FORE!

No, this isn’t about my golf game. (For those that are interested, my handicap is now 26 and rising faster than ocean levels. Pretty soon, I’ll be getting strokes on the practice range!)

I’m talking about foreshadowing, foreboding, foretelling and forewarning.

I once saw an interview with Sidney Sheldon, who according to Wikipedia is “the king of the potboilers” and “the seventh-best-selling fiction writer of all time”. Sheldon, who didn’t start writing fiction until he was 50 and died at 90 in 2007, said that he started with an idea but never knew where his books were going. He added that he liked to write himself into corners, and then write himself out of them. That’s basically how I do it and that’s where the “foreshadowing, foreboding, foretold and forewarning” come in, since I don’t want my readers to be lost, too.

I use computer-writing software called Scrivener, which allows me to put chapters, research, ideas, scenes and odd thoughts (of which I have many) on electronic “index cards” that I can move around and mix and match. The program also keeps a unified “draft” of all the chapters. The program is WORD compatible and by hitting a button my Scrivener draft is compiled in a WORD doc in a separate file on my computer. 

Surprises are essential in thrillers or mysteries, and a total surprise can have real impact. But you don’t want readers to think they’ve been had. I once reviewed a so-called thriller in which the killer turned out to be one of the cops working on the case. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that there had not been a hint that was even remotely possible. I mean, had the culprit turned out to be the milkman, I couldn’t have been more surprised, and disappointed. I spent the entire novel trying to identify the killer, and it’s like he strolled in from another book. (The murder weapon, by the way, was a 500-pound domestic pig, which didn’t help matters. Talk about a surprise coming out of left field!).

In another book I reviewed, by a famous author who will be nameless, the killer was one of the nicest people in the book. The weapon of choice: a slippery dock, where the victim fell and hit his head. The killer wasn’t even there. He just assumed his victim would eventually slip and crack his skull. I’m not sure it’s even possible to foreshadow that kind of murder. Heck, a dozen people, including a hapless milkman, could have fallen on the bloody dock first. Hmm. Maybe that’s how… No, too ridiculous.  

Revelations shouldn’t come out of nowhere. That’s where the four “fores” come in handy. If I have a cop who is a killer (pigless, I hope, in all regards), I might give him a disgusting or mysterious trait. Nose-picking. Heavy drinking. A reluctance to mention his or her past. Whatever. That’s not to say that every nose picker, drunk or reticent person in your book must be the villain. There are such things as red herrings and MacGuffins. Throwing a reader temporarily off the scent is a time-honored mystery strategy. 

One of the “fores” can be a word, a small scene that looks like a throwaway just put in to pad copy, even something as mundane as a character commenting on a book or movie title. The hint can be almost subliminal, so the reader barely recalls the reference.