Shadows and Echoes

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After reading books, blogs, and websites on writing for any length of time, there are certain phrases and bits and pieces of literary jargon that begin to be familiar.  It's not always clear what they mean, and sometimes they're downright unfortunate - internal conflict, for instance, always makes me wonder if the character had mayonnaise and pickles for lunch.  Some of them, however, are quite apt.  One rare example of this is foreshadowing.

Those of you who have followed Scribbles since pretty near the beginning are already aware that foreshadowing is one of my favorite aspects of writing.  It gives me a thrill to read a book, especially one familiar to me, and catch a new instance where threads of future scenes are woven into earlier sections; I love it when the first book of a series plants seeds for those that follow.  I am not sure why, save perhaps that, though (and perhaps because) I am a writer myself, it never ceases to amaze me that an author's mind can contain such a monumental and complete thought.  It is one thing to start at the beginning and bumble clumsily to the end; it is another thing entirely for the ending to be foretold by the beginning.

There are many different styles of foreshadowing.  One of the most obvious is that of premonition or deja vu, two phenomena we don't really understand, but that serve us well as writers.  They allow us to give the character a hint of whatever disaster is to come - not a vision, for that tends to ruin the suspense, but an unpleasant and indefinable taste.  And through the mind of the character, the reader feels it as well.

Foreshadowing can also be done in less obvious ways, ways that will probably not be noticed until the second reading when the ending is already in mind.  They can be as slight as a word that a minor character uses, a change in the weather, an insult, the writing of a letter or the killing of a moth.  It can be anything, really.  There is nothing so slight that the mind cannot latch onto it, connect it with an event and rethink it months or even years later.  The association needn't even be direct; it may be a connection may be only in the character's mind.  Personally, these are my favorites because of the detail and nuance they reflect - and because they're even more natural than a premonition.

As splendid as foreshadowing is, however, it is but one side of the coin of continuity.  Foreshadowing is what the writer does at the beginning of the novel; it is the darkness cast by the real event to which the author was looking.  But later on, especially in a long novel, it is necessary to harken back to earlier scenes and bring them clearly before the reader's mind again.  I call this echoing; like as not it has different names in different places. 

At any rate, for me these are usually pointed (often unintentional) repetitions of something that happened many chapters before.  Again, they're usually small things - the flipside of foreshadowing.  A phrase might be reused that harkens back to another scene; a character's expression might remind the narrator of someone else; a color might be tied to something critical.  Whether indirect or direct, it is an association that carries the mind back across the pages even more plainly than foreshadowing carries the mind forward.

However they are used, foreshadowing and echoing are wonderfully tantalizing ways of bringing together the pattern of a story.  And on a rambling side note, they represent to me one of the spectacular aspects of the Bible: no other book in the world so reflects the perfect continuity in the mind of its author.  Perhaps, after all, that is what we all pattern our own writing after.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is one of the most interesting techniques to use in writing. It lends a story continuity, tying the beginning in with the middle and the end, and also serves to let the reader know that the author is conscious of where he or she is taking the story. In essence, it allows the writer to pull back the veil a little for the reader and give a glimpse of what is to come - even when the reader is unaware that this is being done until the event actually takes place. It can be a foreshadowing of something relatively small, or something grand and momentous; its fulfillment can be fairly obvious and only the circumstances be shrouded in mystery, or the hint may be so slight that the fulfillment comes with a shock. Either way, there is something about it (if well done) that gives a thrill of expectation to the reader.

Foreshadowing is used in many different ways, in many different stories. It is especially obvious in prequels, such as C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, a backstory for his The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe which tells Professor Kirke's story and that of the birth of Narnia. The whole story could be referred to as a foreshadowing, really, as it sets the stage the arrival of the Pevensies and all that follows thereafter, but there are also specific elements that are more noticeable; for instance, the poignant scene in which Digory Kirke encounters Jadis at the gate of the Garden. On the gate inscribed in silver are the words,

"Come in by the gold gates or not at all,
take of my fruit for others or forbear,
for those who steal or those who climb my wall
shall find their heart's desire and find despair."

Naturally, Jadis climbed the wall and ate one of the apples of youth, establishing herself as a permanent evil in Narnia, and that looks forward to the time when she rules Narnia as the White Witch. Not only does The Magician's Nephew answer questions that arise in the other books of the series, but it adds depth to the world Lewis created and to the events in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This is the same for any series in which the author ties the books together, especially those where the plots are only loosely bound together, yet have similar threads running through them. In Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth and its sequels, she links the novels together with the use of a family ring that passes down the generations of the Aquila family. (While this is not strictly foreshadowing, the principle is the same.) On the other hand, a series in which foreshadowing is not used would be Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet, in which the second book makes no mention of the events in the first and thus lacks continuity.

But one problem with this is that writers don't always know where they are heading with a story; after all, Tolkien had only fragments of ideas for The Lord of the Rings when he began The Fellowship of the Ring. When this is the case, it frequently shows in rough drafts as the writer's knowledge of the story increases. Thus comes the need for editing, and it is in this process that foreshadowing can be added as the writer weaves the two halves of the novel more tightly together (something that Jenny wrote an excellent post on a little while ago).

Another use for foreshadowing is to keep readers turning pages. It is not always the best option to drop the reader in the midst of an action scene on page one; sometimes a more "normal" setting is needed to paint a background for the rest of the novel and set up the plot, and so the beginning of a story often has a slower pace than the middle and climax. In such cases, hinting in the first chapters about what is to come later helps keep readers tantalized and waiting for the next twist in the plot.