Foreshadowing: Nuggets of intrigue

By the end of this post, you’ll know how writers use foreshadowing to keep readers turning the pages and to prepare readers for what is to come.

But first, let me define foreshadowing and give you an example.

Foreshadowing is an aspect of the hook. Writers give readers a heads-up about what’s to come. This means the writer is making an assumption about point-of-view, namely that the story is being relayed to readers from some point in the future after the events of the story.

In fiction, you’d weigh up whether the loss of dramatic suspense was a worthy price for such blatant foreshadowing. But with memoir, the reader already knows the writer has survived to tell the tale, and no dramatic suspense is lost. In fiction, blatant foreshadowing stops readers turning the pages. In memoir, it keeps them turning.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky gives an example:

1992 was the Queen of England’s Annus Horribilis. It was also mine. I had hoped that I could leave behind the disappointments of Sizwe and start afresh. But not only did they follow me like a stray dog, other heartbreaks and betrayals were to litter my path. Yet I was unaware of all this as I unpacked my few belongings… (p.302)

The last sentence provides the entry into the narrative of the chapter. This far into the book we care so much for Sandy and the characters in her lives we want to know what’s gone wrong and why.

Another example of foreshadowing is this post itself.