Suspense, Surprise and Foreshadowing
Tuesday, February 16 2010 - oasis
Jordan McCollum’s latest post on telegraphing struck a nerve with me, especially this statement:
Make sure your readers have all the pieces your characters do—but beating your readers over the head with the coming surprise is a good way to ruin it
I’ve been reading Brisingr to Devan, after having finished the previous two novels in the series, and one of my major issues with these books, aside from the fact that you can’t pronounce a single name, is the foreshadowing. Now, to be fair, the first book was much worse than Brisignr, but even this one lays on the foreshadowing to the point where predicting what is going to happen next is just annoying.
As I read through my own work I find that I can pick-out instances of foreshadowing that I wasn’t even aware I put into the book. The question then becomes, is it foreshadowing or merely circumstance? So far, I’ve only had to remove/revise one instance that to me was clearly foreshadowing, I’m not sure anyone else would have caught it.
How do you achieve that balance of circumstance, to deliberate to over abundance?
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1 comment(s)
That's a great question! I think that our subconscious can add a lot of foreshadowing for us. Either we know what's going to happen (or just that something's going to happen), or our subconscious can see that avenue of possibility.
Maybe the rule of three would be a good guideline, depending on the size of the coming event and the amount of time we draw it out.