# "Bolt out of the Blue":  How to get the audience to accept the improbable?



## Logos&Eidos (Nov 25, 2016)

A Bolt out of the Blue, something truly unexpected but also not impossible.

This is about foreshadowing, specifically how to not foreshadow events and not have the audience rioting.

Recently I'd thought quite a lot about it and I've come to the conclusion that I'd like to do it as little as possible.

"Why"?

Because when I look at foreshadowing from the author's side it seems to that it lessens things in a someways, authors must tip their cards to their audience least said audience cries fowl? This forces authors to turn surprises into shocks.  

"What's the difference between a surprise and a shock"?

A surprise is lightning out of the blue, a shock is seeing lightning in a storm cloud.
You "scream what the hell" at the shock for it has caught you off guard, You sigh with relief at surprise because like an opened box the energy was spent getting at what's inside. Heck one could say that allot of story telling especially modern adventure fiction could be described as a series of boxes, with content of each box and the thrill from opening it propelling the audience to the next. 

                                                                         ***

What I want to know is there a way to make shocks acceptable? No idea is original at this point so some author or literary theorist has to have come up with this notion and possibly made it work? 

also.

How minimal can foreshadowing be? What is the smallest most indirect level of sign-posting that a story can have?

And.

Can setting and story elements be foreshadowing?
What I mean is once aspects of setting are established must there coming into play be sign-posted to the audience.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 25, 2016)

I think I may be confused about your post, but I will try to help. 

Tension is necessary to stories. Eliminating foreshadowing will eliminate tension, thus creating a very boring read for your readers. I'll try to explain why. 

Alfred Hitchcock explains tension in this way: 

In one scenario five men are sitting around a table playing cards. They are chatting about their life, maybe one just had a baby, maybe the other is going through a divorce. There is no sign of impending doom. They sip their drinks and laugh together. 

Then BAM! A bomb explodes from under the table. 

This is the scenario I think you are describing. This scenario is frustrating for readers for a few reasons: 
1) They have to wade through a few paragraphs where literally nothing is happening and they will get bored. 
2) They will wonder where the heck the bomb came from all of a sudden and be frustrated that the book feels "random". 
3) The will not have had the time to feel the true, page-turning terror that could have come from knowing the bomb was there, thus feel ripped off of the 'entertainment experience.' 

SCENARIO TWO involves foreshadowing.

The scene opens up with the bomb attached to the bottom of the table. Then pans out to the legs of the men sitting at the table, then pans out to the men playing cards, talking about their lives. The one man just had a baby. The another man is getting a divorce. The entire time the reader is flying through the pages because they "KNOW" something bad is going to happen. Questions are raised: Will the men make it out alive? Will someone find out about the bomb and disarm it? Will someone come to their rescue? What is going to happen to that fatherless baby? Will the wife feel bad about wanting to divorce her husband after he is dead? 

All these questions are what you WANT your reader to be thinking. This is what keeps readers turning pages. They want to know what is going to happen, and they want that feeling of terror. This is why foreshadowing is so important. 

It can be as obvious as I described above, or it can be subtle, but using the setting: 

_During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; at a length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. (Poe, House of Usher)._

Poe uses the setting to get the reader into the mood of foreboding. The reader knows that something bad is going to happen. 

I do this as well in my WIP: 

_“Red sky at morning.” I said through a mouth of toothpaste. 

“Ay,” my dad answered from his position in front of the sofa. “There is a storm a brewing.” 

It was an old sailor saying my father taught me when I first learned to speak. Red Sky at night is usually followed by Sailor’s delight and means fair weather ahead. But red sky at morning is paired with sailor’s take warning and usually means you are in for a rough night. 

Based on the way Mrs. Skein was pounding on our door I didn’t think we would have to wait that long. _

Shocks, I think, can be acceptable in small doses. I think they can be very exciting in small doses, kept for key pivotal moments of the story. Too much, however, can feel like deus ex machina, which is frustrating and can leave readers wondering what the heck is the point of the whole thing.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 25, 2016)

This is where, IMO, a lot of newer writers get things confused. 

Hooking the reader does not come for a series of shocks. It does not come from battles, or car chases, or fights, or sudden things happening. 

Hooking the reader comes from making the reader 'ask questions'. Giving them a steady dose of that tension that Hitchcock so eloquently described. Making the reader wonder what will happen next, how will the character get out of this one... 

So instead of opening with: 

_Jerry's car swerved over the embankment and crashed into the icy pond. Sinking to the depths he wished he had kissed his wife good-bye. _

A more experienced writer would start with: 

_If Jerry had known he was going to drown that morning he would have kissed his wife good-bye._

Do you see the difference?


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 25, 2016)

I will take a little different twist than Helio... and assume the foreshadowing is not about tension, which is absolutely necessary. 

Here's a little tidbit... A large portion of your foreshadowing (if you do it well) is going to go unnoticed by a large percentage of readers anyhow. Doing none is pretty much a mistake, flat out. It's like any detail, a reader can miss them. I will pick on my editor and Helio here quick like... My editor the other day, after finishing the book, was confused about something and I was like huh? So I sent them a direct quote that explained the entire thing and got the head slap reaction, paraphrased was "holy crap! That one sentence cleared it all up." Ayup. Helio mentioned the other day not knowing the age of a character... I went back and found the age mentioned a few pages previously... we all do this as readers, even the pros. As a writer, we must do some head knocking and "reminding" to the reader in order to keep them in touch. Foreshadowing when done subtly is even easier to miss and forget, so by the time a writer thinks they have too much, it's quite possible they have it just right, which is still too little for some folks.

If a "shock" is obvious in hindsight, it was done well. If a "shock" truly feels out of nowhere... it can lead to issues. 

What made Sixth Sense so effective is that the majority of viewers slapped their foreheads on the reveal. "Duh!" and when they watched it a second time and saw all the clues... yeah, that's good stuff. 

Another personal example is a short I wrote which was essentially a joke/play on words for the theme of the flash fiction. I thought I went heavy handed with the overall joke, without  actually saying it, and far as I know not a soul got it until I told them. I wanted people to "earn" the joke because it wouldn't be as funny if it was in your face... turns out, it needed to be in your face. Although it was fun to see peoples' reactions afterward.


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## Penpilot (Nov 25, 2016)

I can't agree more with Helio and Demesnedenoir. 

I'd like to share with you one of my first experiences with writing "surprise". I'm not sure if it applies to your situation, but maybe there's something to be gleaned from it.

It was my first writing class in college. I wrote this story that was supposed to be about origins of urban myth. I basically set up this scenario where a a man and woman meet in a supermarket. There's flirtation, and everything seems cute and cuddly. Skip forward to the parking lot. The woman has a flat and the man shows up to help her fix the flat. More flirtation, then the man proceeds to bash her in the face with a tire iron and toss her in the trunk of his car before driving off. The End. 

I'd even foreshadowed a few things, but I disguised them as part of the flirtation. 

