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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40878
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Setups are most rewarding when the reader realizes _after the fact_ that that detail was important but doesn't figure it out too early (i.e. it's not more obvious than you wanted it to be). If a reader gets to the reveal without prior hints, that comes across as _deus ex machina_. If a reader gets to the reveal, smacks his forehead, and says "oh so _that's_ what that was about!", it's a satisfying surprise. So you need to plant hints -- but since you're the author, you don't have a good way of judging whether they're too subtle or too obvious. (Beta readers will help you there.)

I recently took a class (The Art & Craft of Writing) by L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright, who offered these tips for placing clues:

- In a list (the character gathered X, Y, and Z ingredients, one of which will be significant later), put the clue second in a pair or in the middle of a list of three or more. In my parenthetical example, Y is the important one.

- If your characters come across evidence that leads to the right conclusion, don't avoid having them figure it out (making them look dumb in retrospect). Let them draw the obvious conclusion, and either encounter another obstacle to their goal (great, we know that we stop the villain by using X at time Y, but where will we get an X in time?) or draw the wrong conclusion because of partial information.

- Try to put the supporting information into the story in a way that seems tangential. For example, if the villain is secretly trying to go to the moon, the characters might discover some solid rocket booster fuel in his lab and have no idea why it's there or that it's significant. Mixing in the previous bullet, perhaps they conclude he's building a bomb.

Finally (this is me, not Jagi), remember that your readers are reading the story and the meta-story -- some more than others, of course, but readers are aware of the fact that you are telling a story and you chose to include some details and exclude others. Your clues probably aren't as subtle as you worry they are. That's why it's important to bury some of your clues; if a clue is tied to a character's physical description and you only describe one character, that stands out. If you describe several, your clue is hidden -- but when the reader gets to the end and it turns out that the combination of blue eyes and jet-black hair was significant, it won't come out of nowhere.

Original score: 11