The first post of the day is brought to you by the world’s other “Lamont Cranston“, my cat.
I start each day reading other bloggers, checking the news, and just wandering around the Internet in hopes of inspiration.
I am interrupted quite often by my cat who, like most of the feline persuasion, holds humans as staff (on good days) and as furniture the rest of the time. It’s OK. I’m used to it.
Mr. Cranston doesn’t get too close in the morning. He is more interested in being fed than getting picked up, so imagine my surprise when I found him hunched down by my feet within easy plucking distance. Well, I love my kitty, and thought “he wants to be picked up”, odd, but fine with me. He didn’t want to be picked up. He struggled and jumped down immediately. But he didn’t run away.
To keep a long story from getting longer, he was waiting for me to notice that he’d found a length of pink twine, and had brought it to me so I could play with him. Both the fetching of the string, and the waiting for me to find it were atypical behavior. I may have missed it for a while, but when I found it, I was tickled by the discovery.
Are you bringing strings to your readers? Are you waiting patiently for them to “get it”, to find what you’ve hidden?
Image: Mr. Cranston, himself
Foreshadowing is one of the trickiest parts of writing, and one of my favorite topics to write about. Dropping hints, laying groundwork, suggestion, call it what you like, if done correctly it can bring your reader to a very special realization, but perhaps not the one you expect.
Setting your reader up to “get it” can be done either for you, the author, for them, your readers. What is the difference? Why should you care?
It comes down to the age-old question. Who are you writing for.
If you’ve read Uphill Writing for any length of time, you already know what I think of the person who claims “I write for myself”. The reader is properly the target of all we do in our books, and nowhere is this more important than the area of foreshadowing.
Think about the hundreds of books you’ve read over the years. Which were the books that left you feeling the best? Perhaps you walked away from one or two that beat you up and thought, “well, at least I learned something.”
My guess is that the books you like the best are those where you participated with the author, not where you were spoon-fed or lectured.
Good foreshadowing should break over your reader like a gentle wave, each sweep revealing a bit more, and only enough that your readers “work it out for themselves”.
I promise you, there is nothing so subtle, and so endearing, as making readers believe they may have solved it in advance. Make your reader feel smart, quick, clever. They’ll come back time and again.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio... and isn't it time you experienced some of them?
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Good post. Would the difference between fore-shadowing and telescoping be then, that in the latter case you are ‘laying it on’ what you expect, or want the reader to take as the ‘ah ha’ moment? In other words, you’d be ‘writing for yourself’.
I love Lamont! Gorgeous feline that he is!
My fave in this piece: “I am interrupted quite often by my cat who, like most of the feline persuasion, holds humans as staff (on good days) and as furniture the rest of the time.”
You sure did let the cat out of the bag with that one!
Like Nancy, that line about holding humans as staff really made me smile.
What a cute kitty! Amen to effective foreshadowing. May we lead our readers gently down the path of our story, and then drop a brick on them.
Oh, well said, indeed. )
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