This was the most despicable and dishonest story I've ever written. The story was devoid of any worth. Why? Because there was no purpose to it other than the trick, the "surprise". It was me, the author, showing the reader how 'clever' I was because I could manipulate their expectations and emotions. It was "Ha-Ha, I tricked you. I tricked you. SURPRISE!"

I got a talking-to by my instructor. But me being me, I didn't comprehend things until much later when I saw the same thing done in a story I was critiquing. 

Surprise for the sake of surprise is worthless. And writing a story that serves only to surprise is worth even less than that.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 26, 2016)

Just like foreshadowing in our writing, learning a lesson from what we've written can take a long time to sink in, LOL. This might be part of the reason that so many writers get published the first time when older, heh heh. Stubborn artists with thick, undercooked noodles, can be difficult to sauce to taste.



Penpilot said:


> I can't agree more with Helio and Demesnedenoir.
> 
> I'd like to share with you one of my first experiences with writing "surprise". I'm not sure if it applies to your situation, but maybe there's something to be gleaned from it.
> 
> ...


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## spectre (Nov 26, 2016)

@penpilot

" I got a talking to by my instructor."

What'd he say?

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 26, 2016)

Penpilot said:


> I can't agree more with Helio and Demesnedenoir.
> 
> I'd like to share with you one of my first experiences with writing "surprise". I'm not sure if it applies to your situation, but maybe there's something to be gleaned from it.
> 
> ...



This. 

There's nothing I hate more than a story that exists just to taunt, "Bet you didn't see that coming!" 

Something many authors need to realize: just because your ending is tear-jerking, or shocking, or unanticipated, doesn't mean it's good!


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## FifthView (Nov 26, 2016)

I agree with everyone so far, but I don't want to dismiss the thrilling, useful bolts from the blue that can be used in moderation at key points in a story.  A lot of my favorite novels will do this.  

Often it takes the form of an unexpected, non-foreshadowed encounter between two individuals who have hitherto been on different tracks/arcs–especially, when one is good and one is sinister/evil/vicious.

Sometimes, it's an unexpected magical event or surge of unexpected magical ability.

In these cases, the tension comes from the sudden introduction of the question, "What happens next?" or "What does this mean?"

It's okay to shake things up once in awhile in this way.  But it only works because most of the time readers need the foreshadowing and planting of seeds.  Readers need to feel themselves to be a part of the discovery, the wondering, etc., that foreshadowing allows, and not like passive bystanders shut out of the process.  These bolts-from-the-blue tap into that need by injecting the questions and impetus for discovery _via_ an unexpected event.  Tension is introduced _by_ the event rather than used prior to the event as w/ foreshadowing.


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## Jackarandajam (Nov 26, 2016)

This is a really interesting topic for me, because it's the main reason I'm completely rewriting a novel that I was 80k words into. 
The main, big n' bad, mama jama surprise needs a good foreshadowing. The others... don't. Necessarily. 
(For some things, "I saw that coming" is a good thought that readers have; often it means they're paying attention to the personality of characters and recognizing potentially volatile situations.)
In my story, I have a couple comparisons:

One character is a mutinous asshole, and it's pretty apparent from early on that he's going to die eventually, or at least you want him to. He dies, but the WAY he dies is shocking and unforshadowed. I like that, because I think his death brings reader satisfaction, and the way he dies advances another characters identity.

Another character is someone who he's seemed to be the antithesis of for the entire story. It's a twist I'm very excited about, and was terrified of giving away when I wrote the first draft. The reason I'm not particularly worried about foreshadowing is because I WANT to broadside the readers with this one. It's a bit of a "saves the day" twist, and it's subject content that I've made the reader very aware of.
Now, the BIG GUY, the twist that makes the story. I want that one to be foreshadowed philosophically, physically, and emotionally, because I want it to hit like Mjolnir when it makes contact. I want them to immediately see all the signs that pointed to it and groan, and THEY WANT THAT TOO. As a reader, I live for that feeling. I want to be OUTSMARTED, not overpowered, by the author.
This is one of the reasons I don't like GRRM, but I digress.
perhaps the worst kind of "bolt out of the blue" is when (best example: crime show) a pivotal character is introduced AS the big finale twist. A good reader or watcher (I think) feels robbed when somebody they never had the opportunity to consider is guilty of the crime they've been invested in for the entire performance.
It's a really good, convoluted topic. I'm excited about this thread.


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## Jackarandajam (Nov 26, 2016)

Foreshadowing is why Of Mice And Men was such a good book. 
American Gods? I don't wanna give it away if you haven't read it, but there's a twist during the big finale that makes you wanna jump in front of a train. It was RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME. 
I'm not going to monologue about it, but it's one of the reasons I advocate having a really strong outline before you punch out thousands of words. Foreshadowing is a difficult thing to write on the fly, and a really difficult thing to plug into an existing story.


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## Demesnedenoir (Nov 27, 2016)

It's funny, I've actually found myself foreshadowing things I didn't know were going to happen yet, maybe that's half of why I enjoy writing, LOL. Holy shit! I knew what was going to happen before I knew what was going to happen! So, I'm quite certain the outline advice, like most things, depends on the writer. It makes intuitive sense. Adding foreshadowing has never really been an issue either... now getting the right amount, that is a challenge, and there's no real idea of how to know until it hits a lot of readers.



Jackarandajam said:


> Foreshadowing is why Of Mice And Men was such a good book.
> American Gods? I don't wanna give it away if you haven't read it, but there's a twist during the big finale that makes you wanna jump in front of a train. It was RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME.
> I'm not going to monologue about it, but it's one of the reasons I advocate having a really strong outline before you punch out thousands of words. Foreshadowing is a difficult thing to write on the fly, and a really difficult thing to plug into an existing story.


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## Penpilot (Nov 27, 2016)

spectre said:


> @penpilot
> 
> " I got a talking to by my instructor."
> 
> What'd he say?



Well, he told me to really think about what I had written, about the use of violence. That you have to be careful and considerate when you use violence in a story. He pointed me to some stories written about Ã‰cole Polytechnique massacre up here in Canada.

I went and read the stories, but like I said, what I was doing didn't sink in to much later.

I was pretty callous in the way I used violence. There was no consideration to what had really just happened in the story. A woman was just smashed in the face and driven away to probably be murdered, but I was using that little tid-bit to end my precious little trick. Ta-da. It was something to be "surprised" over, but nothing else.

I was frivolous in the way I treated that character's life. It was to be used and tossed away. Ha-ha. 

I know it's just a character, and it's just a story, but consideration has to be given in how you go about using violence. Sure violence can be used to comedic effect, etc., but it's all about intent. There's over the top cartoon violence and stuff like that. Who doesn't expect a nice henchman body count in something like a Bond movie? But in my story, the intent wasn't comedic or cartoon. There was supposed to be some level of seriousness to it, so the way I treated that character was despicable.


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## spectre (Nov 27, 2016)

@penpilot

I disagree. I can picture the story, seems like a sudden thrilling read.

