How can we have foreshadowing in a story that takes place in a universe where the future can't be known beforehand?
In a (non-comedic) story where the philosophical implications of the existence of any way of predicting the future (except by accident) happen to be unacceptable or incompatible with the laws or the spirit of the story, what are some good ways to foreshadow important (either on a personal or a grand scale) future events?
I should explain myself a little. Any story with strong foreshadowing that I know of matches at least one of the following descriptions:
- It's in the high fantasy genre, where prophecies are acceptable and make sense in the idealistic and often religious framework of the story world.
- It contains supernatural elements that affect the lives of the characters, such as magic or deities, that allow the characters some kinds of foresight.
- The artist didn't really care about the (in-story) philosophical and metaphysical implications of the existence of prophecies, signs, divination, etc.
- The thing that's foreshadowed is an obvious premise of the story.
- It was done for comedic effect.
Is there any way to foreshadow events in a story where none of the above is applicable?
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Foreshadowing is used in all kinds of stories. There is foreshadowing in most mystery stories for example (often as both red herrings and 'proper' foreshadowing), and that doesn't fit anything on your list. Foreshadowing is something the author does, not the characters. It may be through a character giving a prophecy etc. but that is not the only way or even the normal way, even in fantasy.
This is a clumsy example but you could foreshadow an event like the death of the protagonist's mother at the climax by mentioning other people's dead mothers, by mentioning the death of the grandmother, by hinting that the mother is ill, etc. These are all fairly explicit means of foreshadowing the death. Less obvious would be making a theme of the cycle of life, death, growing up, independence, great loss, change or whatever the deeper meaning of the death is supposed to be.
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Foreshadowing occurs even in real life. Suppose you know some 10-year-old who is mouthy and disrespectful to adults, including his own parents. You say to yourself, "He'll turn out badly." You're not surprised to hear, 10 years later, that he's been convicted of armed robbery. His early behavior gave you a hint about his (likely) later life. If you hear instead that he turned out to be a loving and selfless person, you WILL be surprised. "Wow, really? That brat? Great! What happened?"
Other real-life foreshadowing: the brainy nerd starts a tech company; the rich BMOC jock goes into politics; the prom queen becomes a newscaster (via the weather girl route); the floozy bimbo winds up a single mother; the stoner turns up dead. None of these things surprise us, with no prophecy necessary.
In writing, you as the author merely present facts selectively to enhance the foreshadowing (or the irony/twist/surprise). Hopefully you do it less clumsily than my examples.
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I think you're confusing "foreshadowing" with "prophesizing." Foreshadow is derived literally from "before" + "shadow" — the shadow of an event falls before the event itself. The "shadow" means the reader can see something coming before it happens. (Imagine a very tall tree falling. The shadow of the tree reaches the ground before the tree does. You can see that the tree is going to hit the ground somewhere because you can see where its shadow is.)
The idea is that the reader can predict "Gosh, there's a big red button on that console with a 'Don't Touch' sign on it. Oh look, some nameless sod just touched it and he's being dragged off to be executed. Hmm, the heroine and her plucky comic relief sidekick just entered the room. I bet the sidekick is going to touch the big red button, will be sentenced to death, and will have to be rescued."
The foreshadowing is "the nameless sod just touched it and he's being dragged off to be executed." Usually an event like that is put into a story for a later payoff: someone else touches the button, some other random event occurs and the person is executed (thus showing the depravity of the leader), et cetera.
The characters are not predicting events by supernatural means. Foreshadowing happens between the author and the audience.
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