too. I frequently end up going back and titivating my foreshadowing. To titillate without betraying, if you keep abreast of my reasoning. It's a ticklish thing to do -- because, like humor, it involves getting the reader to see both things but expect the wrong one. (Laughter is actually something of a reaction to shock, it turns out.) The classic example of how it works is Charlie Chaplin walking along the road. There is an open manhole cover, in a littered street. The hole gapes. Gets bigger in every frame. Naturally so does the street and the litter. We see the detail of it, the junk, the cigarette butts, the banana peels, the empty bottles - and the hole. The hole getting bigger and more obviously in the way of the oblivious walker. We see the walker, the hole (and its surrounds, but it is the hole we focus on ) and....
He steps over the hole.
And onto the banana peel (which has been in plain view in every frame).
It's been said that foreshadowing works best if repeated 3 times.
This is good advice... if you are not your average sledge-hammer wielding writer. Remember the banana peel was in frame... but not the center of attention. Peripheral, but large enough and clear enough to be remembered. One way to do this is to make it memorable... for the wrong reason.
For instance here (from A MANKIND WITCH)
_______________________________________________________________________
"The poor girl. I feel so sorry for her. She's stunted, you know. They say..." and the honeyed voice of Signy's stepmother dropped, but not so low that it couldn't be heard clearly through the thin wooden wall. "It's the dokkalfar blood on her mother's side... The woman died in bearing the girl. That's a sure sign of the ill-fortune that goes with meddling in seid-magic. And only the one scrawny girl-child, Jarl. Anyway, it is not important. She is of the royal line even if she probably will never bear children. She's far too small. She spoils her complexion with sunlight. And she has no womanly skills. I mean, look at her embroidery! It's appalling. No, your master would be wise to look elsewhere."
Signy's nails dug into her palms. She dropped the frame of crooked stitchery that confirmed the truth about her skills with a needle. She knew perfectly well that she had been supposed to hear every word. That it was meant to wound. That didn't stop it hurting. The Dowager Queen Albruna seldom missed the opportunity to try and belittle her... And seldom failed to do so. It wasn't hard. Signy knew that she was no one's idea of a shield-maiden. She was too small, too wiry, and as gifted with 'womanly' skills of fine weaving and stitchery as a boar-pig. She couldn't even see her threads in linen-work, let alone do it. But, by Freya's paps, she'd sooner die than let the queen-mother see any sign of how her barbs stung.
_________________________________________________________________________
There are several piece of foreshadowing there -- but the spite about the embroidery is key to the entire story -- because Signy is long-sighted. And this is the foundation on which the story rests.
Other ways to hide things are in other senses. I'm too lazy to go and look up the examples, but I did this several times with my alien hero in SLOW TRAIN. What he was smelling - or hearing was plot-relevant. The reader (I hope) was taken by the vividness of the imagery from an alien viewpoint, without realizing I was cueing them in.
And it doesn't always have to be important. You can thread your re-enforcing of foreshadowing into scenery, or into the speech tags.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Can't I stop and rest for a while, Prince Vlad?" whined the Boyar.
"We'll rest when we're there," said Vlad, wishing for the tenth time, at least, that he hadn't agreed to take the man along. The rest of this troop were his best men. Yes, some were poachers, ex-bandits and rogues. They were his forward scouts. The rest were good shots and the steadiest men he had. He'd had Emil and Mirko pick them out, and then let his feeling govern the selected ones. He was getting better at trusting those feelings.
"Where are we going?"
It was not a question Vlad wanted to answer. Not after his experiences in Gara. "A little ambush," was all that he said.
"We're a long way out of the high mountains," said the Boyar, who seemed to assume he was at liberty to interrupt Vlad's thoughts at will, and speak to him without the respect Vlad had come to take for granted. He tried to make his volunteer armies more comfortable, confident enough to address their Prince... until of course he found someone like this who took it all too far.
__________________________________________________________________________
There is more information contained in the speech tags and Vlad's thoughts - and attitudes - than there is in the dialogue.
And thus, we build up. We re-enforce our paper (or electron)tower and mason over all those cracks of confusion. And we can still assault heaven, or at least the heights of our profession, because Hanuman told us to use steel rods and brickforce so the edifice can stand. (And who saw this bit coming?)
The demons hate him. Of course you all know who the demons are, don't you?;-)
Ok - your thoughts on foreshadowing?
Many of you are self-confessed pantsers. How do you do it?
Something wicked this way comes. Probably bouncing through the quivering forest.
Look...
I've warned you.
I've told you.
Do you think anyone of you were listening?
You call me a troublemaker. You babble-on, Babylon. Go on with your dream projects, running ever faster.
Building up. Building up and up.
There's a shadow in the doorway. It's not just one of my pranks.
And you're still all talking busily. Flying by the seat of your pants... or building by them. Which means you'll never see disaster coming your way.
Pansters! Huh.
Wake up and smell the scent of decay wafting up through the lower stories. You need to monkey about with it.
Because otherwise the next page will not be quite what your audience expected.
And it should be.
But only in retrospect.
Or it will fall...
I've talked about apeing other genres before. I've also talked about expectations and managing them. I've been writing these pieces for a while and so I've even probably talked about the mechanics of humor (just what is it that makes people laugh). Now I want to talk about something that draws on all three of those: the art of foreshadowing.
It's is probably the core skill required to write good murder-mysteries, and plays quite well in suspense of any kind. It can of course lift your fantasy or sf beyond the ordinary. It's far from easy to do well, and often requires a fair degree of sleight of hand. The key to having done it well, is that the reader DOESN'T see it coming. He sees something coming (IE. his expectations are being managed). However, when the incident happens... a head-palm-slap moment, as the reader says "OF COURSE! Why on earth didn't I see _that_ coming? Of course he was the villain / hero / lost heir, etc."
