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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36829
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36829
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To me a good resurrection is a good plot twist, meaning the reader _could_ go back and re-read what went before, and see it in a new light and realize the clues for the resurrection were there, they just missed them.

Perhaps the best executed twist I've seen was in _The Sixth Sense._ I immediately watched the movie again, without skipping or fast forwarding, to see if it had cheated. Nope! The opposite, even more clues than I would have considered necessary were present, but so cleverly placed with other distractions I completely missed them.

A good resurrection cannot be a cheat. Your clues don't have to be blatant, but they need to be there. You can hide them "in the light", i.e. have the clue be a throwaway event or conversation that is lost in the glare of a more dramatic event. So you intentionally make your character say things or do things that seems innocuous, but are not; they are the clues, but put these moments in places where the reader is already anticipating something else, and this doesn't fit so it gets ignored. Or put them a page or two before an "explosion:" A fight scene, a sex scene, some other memorable moment so the glare of that encourages the reader to forget the quiet clue that came just before it.

Separately, you can also foreshadow resurrection. That can be explicit: Your hero kills somebody in battle he was certain was dead, but no explanation is given. Or meets somebody he had heard was dead (Samuel Clemens; "The news of my demise has been greatly exaggerated!")

Or foreshadowing can be indirect: The resurrectee figuratively resurrects **_something else,_** a love relationship, a cell phone she thought he ruined by dropping it in dishwater, a "dead" car. Or she experiences a resurrection, visiting a school/college reunion and resurrecting an old friendship that had ended in acrimony over a boy they **both** now hate (eg. she blamed her friend when she should have blamed her boyfriend). (and refers to it as such).

Original score: 3