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk


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## psychotick (Nov 27, 2016)

Hi,

I think first you have to come back to the story and ask yourself - what does this surprise contribute to it. That will guide you in whether or not to foreshadow. 

Lets go back to the bomb under the card table example. Do you want this to surprise or shock? Well say it's your opening scene. Half a dozen guys sitting around a table playing cards. Everythings fine and dandy. And then bang! Suddenly you've got a great opening for a book - say detective story - ie who bombed the card players etc. You don't want foreshadowing - not that you've got a lot of pages to do it in - because the surprise becomes the hook. The Sixth Sense as already mentioned uses this tactic, and it works very well in it - though the surprising start also becomes a foreshadowing in itself.

But now say it's the end of the book, the six players get blown up and the plot ends abruptly. Bad guys dead. Good guys dead. Maybe everyone dead. And now suddenly you've written a deus ex machina where a bolt out of the blue has completely ended the book one way or another - and your readers are busy going - "what the ... ?" That really needed to be foreshadowed in some way because without that your readers are going to be wondering what the whole point of the book was. There was a film I watched a great many years ago where two or three bandits had just robbed the banks, escaped the police, and were on the highways racing to safety when their car got smashed into by a train without any warning, presumably killing them all. Finis! What are you supposed to do with that as a viewer? Is it a good ending? A bad one? Does it make any sense within the context of the story? Or does it just make the whole story pointless?

To my mind one of the key differences between a good detective story and a bad one is that a good one can make me think "oh my God, I should have seen that coming!" and a bad one makes me ask "well how the bloody hell was I supposed to know that?!"

You need to go back to your story, mostly your plot, and ask yourself how your surprise or twist plays into it before you can decide whether to foreshadow or not.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Penpilot (Nov 28, 2016)

spectre said:


> @penpilot
> 
> I disagree. I can picture the story, seems like a sudden thrilling read.
> 
> Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk



Not really. I've gone back and read the story many years after the fact. The prose was fine, but the story is empty. It ends and I think "so what?" It was like eating well prepared cardboard. I've gone back and read stuff that I wrote before that story, and in around that time. Though that stuff may not be as technically sound, there's substance to it, because I'm not trying to trick anyone. I'm just telling an honest story.

Don't get fooled by a summary that fancies your tickles. I'm sure many have been fooled into reading a crap book because it had great book jacket copy. I know I have.


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## La Volpe (Nov 28, 2016)

Jackarandajam said:


> Foreshadowing is why Of Mice And Men was such a good book.
> American Gods? I don't wanna give it away if you haven't read it, but there's a twist during the big finale that makes you wanna jump in front of a train. It was RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME.
> I'm not going to monologue about it, but it's one of the reasons I advocate having a really strong outline before you punch out thousands of words. Foreshadowing is a difficult thing to write on the fly, and a really difficult thing to plug into an existing story.



When I got to that part in American Gods, I could not believe that I didn't see it coming. It was so incredibly obvious.

--

To add to that, I think as authors, it is pretty difficult to predict how easily people will see twists coming (and related, how well they'll understand things you've explained). I've written stuff many a time where I start to wonder if I'm being overly heavy-handed with handing out clues, but then after my beta readers are done, not one of them has any idea.

So, for me, I generally need to put in so many clues that it feels like it's too much, and then it'll be hopefully just right. Otherwise it can feel like a random event.

Related to that, I think it's a lot easier to get away with out-of-the-blue complications than out-of-the-blue solutions. Though the "every dies by train" thing mentioned by Psychotick seems a little too much.


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## Logos&Eidos (Nov 28, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> I think I may be confused about your post, but I will try to help.
> 
> Tension is necessary to stories. Eliminating foreshadowing will eliminate tension, thus creating a very boring read for your readers. I'll try to explain
> 
> ...




I don't think that I have the vocabulary or knowledge of literary theory to properly express what I'm looking for. My OP is as much exploratory as it is 

inquisitive. What really got me thinking about this an episode of the "the legendarium podcast" one of the host mentioned that they think didn't that the 

revelation regarding a certain side character was foreshadowed enough. I however accepted the reveal without question. In part because the character's nature 

meant that there were only a finite set of possibilities for them...

1. Be joke.

2. Die as an example of how evil a villain was, because only someone truly wicked would harm the innocent and defenseless.

3. Be far more than they seem.

Looking back there were elements that gave away the nature of the character away, however I din't catch them what made me suspicious was recognition of 

character type and story role. After years of consuming stories I've started seeing the pattern,not perfectly by any means, but I can see it.  I've also 

started asking questions about why things are the way that they are.

Why is the main character often a youngish person who is filled with hidden potential, of humble origin and nature, with an apparently non existent family or 

an existing family with whom they have an "interesting" relationship with, Ignorant of the setting and central conflict, perhaps even ignorant to the point 

of not knowing things that should be common knowledge in their world?

The answer to the above is that those traits are easy to use,recognizable,and well liked components in a hero; Ignorance of the setting gives the author an 

excuse for the dreaded exposition and let's the audience learn the world with the character.


From the author side I've come to see sign posting a story beyond the premise as some what deflating, because the author is giving a way information before 

the story would naturally arrive at it;the idea in mystery writing that all the elements needed to solve the case are available at the start of the story 

made me twitch. The idea of putting everything needed to solve the plot on the table then hiding those pieces from the audience, just feels dishonest and 

vainglorious on the part of the author like they are marveling at their cleverness.

It would be far more genuine to me if the elements needed to solve the plot were opaque, sure some people are going to decrypt the plot, but why help them do 

it?  As destination oriented as I am as consumer of stories, from the point of view as a creator I want the audience to just get in the water and be carried 

along. I would only want to sign post things that I want the audience to know to at that time and no more, certainly where your going can be inferred from 

where we are at the moment, but beyond that I simply don't want to tell you(the audience).

So I started wondering if there was another way?
I'd found one before, when I was wondering if there was a POV that gave the audience an observer perspective on a story instead of a participatory 

perspective one that lend'd itself to descriptive writing and I found third person cinematic/objective. I found the 

four act story, because how I conceived of plots didn't neatly fit the three act structure.  

And I'm looking for another way in regards to propelling a story and keeping the reader involved without having to tip my hand before I'm ready. If there is 

no other way but to sign post the story, I want know how to render those signs completely opaque, to the point where they become irrelevant. 





Jackarandajam said:


> This is a really interesting topic for me, because it's the main reason I'm completely rewriting a novel that I was 80k words
> 
> into.
> The main, big n' bad, mama jama surprise needs a good foreshadowing. The others... don't. Necessarily.
> ...



I don't want to be outsmarted, I'd rather the capacity to solve the plot or at least certain key element be taken completely off the table. I have no problem going "wait and see" to the audience, what I don't to show them my hand. Things that are meant to be a surprise aren't something that should be sign posted and should hit like a "Bolt out of the blue".


