Foreboding: Definition and examples of the literary time period
How do you feel when you read a story where things go a little too comfortably? Manipulated and offended, right? As readers, we willingly go into a story of lifting unbelief, but we can only go as far as that.
As writers, we have to respect the allowances granted by the reader and not push them beyond the border.
Chance is common in real life, but readers hate it. In fiction, coincidence feels invented and shows how the writer's hand pulls the strings. If you need to introduce something into your story that feels dangerously close to chance, you can do it with foreboding.
Definition of foreboding
Foreboding is the weaving of clues into a fiction to make future story events appear natural and consistent. It is the antidote to chance and skillfully prepares the reader for an upcoming turn of the plot without revealing it.
Readers are savvy people. They understand that everything in a story is on a basis that you need to know and will therefore emerge at some point. Every important object, person, or fact must be implanted in the story before it can be used credibly, and everything that has been planted must come into play or it buzzes at the corner of a reader's subconscious like an annoying housefly.
Remember Chekhov's wise advice:
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"If a gun hangs on the wall in the first act, it has to shoot in the last." – Anton Chekhov
9 Foreboding techniques and examples
For an optimal effect, the premonition should be subtle. It is a skill worth learning that gives legitimacy to your changes in action and stories. Here are nine ways you can do this.
1. Let the narrator reveal it
This is the time when the viewpoint tells the reader that something important is going to happen. We know what, but we keep reading to find out how.
Here is an example from my short story "A Touch of Local Color".
When the breeze whistles through green leaves at a certain distance or the crumbling smell of damp earth permeates the air, I remember the day I helped murder an innocent girl.
Or, to quote from a better known source, Shakespeare's Macbeth:
By pricking my thumbs, something bad happens in this way.
2. Hold up a mirror
You often see this when a story begins and ends with "bookends", but it can also be used on a smaller scale.
One example is the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo. In the opening scene, San Francisco detective Scottie Ferguson is involved in a chase on the roof in which his fear of heights leads to the death of a police officer. His condition is firmly anchored in the viewer's thoughts, which gives the film's finale a feeling of inevitability.
Another example is in Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Purloined Letter". The perpetrator steals an important letter early on by exchanging it for an unimportant one. Later, under the nose of the best Parisian detectives, he uses a similar technique to hide the letter in public.
3. Take the time to describe it
As I said, readers have an instinct to know what's relevant in a story. When you spend time describing something, readers recognize that it has meaning and expect it to come into play later in the story. Captain Queeg's bearings in The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk come to mind.
Here's another example of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.
When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it first. The first time I saw her, it was the back of my head that I saw and there was something nice about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard grain of corn or a river bed fossil. Her head was finely shaped, as the Victorians would call him. You can imagine the skull pretty easily.
4. Use dramatic irony
This is when you point out to your reader something that your character does not know, and the contrast between what the character believes and the actual state of play.
One of the most consistent examples comes from the Sophocles play Oedipus Rex, in which King Oedipus tries to find and punish the man who murdered the former king:
Now my curse on the killer. Whoever he is
a lonely man who is unknown in his crime
or one of many, let this man pull out
his life in agony, step by step.
The well-known Greek audience sat with eager attention on its hard stone seats to see how Oedipus … would hunt and destroy itself.
5. Eject a casual comment
You can choose to have your character deliver a line that appears irrelevant, but takes on a new meaning at the end of the story.
A well-known example comes from Star Wars, Episode 2, when Obi-Wan offers the young Anakin Skywalker this ironic observation:
Why do I have the feeling that you will be my death?
Or how about Indiana Jones admitting that he hates snakes and anticipates his scene in the tomb trapped between thousands of Egyptian Asps.
Or maybe when the Sorting Hat assigns Hogwarts students an internship and Ron says to Harry, "No matter what house I'm in, I hope she's not there," regarding Hermione Granger.
6. Let the environment reflect the future
This is a subtle technique in which the natural environment, the weather, the ambience set up and predict future events. Here's an example from the opening of Tami Hoag's thriller Kill The Messenger.
LA traffic. Rush hour. Rush hour at four and counting. Any Angelino who broke it to get home before the sky opened like a burst bubble and the rain came in a surge. The city had been crushed all day under the weight of an anvil sky. Endless, threatening twilight in the concrete canyons between the skyscrapers of the city center. The air is heavy with anticipation.
7. Use symbols or imagery
Hemingway used the falling leaves of autumn to predict the death in A Farewell to Arms. A story that ends with peace building could include a dove. You have the idea.
A film example that came to my mind is Body Heat, with the repeated flame motif anticipating the film's dramatic final scenes. The title – Body Heat – is a multi-faceted lookalike.
8. Throw in "disposable" details
Remember that the plant must be there, but you don't want to wave a red flag and jump up and down. Subtle is the name of the game. Present the required information to the reader and continue.
There's an example of what I'm talking about in Stephen King's novel The Dead Zone. A lightning rod arrives early at a bar for a drink and tries to sell its goods to the owner who is not buying. The reader feels that the bartender later wishes he had distributed the money. When lightning strikes, it feels less like coincidence than after letting it come.
9. Add a name
In To Kill a Mockingbird, the Finches not only have a neighbor with garden diversity, but also Boo Radley. You know immediately if you only hear him that he will be important later.
Suzanne Collins mentions the harvest in the first paragraph of The Hunger Games, and we immediately know that she is not talking about using agricultural equipment. An event has been named and we will continue reading to find out more.
Back to Stephen King – in his Nov. 22, 1963 he calls a character "The Yellow-Card Man", suggesting that the yellow card and the man who wears it will go down in the future of history.
What if I missed my chance?
You didn't do that. As writers, we get stuck in time. We don't have to write linear from front to back. If you get to a later scene in the book and find that this will be a coincidence because it wasn't predicted correctly, go back and set it up.
Readers hate coincidences, but they love well-executed predictions. Remember, it is best used without frills. Let your forebodings be like the subtle placement of Poe's stolen letter: artfully presented, but within sight.
What about you? Can you imagine examples of harbingers that you liked? How about a coincidence that you didn't have? Tell us about it in the comments.
WORK OUT
Let's practice the premonition. Choose one of the nine techniques described in the article and write a few paragraphs from a scene. Use the method you choose to predict future events. Then write a paragraph about what will happen later in the story to fulfill the premonition.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're done, post your work in the comments and leave feedback for your co-writers!
Joslyn Chase
