Foreshadowing, which refers to subtle hints that allude to something that will happen in the future, is a versatile literary device. It’s been used for millennia to inspire reader curiosity, add intrigue, and heighten thematic meaning. To use it well, you need to choose which elements to foreshadow, then determine how best to layer in the references.
Two Kinds of Foreshadowing: Direct & Indirect
there are two kinds of foreshadowing: direct, like a prophecy spoken by the Oracle of Delphi, and indirect, like a seemingly innocuous statement whose true meaning isn’t revealed until later in the story.
Direct foreshadowing is easy to spot. It’s the dream the young boy has about tomorrow’s soccer match. It’s a flashback or flash-forward that hasn’t been fully explained. Sometimes, it is even as overt as the narrator telling you what will happen, leaving readers wanting to know why or how. Consider, for example, how the last paragraph in the prologue of Julie Clark’s the Last Flight: A Novel directly foreshadows an event. It reads, “She doesn’t know it yet, but soon, she will become one of the vanished.” You don’t need to know the particulars to know that someone becoming “one of the vanished” isn’t good news.