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## Jackarandajam (Nov 28, 2016)

I think we may have a few different ideas of what "foreshadowing" is specifically referring to. 
When I think of foreshadowing, I think of the example Of Mice And Men gave us:
-----
A man has a dog, that he loves very much. It's dying outside the shed, howling miserably and in terrible pain. 
Because of his affection for the dog, he cannot work up the nerve to put it out of it's misery, and someone else goes outside and does it.
He later regrets not being the one to do it; he loved the dog, and he should have taken responsibility for what had to be done.
We all know what happens at the end.
-----
In this case, it wasn't a whodunnit series of clues that was included as a foreshadowing, it was a philosophical blow-softener.
The end of the book was still shocking, but after reading it, you recalled that moment earlier, when that man had let someone -who was just annoyed at the dogs howling- take his responsibility for something he loved from him. 
I don't think anyone who read that knew what was going to happen; it was designed to create a loop-back of reflection. The last moment made my brain say "something is morally familiar here," and it lent a blast of beauty and satisfaction to the story. 
So I think, perhaps, everyone could be right. 
A foreshadowing in the earlier mentioned story about the woman getting stuffed in the trunk could have been as simple as her car not starting on that beautiful summer morning, and her inner dialogue on the way to the store:
"Just when you think everything is going perfectly, something horrible comes along and ruins your day."

I think the series of clues that leads to the culmination of a mystery novel should be categorized differently; that takes a particular style of prep work.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 28, 2016)

I think this ^^ response is very well stated. I love the concept of the "loop" and use it often in my own stories. 

I heard somewhere, I think it was here, (it's a long podcast... about 50min)

The Power of Irony | The Narrative Breakdown

that a good story hook is one that often has a sense of irony. 

"Irony is a _meaningful gap_ between expectations and outcome. Sometimes there can be things that are incongruous, I was expecting one thing and I got another, but I wasn't really invested in the other thing. I hadn't put any effort into making the other thing matter. That's a nonmeaningful gap between expectations and outcome." 

 I read a story similar to Penpilot's recently, but where it differed was that the MC was plotting the murder of his wife. We went through the entire story of him plotting her murder, then just as he was about to do it, BAM! His wife injected him with a narcotic and pulled out a plastic sheet.... the end... 

It was shocking and grotesque, but what made it wonderful was the irony. The fact that he had spent the entire story plotting the same demise for her. 

The story is here for those who want to read: 

I'll Bury You In The Garden | wordhaus


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## Heliotrope (Nov 28, 2016)

Actually, I'm listening to the podcast again and it covers a ton of what has been brought up in this thread. I highly suggest it.


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## Jackarandajam (Nov 28, 2016)

There are countless different surprises in any story; revealing who a character is, revealing how a crime was committed, revealing a death, revealing a survival. Not every surprise should have a foreshadowing; I don't think anyone is arguing that. 
I think the real question is: are you putting your reader through something boring, hoping they'll stick around for the bomb? 
Similar to the Hitchcock quote earlier, I heard one recently that has been on my mind for this rewrite:
"Put the cat in the oven before you describe the kitchen."

Same scenario; Writer describes kitchen for two paragraphs (reader scanning for something interesting), and then a guy throws a live cat in the oven and cranks it to 400f (hopefully they're still reading),
Or;
A guy throws a live cat in the oven and cranks it to 400f (whaaa??!?!),
Writer describes kitchen at their leisure, enjoying full reader interest.

The writer might adore their kitchen description, but that isn't necessarily enough for a reader.


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## FifthView (Nov 29, 2016)

Jackarandajam, that relates somewhat to something I've been thinking since psychotick mentioned timing earlier in this thread, i.e. whether the bolt from the blue happens very early in the story or near the end.

I think in cases where we use a bolt from the blue, we need to spend as much time _after_ the surprising event showing its reverberations as we might have spent _before_ an event when we are foreshadowing.  

If we describe foreshadowing with the metaphor of a storm brewing long before the bolt of lightning strikes, then we can describe an un-foreshadowed bolt from the blue as something like a large meteor striking the earth without warning:  There's going to be a lot of fallout (scorched earth, devastation, perhaps even long-lasting climate change.)

What doesn't seem to work is a major bolt from the blue that ends things, like deus ex machina, or many successive bolts from the blue that have no lasting effects but are merely plot contrivances quickly forgotten within a page or two.



Jackarandajam said:


> I think we may have a few different ideas of what "foreshadowing" is specifically referring to.



I think you are right.  For me, an awful lot of foreshadowing is broad:   a tone is being set in preparation for things to follow, or else broad future developments are being hinted but without much specificity.

I.e., it's not about signposting a specific event or giving a reader specific clues.

I recently purchased a used copy of _Dune_ because, although I read it about 10 times as a teen, I'd never really studied it and I wanted to focus on learning the elements of its prose, structure and so forth in more detail.  I think the first chapter opens up with some great foreshadowing:

_In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

It was a warm night at Castle Caladan, and the ancient pile of stone that had served the Atreides family as home for twenty-six generations bore that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather.

The old woman was let in by the side door down the vaulted passage by Paul's room and she was allowed a moment to peer in at him where he lay in his bed.

By the half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor, the awakened boy could see a bulky female shape at his door, standing one step ahead of his mother. The old woman was a witch shadow - hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded 'round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

"Is he not small for his age, Jessica?" the old woman asked. Her voice wheezed and twanged like an untuned baliset.

Paul's mother answered in her soft contralto: "The Atreides are known to start late getting their growth, Your Reverence."

"So I've heard, so I've heard," wheezed the old woman. "Yet he's already fifteen."

"Yes, Your Reverence."

"He's awake and listening to us," said the old woman. "Sly little rascal." She chuckled. "But royalty has need of slyness. And if he's really the Kwisatz Haderach . . . well . . ."_​
It's all about change.  Not only is the Castle described quite specifically as "that cooled-sweat feeling it acquired before a change in the weather," but it is an old castle, "the ancient pile of stone."  And this old hag is old, with voice wheezing, with the implication that she's similar to the ancient pile of stone.  She looks in on the young boy, who is the future toward which, and because of which, everything is going to change.

There's also the dim light, the fact that boy and hag only dimly see each other across that great divide—and yet each is acutely aware of the other.  For me, the "half-light of a suspensor lamp, dimmed and hanging near the floor" ties into this change:  the past viewing the future and the future viewing the past, but with a great gulf between them.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Nov 30, 2016)

I don't think about foreshadowing in my stories as much as creating the rules for the story world. I try to demonstrate the rules with scenes and dialogue, limiting exposition and info dumps. This allows readers to create their own expectations, which might be right or wrong. The ending of the story must adhere to the rules, but it need not be what the reader expects, creating what may feel like a bolt from the blue for readers, but also leave them satisfied with the read. If the ending of the story is basically a new rule, it may leave the reader feeling cheated. If the ending is an unexpected application of an existing rule, that's bound to be a much more satisfying read.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 1, 2016)

Demesnedenoir said:


> I will take a little different twist than Helio... and assume the foreshadowing is not about tension, which is absolutely necessary.
> 
> Here's a little tidbit... A large portion of your foreshadowing (if you do it well) is going to go unnoticed by a large percentage of readers anyhow. Doing none is pretty much a mistake, flat out. It's like any detail, a reader can miss them. I will pick on my editor and Helio here quick like... My editor the other day, after finishing the book, was confused about something and I was like huh? So I sent them a direct quote that explained the entire thing and got the head slap reaction, paraphrased was "holy crap! That one sentence cleared it all up." Ayup. Helio mentioned the other day not knowing the age of a character... I went back and found the age mentioned a few pages previously... we all do this as readers, even the pros. As a writer, we must do some head knocking and "reminding" to the reader in order to keep them in touch. Foreshadowing when done subtly is even easier to miss and forget, so by the time a writer thinks they have too much, it's quite possible they have it just right, which is still too little for some folks.
> 
> ...



