Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35669
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

"The Wheel of Time" is an excellent use of foreshadowing. Most of his foreshadowing was done in just a sentence here and a sentence there. It was a huge series and therefore had a lot of things to foreshadow.

I think that some of the foreshadowing was a game by the author. He would deliberately give small amounts of information to the reader and see if they could guess the outcome. For example, one character "died" but many readers believed she'd come back because it was foreshadowed that she would marry another character. And eventually (it was a 13-book series with large books) she was rescued.

I agree with @Amadeus that foreshadowing should be done as early as possible.

I believe that foreshadowing aids in specific events or intentions. Again, in the Wheel of Time, one of Rand's lovers (not at the time) had a true dream of the future (this was her power) where she, along with two other young women, were standing very sad at his funeral. This foreshadowed the even of his death, and that he would have the three women who loved him. However, it did not foreshadow that Rand would love any of them back.

Please don't think I'm recommending the Wheel of Time for reading purposes. It was too long and over bloated, and Robert Jordon died three volumes before completing the series. Brandon Sanderson did well on his first two volumes but IMNSHO the last book felt like a parody of the series.

Original score: 4