Aftshadowing

[elfs]

I've noticed recently that I don't do foreshadowing very well. Eventually, I have to foreshadow, so I go back in and tweak things and eventually have a story that makes sense going forwards.

What I do have instead is aftshadowing. A character will say something in an offhand way, or an incident will come out of my fingers and onto the page, that I'll then have to justify later with some explanation. In a scene I wrote recently, Caprice is reviewing her email and one of the messages is from her brother, who's heading from Earth to Mercury and is stopping at Mars on the way. Caprice says, "I was never very good at orbital mechanics." And her uncle says, "Yes, that was one of the records at the academy you allowed me to keep."

Great. I have three things in this brief exchange which will need explication or exploitation sometime later in the book. But I have no idea how I'm going to do that. They're foreshadowing for things I haven't even thought of yet!

*Sigh*.

Comments

"I'll explain later."

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if you have to explain anything. One of the best scenes I ever saw in a movie was from "Bukaroo Banzi". During a chase scene one of the characters stops and points to a watermelon with a questioning expression. The second character looks at it and then says, "I'll tell you later."

And then they continue the chase.

And they never go back and explain it.

It is one of the best scenes because it throws off any presumption you might have for the coming scenes.

So why should you have to go back and explain everything? I have an imagination, I can think of things.

MPK

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Gotta love those muses.