A surprise is something that I wouldn't want the audience to know, therefore I would want it to catch people completely off guard.  The only things that I would want to foreshadow would be things that I wanted the audience to know,at least in passing. 

What information about the plot needs to be given away in order to get people to go along with the ride?




Penpilot said:


> I can't agree more with Helio and Demesnedenoir.
> 
> I'd like to share with you one of my first experiences with writing "surprise". I'm not sure if it applies to your situation, but maybe there's something to be gleaned from it.
> 
> ...



I'm not interested in surprise for the sake of surprise, If I chose to have a genuine surprise or complete shift in direction
how would I or any writer get people to just go along with it without "foreshadowing" that they were going to happen;because
if people are told that they are coming there is no point in having  them. 





FifthView said:


> I agree with everyone so far, but I don't want to dismiss the thrilling, useful bolts from the blue that can be used in moderation at key points in a story.  A lot of my favorite novels will do this.
> 
> Often it takes the form of an unexpected, non-foreshadowed encounter between two individuals who have hitherto been on different tracks/arcs—especially, when one is good and one is sinister/evil/vicious.
> 
> ...




Using surprises to add to the situation in a story is well the entire point, I'm trying to figure out how to use them well.

I have to disagree a reader,any consumers of fiction are just passive observes of the events contained with in a given work;he only active participants are those who created the work.  The Documentarian and the audience that eventually views the documentary, are not the subject and have no influence or personal stake in the events with in, yet do to empathy they connect with the subject despite not being them.


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## Demesnedenoir (Dec 1, 2016)

First, the best surprises are foreshadowed. Certain surprises don't have to be. But without a real idea of what you're doing there are no answers.

Second, whether readers are passive or active is in some ways dependent on defining those terms... but as I define them, no, readers are active participants in fiction.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 1, 2016)

Arlington Road. 

Watch it if you haven't. That's sort of my answer to surprises and endings, and the sleight of hand that makes a reader feel truly engaged, but clobbered in the face when they realize they were watching the wrong thing. Irony.

Okay, I'm just going to share one of my personal experiences, because I think all the conversation here is pretty thorough. 

Regarding surprises, I wrote a book in 2011 that I describe as "Dangerous Beauty" meets Assassin's Creed II. It's basically half love story and half political intrigue. I wanted to have surprises and twists, and so much poignant "discovery" happening that a reader would get to the last page and immediately want to begin reading the first page again, now that he knew what was going to happen. It was nonstop secrets and reveals. But I did a lot of foreshadowing. And I hated every second of it, because I like surprises. 

however...

I ran into something really confusing to me. In previous novels, when my crit partners would read, they near constantly complained that I'd go chapters without anything really happening, not building tension, not deepening the mysteries, and then BAM! a secret was revealed and then another, and they had absolutely NO impact because the reader was bored and uninterested, rather than wowed by my cleverness.

That's sort of how this topic resonates with me. And I fought this for a long time, if I'm being honest. I just didn't want to believe that my secrets and cleverness was detrimental to the stories I was trying to tell. When I worked on the novel from 2011, I rewrote chapters so many times. I had 30+ crit partners who read and helped me find the perfect amount of foreshadowing, increasing in intensity with each hint given. I had to use a lot of people because I worried that only a first-time reader would be able to give an accurate answer as to whether they were surprised, and whether they felt satisfied. It was torture. I never got it right, btw.

But anyways, I had a good friend (who has never read the book), who listened to my complaint one day, especially about the dissatisfaction I felt over my ending (everyone lives happily ever after). He asked if I'd ever watched Arlington Road. He told me maybe I needed a better ending.

Oh man, I SO did. And I needed better foreshadowing as well, because I've learned so much about tension and reader engagement since then, and while I love secrets more than perhaps anyone alive, they need to be carefully constructed and unleashed at the right time, in the right way, to draw maximum impact from a reader. 

However, that being said, readers are of many different personalities, and some people will love a story that literally has no foreshadowing and just surprises like bolts from the blue. But, those readers are in the serious minority. Most people like to rationalize, solve problems, pit their cleverness against a series of presented facts. Those are the people who will continue to love you if you give them the sensation they're looking to feel. They'll read you over and over. To feel that build up, slow and surprising, knowing they already KNOW the answer, but want to feel the questions again. The folks who just burst out laughing when the man attacks the women and throws her in the trunk (sorry, Penpilot, it's a good example, and I'm not picking on you at all), those people won't read your story again, because they responded to that one jolt, but can't feel it again. It's a one-time-use tool. And it's okay to use it, but know what you have, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Books that do not justify their surprises are published every day, I'm sure. Personally, to me, they're endlessly frustrating because I'm in a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where there is no right choice, and anything at all can happen. So at that point, I think to myself, who cares?

I just outlined a rewrite of an old novel from 2006...yeah, really reaching back in the vault, now HA! Anyways, this guy is in prison, and a girl breaks him out. Originally, her motivation was that her father is practically her jailor, and she wants to live a better life, and she thinks this guy is a noble. So she expects he'll be so happy he's free, he'll marry her. 

Today, I decided that sucked, so what if she's not just a malcontent dreamer, but a spoiled adrenaline junkie? What if while they're evading the law, they keep running into trouble because of a string of bad luck and a rash of crime? What if it takes half the novel before the MC catches on that the law isn't following them because of HIM, but because of HER? What if her real reason for breaking him out was because she wanted a partner in crime, someone with more experience? Someone who could get done the things she couldn't, and who would teach her the trade. So, I wouldn't want that to be too guessable when they set out, fresh from the jailbreak. Of course I think she should keep her motivation a secret for a time. But because of the nature of the danger (he thinks the law is after him), it shouldn't be too obvious. It should feel like Arlington road in a way. The reader should believe he's running and it makes sense for the law to be following. But I want it to be dramatic in the moment when he discovers WHY their problems are one step behind them, and also dramatic when he has to make a choice to leave the lying little wretch to fend for herself, or whether he'll help her get out of trouble, even though it would be easier for him to just cut his losses.


Secrets are awesome, but you have to think about how to get the impact and response you want with them.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 1, 2016)

Okay, I think I'm confused by the original question, now. A bolt from the blue is something completely unexpected, something I view as unrelated. Let me give an example. 

