I have finished the posts that will go up automatically during the summer. They will, hopefully, appear once a week on Monday. The posts won't include my progress in writing as I will not be touching this blog until I return. This summer is to have fun and take a break from my book. Instead, as I previously mentioned, I will concentrate on writing short stories.
Unfortunately while I was finishing the posts for this summer, I accidentally deleted a post that I had been working on entitled "World building". I had finished the first draft of it and I don't know when I will get around to rewriting it. It was very frustrating when I couldn't recover it so I think I will revisit it in a few months once I have gotten over my anger. At the moment the thought of having to redo it is too much to handle.
Due to my habit of writing random scenes ahead of where I am currently writing, now that I have reached that part there are passages that no longer fit. They weren't bad but they don't fit the character development. I am sad that I have to delete so much but since it is for the better of my story I can do it.
The fact that I'm able to delete almost five thousand words without hesitation comforts me because now I can be confident in the fact that my story is getting better. I have no problem deleting superfluous writing if it isn't necessary to my story. Since my book is getting so long I like knowing that most of it will be used in my final draft. Published authors are always telling aspiring authors that they shouldn't be afraid of deleting previous work and this proves that I can.
Also, the other day I was watching a Youtube video called Vlogger's Choice: Life as a Full Time Writer and I decided to follow an idea that she proposed. Whenever she starts writing she will read a poem first to train herself to be in the right mindset. Almost like Pavlov. So now before every writing session I will read a poem from my book of modern American and British poetry. Hopefully I can train myself to become more on task as Youtube has a habit of distracting me.
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It is impossible to foreshadow anything without knowing a future event or idea. Whether you are hinting at a plot twist or giving a character a weapon so they have something to fight the villain with later on, it is needed so that the building blocks are set and the reader doesn't feel cheated. There is nothing worse than a plot twist that had no hints leading up to it so you feel as though the author threw it in last minute.
I'm sorry to digress, but I want to mention how frustrated I get when authors seem to forget a detail. Like, if the hero found a scroll and then had to go through a thousand obstacles before finally arriving at headquarters to hand over the scroll to their friends. The whole time I am thinking, where is the scroll? Did he leave it behind? Did he drop it? Where is he hiding it? This is not a video game where weapons magically disappear into a "stash" or whatever it is (I don't play video games so I apologize for my lack of knowledge) and then it suddenly reappears when the hero wants it to. Instead, the author could have the hero discover a really nifty pocket sown into his clothing that would hide an object a couple chapters earlier so when he needs a place to stash it then we can come to the same conclusion as the character that the pocket is the best place. I am probably being nit picky but the entire time I was worried that the character had left it behind because there is no mention of it.
So there is no magic solution to this. There is no way you can magically create foreshadowing without knowing important things later on. If you are outlining you can always work backwards so that if in the fifth chapter the character needs to know something, someone is telling them the information in chapter two so the reader can also be aware of it. Or, if you write without any type of outline, don't worry about foreshadowing until you've finished your first draft and you know how your story is going to end.
Nifty pockets and information are some types of foreshadowing you can do, but there are also many other ways to use it as well. You can foreshadow themes or secrets by having heavy irony that no one will catch until the second reading. I love books where there are things you didn't notice the first time that add depth to the characters and overall story on a reread.
If you still don't know where to start, here is an example. Let's say that character A has been hiding from character B that they still haven't read a book that they promised they would read. Instead they skimmed through a summary online. Now, if we are in character B's perspective and we don't know that character A has done this, there can still be hints thrown in by having character A acting guilty or changing the subject whenever the book is brought up in conversation. The subtlety can be varied to blatantly obvious and barely noticeable.
I have researched other people's techniques on how to foreshadow but I have never been satisfied with their answers. I have come to the conclusion that every story is different and the way you have to foreshadow that book is going to vary. Trying to establish rules surrounding this device will be useless because it will only apply to a handful of books.
Therefore we have to practice how to do it on our own. Perhaps we'll come up with a new technique that will be revolutionary because of the way our book is structured. But no matter what, I always link irony and foreshadowing together because I view it as giving the reader just enough information to make them suspicious, but hiding enough that they won't know the answer until you are ready to give it to them.
Some of the best foreshadowing I have ever seen are in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Sometimes the foreshadowing doesn't have to pay off until the second or third book, which is the case in this trilogy. It has been so tightly written that every chapter, every paragraph, serves a purpose.
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