Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How do I make "foreshadowing" more relevant in the early going?

You can do almost anything if you make it a story. Want to foreshadow something that will happen in chapter 5. That's fine, as long as you do it in the context of a story in chapter 1. A novel is a...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:57Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35637
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:38:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35637
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:38:50Z (almost 5 years ago)
You can do almost anything if you make it a story. Want to foreshadow something that will happen in chapter 5. That's fine, as long as you do it in the context of a story in chapter 1. A novel is a long story made up of many smaller stories. Each turn, each event, each incident, is a story in its own right.

People will follow what they perceive to be a story. Once you start dumping facts on them that they will need to know for the story you are going to start telling later, you will lose them. That does not mean you can't give them all this information, it just means that you have to do it in the form of a story. If you make it a story, they will follow that story for its own sake. Later they will realize that that earlier story was part of a much larger story, which is want you want. But it has to be a story in its own right at they time they are reading it.

Reader's patience is zero. Reader's appetite for story is endless.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-04-27T15:25:42Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 11