Johnny is in love with this girl, and for seven chapters, he's been pursuing her, and then they go out and it's awesome, and they become boyfriend-girlfriend. But then he sees her talking to his best friend, and in the next chapter, he yells at her and she backs off, telling him he's too intense for her.

A couple more chapters of Johnny trying to get over the girl, but by then, he realizes he was a jerk and he wants her back. But it's the last day of school, and the next morning, she's leaving to spend the summer break to visit her grandmother in Australia. So he has only a few hours to win her back. 

He runs down the street, toward her house.

*Bolt out of the blue: *And a speeding car hits him and he spends four weeks in the hospital, recovering from trauma. But after, when he sees the girl at school, they catch back up and she says he can call her.

*Bolt from the blue:* And her house is on fire and the street is cordoned off, and everyone inside dies. Johnny attends the funeral...or doesn't.

*Bolt from the blue:* And he just stops in the road and says, "**** that bitch!" and goes back home. There, he eats chocolate cake and starts composing a rock song that's secretly about the girl.

*Surprise and irony:* And she's already gone because her plane is leaving tonight, and he's missed her. And now he can reflect on his stupidity, and move on with his life and take up basketball instead of dating. Or write letters to her all summer telling her how he loves her. Whatever.

*Surprise and irony:* And when he's running, he smacks into another girl from school, and she falls over and smacks her chin on the sidewalk and has to go get stitches, and Johnny feels bad and takes her home so her parents can get her to the hospital. And he forgets about the leaving girlfriend, and does the right thing...which ends up good for him or doesn't.


A story has to have a purpose. Whether the surprise is happening in a scene or a story, there must be a reason readers will care. If something just comes out of nowhere, it's okay, but think about what impact that thing will have. The worst kind (for me) are the "dragon Swoops Down" variety. Where the characters are in a hopeless situation. There is no way out. Enemies have them surrounded. And then the eagles dragons swoop down and everything is okay again.

Surprises can be fine if they're not broadcasted, but it sounds to me like the emphasis is being put on "shocking" a reader. I tried to be fair with the examples I put above. NO straw men in my army. But I see it as sort of like this:

If you want a shocking surprise, set it up to shock, and then allow the result of it to be something a reader expected. Or, reveal a secret in a way that was foreshadowed, and then let the conclusion of the surprise be the unexpected. 

I believe wholly that it is a mistake to have a bolt from the blue surprise like the dragon swooping down, and then leave the effects of that incident also in contradiction to what a reader would expect.


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## Heliotrope (Dec 1, 2016)

The dragons swooping down _would_ be suprising/ironic if previous to that the character who needed rescuing was a renowned Dragon slayer who vowed they were nothing but vermin and he wouldn't be caught dead riding one if his life depended on it. And so having to catch a ride on one would be part of his character arc, learning to trust something he so violently hated for so long. 

Then it would work. 

But it would need that earlier set up.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 2, 2016)

CagedMaiden, to continue with your above example, how would you feel about the story if Johnny is running over to the girl's house and just before he gets hit by the speeding car, a dragon swoops down, grabs him, and carries him over to the girl's house, where he discovers she's from a portal fantasy world, which is where she's headed for the summer, rather than Australia, which was just a cover story?


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 2, 2016)

Yeah, see that would be an interesting concept, if a whole lot of information for a writer to be getting across to a reader all at once. If one were really serious about doing a story that had that many elements....we'll call them "off the beaten path"...unexpected wouldn't be my first choice. 

For example, in chapters 1-7, where Johnny was pursuing the girl, I'd definitely set up an expectation. I'd have his friends call the girl weird. Someone says she believes in magic, another says she's just been hanging out with the goth kids too much. They go back to playing their D&D game (and not even an immersive one at that--one of those campaigns where the players lose their shit if anything bad happens to them, and they all start complaining).

While he's with the girl, she is nice and sweet, but distracted. Johnny gets the feeling he's second fiddle in her life. His best friend has known her forever, so he tells Johnny some non-public things about her, like that she entered a recovery program last summer, between sophomore and junior years. She doesn't talk about it, but so-and-so told him about it.

Johnny gets doubts about his girlfriend. When he sees his friend talking to her, and they look rather close...he flips out. They break up, the friend is canned, Johnny is alone. He stews for a bit and runs into some other trouble of his own. He realizes there is something weird going on, something magical, maybe. His friend calls him to tell him the girl is leaving for Australia the day after there last day of school. Johnny has some choices to make, and no time to make them. He decides he wants her back. In the background of all this, I'd have hints about the world that exists, depending on how it existed. If there was a gateway, then things would come through. If it was a parallel dimension that covered the same physical space, I'd have hurry images of things that exist in the fantasy world show through into the real world.

She's not there the last day of school. if Johnny skips one more class, he'll be expelled. But worse, he'll have detention that afternoon and would miss seeing her at her house before she boards her plane at 8:30pm that night...and since it's international, she'd have to leave the house by 6pm.

Anyways, so he's running to her house, the car swerves, pulling Johnny from his thoughts, and while he is frozen in the road, a dragon swoops down and picks him up. Flies him to her house, and there she is, sitting on the porch, having witnessed the whole near-accident. She smiles and says she wondered when he would come to his senses. 

He's taken aback (not to mention shocked by the appearance of a dragon), and he notices that inside the living room, instead of a couch from the 90s and a life-size wax sculpture of Elvis, now, there's a glowing gate. She says Australia's not where she's going, but she'd like it if Johnny joined her...to meet her grandmother...in another world.


Any idea can be written, and any event can be foreshadowed so it feels real. Even the weakest concepts can be structured so that they feel fitting. For every person who thinks one thing is really compelling and makes perfect sense, another will think the opposite is compelling and makes perfect sense. One reader wants to delve into magic-wielding character, to be impressed with cunning spells and the limitless possibilities of magic, and they're looking for something awe-inspiring. Something like magic spells whispered on the wind, that build in weather patterns and take effect unpredictable, say. Another reader thinks that's crap and totally unbelievable, and wants read about a thief who brings down an empire by stealing the crown jewels and kidnapping the king on accident. Another reader is looking for comedy, and hopes a D&D game gone wrong and a teleportation into a fantasy/game world is a hilarious story. Or someone wants to be moved by strong social commentary about race, religion, or freedom. Another reader is drawn to stories that keep rolling the ball that Tolkein started forever ago. Just give them more orcs and elves. Some other readers want to be excited by romance, repulsed by hatred, curiously satisfied by a grisly death of an antagonist. Or see themselves reflected in the main character. Basically, any plot can work, and midpoint twist, any level of foreshadowing can be applied up to a twist's reveal...but the most important thing about this whole question (if you ask me), is that the choices be made deliberately, and the resulting story be judged harshly, to make sure you aren't saving something in your story that merely amuses you, but that will satisfy readers (if the writer intends to share the work widely).


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 2, 2016)

I also think it matters where in the story the dragon swooped down as to how much had to be said to prepare the reader for it.