It was something I tried to do with Cap in THE FORLORN. He was a major character. Their leader. And they were undoubtedly a heroic group. Only I slowly tried to build up that Cap was a self-centered (cough)... and a few other little hints. So: hopefully when the denouement happend... it seemed plausible. In plain sight, given a slightly different interpretation of the story shown.
That's a major example woven into the full length of a novel, which I basically had to know from page 1. It's something I use almost constantly, however, at greater or lesser level, so that we change circumstances without there being a feeling of ‘oh this was getting boring so I decided to make the roof fall in.' That, sadly, is something which is all to common in pantser writing. Now, there are some great pantser writers. Some of them even do short-term foreshadow. And there are even those who long-term foreshadow. That means either their trousers have co-operated and led them instinctively to a great WHY DIDN'T I SEE THAT COMING or that they've edited their work and realized that the finale needed foreshadowing and gone back and systematically done the lead in to it (or that the ‘pantser' part merely applied to detail, and they knew where they were going throughout - ergo they had broad plot, not a detailed one).
I am of course always a plotter, although I sometimes end up as the last example of pantser too. I frequently end up going back and titivating my foreshadowing. To titillate without betraying, if you keep abreast of my reasoning. It's a ticklish thing to do -- because, like humor, it involves getting the reader to see both things but expect the wrong one. (Laughter is actually something of a reaction to shock, it turns out.) The classic example of how it works is Charlie Chaplin walking along the road. There is an open manhole cover, in a littered street. The hole gapes. Gets bigger in every frame. Naturally so does the street and the litter. We see the detail of it, the junk, the cigarette butts, the banana peels, the empty bottles - and the hole. The hole getting bigger and more obviously in the way of the oblivious walker. We see the walker, the hole (and its surrounds, but it is the hole we focus on ) and....
He steps over the hole.
And onto the banana peel (which has been in plain view in every frame).
It's been said that foreshadowing works best if repeated 3 times.
This is good advice... if you are not your average sledge-hammer wielding writer. Remember the banana peel was in frame... but not the center of attention. Peripheral, but large enough and clear enough to be remembered. One way to do this is to make it memorable... for the wrong reason.
For instance here (from A MANKIND WITCH)
_______________________________________________________________________
"The poor girl. I feel so sorry for her. She's stunted, you know. They say..." and the honeyed voice of Signy's stepmother dropped, but not so low that it couldn't be heard clearly through the thin wooden wall. "It's the dokkalfar blood on her mother's side... The woman died in bearing the girl. That's a sure sign of the ill-fortune that goes with meddling in seid-magic. And only the one scrawny girl-child, Jarl. Anyway, it is not important. She is of the royal line even if she probably will never bear children. She's far too small. She spoils her complexion with sunlight. And she has no womanly skills. I mean, look at her embroidery! It's appalling. No, your master would be wise to look elsewhere."
Signy's nails dug into her palms. She dropped the frame of crooked stitchery that confirmed the truth about her skills with a needle. She knew perfectly well that she had been supposed to hear every word. That it was meant to wound. That didn't stop it hurting. The Dowager Queen Albruna seldom missed the opportunity to try and belittle her... And seldom failed to do so. It wasn't hard. Signy knew that she was no one's idea of a shield-maiden. She was too small, too wiry, and as gifted with 'womanly' skills of fine weaving and stitchery as a boar-pig. She couldn't even see her threads in linen-work, let alone do it. But, by Freya's paps, she'd sooner die than let the queen-mother see any sign of how her barbs stung.
_________________________________________________________________________
There are several piece of foreshadowing there -- but the spite about the embroidery is key to the entire story -- because Signy is long-sighted. And this is the foundation on which the story rests.
Other ways to hide things are in other senses. I'm too lazy to go and look up the examples, but I did this several times with my alien hero in SLOW TRAIN. What he was smelling - or hearing was plot-relevant. The reader (I hope) was taken by the vividness of the imagery from an alien viewpoint, without realizing I was cueing them in.
And it doesn't always have to be important. You can thread your re-enforcing of foreshadowing into scenery, or into the speech tags.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Can't I stop and rest for a while, Prince Vlad?" whined the Boyar.
"We'll rest when we're there," said Vlad, wishing for the tenth time, at least, that he hadn't agreed to take the man along. The rest of this troop were his best men. Yes, some were poachers, ex-bandits and rogues. They were his forward scouts. The rest were good shots and the steadiest men he had. He'd had Emil and Mirko pick them out, and then let his feeling govern the selected ones. He was getting better at trusting those feelings.
"Where are we going?"
It was not a question Vlad wanted to answer. Not after his experiences in Gara. "A little ambush," was all that he said.
"We're a long way out of the high mountains," said the Boyar, who seemed to assume he was at liberty to interrupt Vlad's thoughts at will, and speak to him without the respect Vlad had come to take for granted. He tried to make his volunteer armies more comfortable, confident enough to address their Prince... until of course he found someone like this who took it all too far.
__________________________________________________________________________
There is more information contained in the speech tags and Vlad's thoughts - and attitudes - than there is in the dialogue.
And thus, we build up. We re-enforce our paper (or electron)tower and mason over all those cracks of confusion. And we can still assault heaven, or at least the heights of our profession, because Hanuman told us to use steel rods and brickforce so the edifice can stand. (And who saw this bit coming?)
The demons hate him. Of course you all know who the demons are, don't you?;-)
Ok - your thoughts on foreshadowing?
Many of you are self-confessed pantsers. How do you do it?
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