If the incident occurs near the beginning of the story, it might work without much leading indications of weirdness. The dragon's swooping down might in itself be the first sign of weirdness, used as foreshadowing for lots more strange activity to come.

If the swooping incident happens midway through the book, then as a reader I'd like to have already had some idea that strange things like that were possible. If I'd started reading because the story was touted as fantasy but nothing fantasy-based had happened in the first half of the book, I don't know if I'd keep reading to the midway point to see the dragon finally swooping down.

If nothing fantasy-based/strange/weird occurred for 298 pages, and then suddenly the dragon swoops down and saves Johnny on page 299, with the story coming to an abrupt end on page 300, then I might throw the book at the wall or delete it from my Kindle archive. Though it's more likely I wouldn't have made it to page 298, if I were expecting the story to be in the fantasy genre. In any case, I'd most likely not be reading that author again, especially if that were my first encounter with that author's work.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Dec 2, 2016)

First of all: I read the post about Johnny and the dragon story before reading the background of it and it was kinda cool to see how everybody put that together. 

Second: What if a bolt from the blue acts as a inciting incident (to the story or just to a new stage in plot) and is explained later, but is used as a catalyst to the story? 

When y'all were talking about foreshadowing, I thought of my own story. 

Come to think of it, my "bolt from the blue" moment isn't unforeshadowed, but it does kinda come out of nowhere.

So, my main character is at an assassin school (long story) and she knows that the Headmistress is keeping secrets, but doesn't know what exactly the Headmistress is hiding. She decides to break into the Headmistress's office. She succeeds in doing this and ends up discovering a staircase leading to a secret room. In that secret room she discovers a boy with pure white hair, who turns out to be the Headmistress's son who she's kept a secret and locked up. 

So, this is a serious "what the heck?" moment because it doesn't solve anything or have any immediate explanation. It's just this sudden, random thing that's barely foreshadowed. It seems like an extra complication to the story and kind of irrelevant to the plot. The fact that she's keeping secrets is foreshadowed vaguely, but this couldn't have been expected by the reader at all. 

But, this is a catalyst for all the other secrets unraveling, so, does it work? 

The mysteries in this are rather slow-burn too. I'm like 15 chapters later and I still haven't revealed why the Headmistress has a son that she's kept locked up in secret, though I've hinted at it. Lots more stuff has come out, but this hasn't yet. 

This topic catches my attention because come to think of it half of what I've been writing is foreshadowing. Ive been foreshadowing a bit of my MC's backstory for the entire book and it still hasn't come into the light yet. I have to reveal so many secrets, I've had to carefully consider what hints and information to drop and how early. It can be really difficult, figuring out what is the right time or way to reveal something. For example, I was building up to a big reveal a few chapters ahead of where I am, but now the villain has spilled most of the beans (deviating from my outline) and...yeah. I keep telling myself it can all be fixed in the next draft...


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## Heliotrope (Dec 2, 2016)

Dragon, please listen to that podcast that I posted about irony. 

There is NOTHING wrong with surprising or shocking the reader. In fact, things SHOULD be happening on every page that makes the reader sit up and pay attention. Something to make the reader go "Oh! I never saw that coming!" 

What we are talking about though, is the concept of dramatic irony. How there should be  "meaningful gap between expectations and outcome." 

Setting up reader expectations, and then subverting those expectations with something shocking is good, if it is meaningful. But setting it up and giving a shock that the reader has no investment in can be a bit of a letdown. 

I loved that CM used the eagles decending, because that is the moment that ruined LOTR for my husband. He already hated Frodo's big blue eyes staring at nothing for half the movie, but when the eagles decended to take them out of Mordor he threw his hands up and said "That's it. I'm done." 

So in the case of yours, it sounds great. It is meaningful in that it relates to what the reader has already seen. They know the headmistress is hiding something... but what? You have already set up the question in the reader's heads so that when your MC stumbles upon the boy the reader has that "Aha!" moment. 

However, if you didn't set it up in that way it might be problematic. If you set didn't set up the expectation in the reader's mind first the girl might stumble upon the boy and the reader would be confused. "Wait? Who is the boy?" 

_Dramatic voice: "It's the Headmistresses son!" 

Reader: The headmistress has a son? Where did he come from? 

Dramatic voice: She's been hiding him all along! 

Reader: I don't get it, why does she have a secret son? 

You get the idea. When you foreshadow first then it builds to the dramatic moment of the reveal, adding suspense for the reader. If you don't then it can come off really anticlimactic, leaving the reader wondering WTF just happened and why they should care._


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Dec 2, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> Dragon, please listen to that podcast that I posted about irony.
> 
> There is NOTHING wrong with surprising or shocking the reader. In fact, things SHOULD be happening on every page that makes the reader sit up and pay attention. Something to make the reader go "Oh! I never saw that coming!"
> 
> ...


_

Sorry, haven't really been following this conversation in terms of reading everything thoroughly...

I told my friend i would listen to a podcast she sent me a link to like six months ago and I NEVER DID. 

But i'm glad you think it sounds great. it felt pretty great writing it, lol._


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## Ireth (Dec 2, 2016)

This makes me wonder about the inciting incident in my WIP My Soul to Keep. My MCs, twin siblings, start off happily celebrating their seventeenth birthday. Then on page two, BAM, the sister is killed in a drive-by shooting. No warning, no foreshadowing. Only much later is the shooter revealed as the antagonist of the story (or rather, the antagonist established throughout the story is revealed as the shooter). Is that a bad thing?


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## Heliotrope (Dec 2, 2016)

No! 

Oh my goodness. I watched an episode of the office the other night that was a PERFECT example of dramatic irony. 

Watch this clip, it is 23 seconds long. 








Analysis: Ok, so obviously the viewer can't predict that Micheal is going to hit Merideth with his car. Nobody saw that coming. It is a HUGE shock, or a "bolt out of the blue." 

However, it contains loads of dramatic irony. It is meaningful because for 22 seconds before that Micheal is talking about what a great year he is having. Things are good at work, great with his girlfriend, his sales team is performing well. Anyone who watches the show knows that pretty much nothing good ever happens for Micheal, so this is really nice to see him so confident and happy... then BAM! All that is taken from him in a second. The "bolt out of the blue" is meaningful. It isn't as random as it appears.

Now, if they had framed it differently, maybe he spent the first 22 seconds talking about how miserable he was, then hit Merideth, the response would be different. There would be no seperation between expectation and outcome. 

First scenario: He's having a great day! To, BAM! He's having a terrible day. (meaningful gap between expectation and outcome).

Second scenario: He's having a terrible day, to, he's still having a terrible day. (No meaningful gap between expectation and outcome.) 

A third scenario might be he's driving along having a great day when a cat walks across the street wearing a top cat and spinning a baton. That would leave the view saying "WTF, that was random?" So again, not a meaningful gap between expectation and outcome.


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## Penpilot (Dec 2, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> I'm not interested in surprise for the sake of surprise, If I chose to have a genuine surprise or complete shift in direction
> how would I or any writer get people to just go along with it without "foreshadowing" that they were going to happen;because
> if people are told that they are coming there is no point in having  them.



Well, there's good foreshadowing and bad. For example, someone parks their new car next to a building where a piano is being lifted to to the tenth floor. As they get out, they say, "Gosh, I love my new car. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to it? It's the most important thing in my life."

Everyone sees the set up here. If that piano falls on the car, everyone will say the saw it coming. Terrible foreshadowing. 

So let's not do that. Instead, they step onto the sidewalk and pause to give a wistful look back at the car and proceed to fall down a manhole and die because they were too distracted to see any of the hazard signs. The piano dropping on him would work too.

Now there's some of that dramatic irony Helio has been talking about. 



Caged Maiden said:


> Secrets are awesome, but you have to think about how to get the impact and response you want with them.



I couldn't agree more. In my first novel, one of my main characters had this big secret that they were going to reveal near the end in a very dramatic moment. Everyone was going to gasp I thought. But I spent so much time and energy dancing around the secret, IMHO it hurt the story, all for that one moment of surprise.

The secret was the character was dying. *Gasp* BORING.

So, I changed things and instead revealed it early on. Sure, I lost that moment, which wasn't very good in the first place, but I gained so much more. All their actions and interactions gained something. Suddenly, I had all these great questions added to what was already there, and I delve deep into them. What does a dying man do? How do they view the world differently? How do they deal with find new love? Etc.

Since then, I've found that revealing secrets and having characters deal with the implications to be way more interesting and impactful than keeping them.





DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Second: What if a bolt from the blue acts as a inciting incident (to the story or just to a new stage in plot) and is explained later, but is used as a catalyst to the story?



In your case, I think it's fine. What defines an inciting incident isn't what they find. It's the choice they make. They choose to break into the office. What they find can be anything as long as it pulls them into the story.


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## Chessie (Dec 3, 2016)

One of the masters of foreshadowing in television history is The X-Files. Husband and I are making our 4th or 5th run through the series (since the 90s) and we're currently in Season 3. 

There's an episode where Scully goes to a woman's house to question her about an alien autopsy tape that Mulder bought off the television, but the lady isn't there. Instead, Scully finds herself in a room surrounded by a group of women who claim to be abductees just like her. Towards the end of the episode, these women finally take her to see Betsy, the lady she had originally been searching for. Turns out that Betsy is dying of cancer, and both of the women speaking to Scully turn to her and say, "this is all our fates. We're all slowly dying because of the tests they're doing on us."

A bit of a spoiler (although I don't think anyone here watches the X-Files anymore) but Scully ends up getting cancer shortly thereafter. So I thought of this conversation while watching the episode, in that foreshadowing can be something as simple as a conversation. It doesn't have to be big, it can be small, subtle, barely there. I notice it more on that show because I've seen it a million times, but in other tv shows, movies or books, I'm always like huh, clever!

Yet I think that foreshadowing and surprises are different things. Some might disagree but I don't think there should be technical surprises in fiction. Everything should have a setup. This is why I love mystery, especially Agatha Christie who is another master at this sort of stuff. She always manages to one up me whenever I read her novels even though I can go back 50 pages and see what she did there to set something up. And then I'm like damn it! I should've known! I play a guessing game with Agatha and only once have I been right: And Then There Were None...that one was a bit easy. Besides that book, she sets up all of her mysteries with tender foreshadowing that should be freaking obvious when something pops up. 

One of Agatha's best examples comes from a book that shall go unnamed in case anyone ever reads her books here but it's about a child's murder at a Halloween party. Many more people die, killed by the same individual, who so happens to give off massive clues about being guilty in the way this person behaves when questioned about what he/she saw in the study the night the child died. The foreshadowing was the way this individual was standing...and the fact that this person had to change their clothes because they got wet...and _this_ is precisely what Poirot uses to catch the killer. Without it, none of it would have made sense. 


It's a skill like anything else in a fiction writerly box.


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## FifthView (Dec 3, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> I don't think about foreshadowing in my stories as much as creating the rules for the story world. I try to demonstrate the rules with scenes and dialogue, limiting exposition and info dumps. This allows readers to create their own expectations, which might be right or wrong. The ending of the story must adhere to the rules, but it need not be what the reader expects, creating what may feel like a bolt from the blue for readers, but also leave them satisfied with the read. If the ending of the story is basically a new rule, it may leave the reader feeling cheated. If the ending is an unexpected application of an existing rule, that's bound to be a much more satisfying read.



I've been thinking this, too, while reading this thread.

Set-up and world building are not, _per se_, foreshadowing.  

But we can still set up the parameters so that when an event happens it doesn't break the world/story, even if it is shocking, surprising, and is not foreshadowed, _per se_.

I'm using "per se" because the dividing line between simple world building, the creation of rule sets, and plot development (ducks in a row) on the one hand and foreshadowing on the other can blur quite a bit.  Even so, I make a distinction between a) setting up a world & story development which make a later event _plausible_ and b) using foreshadowing.

_Edit, because_: For me personally, foreshadowing has a kind of _additive_ quality.   It's not actually a requirement like setting things up so that what happens later is plausible.   Foreshadowing improves the tone of the story for the reader, helps to engage the reader, improves enjoyment for the reader.  For instance, hitting oneself on the forehead after an event happens, thinking, _Of course!  There were all those signs!_  Or before the event, building up dread, tension, and so forth.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

@ Chessie 

Yes so much! A conversation. I'm so with you. 

I do this a ton!

A character is going to lose a best friend due to a selfish decision? Have him accuse her of being selfish and always using him for her own gains. (did that)

A character is going to confess all her lies and tell the truth for once, that she acts strong because inside she's terrified? Have him tell her way back in the beginning that she can insult him all she wants, he knows who and what he is, and one day she'll have to look at who and what she is...will she be so content with her own truth? (did that). 

A conversation is a wonderful way to bring things full circle. Have a character deny something exists, and then show them it does.


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## Jackarandajam (Dec 3, 2016)

Since we're dicing this concept into more manageable bits, I'll go ahead and take a stab at categorizing myself; I think, after re-reading, I'm referring to "moral" foreshadowing, or the books philosophical theme.


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## Ireth (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> A conversation is a wonderful way to bring things full circle. Have a character deny something exists, and then show them it does.



I had fun with that in _Winter's Queen_. The MC's friend mocks her for believing in Fae, and demand she prove that they exist; not two seconds later the villain looms out of the shadows and says, more or less, "Here I am. Do you believe in me now?"


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

where do I read these books, Ireth? I'm dying to see them.


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## Chessie (Dec 3, 2016)

Jackarandajam said:


> Since we're dicing this concept into more manageable bits, I'll go ahead and take a stab at categorizing myself; I think, after re-reading, I'm referring to "moral" foreshadowing, or the books philosophical theme.



Ah, yes. I do so love this aspect of writing fiction. When you can incorporate a theme strongly into plot and story, the final result can be one of a nicely wrapped present with a big beautiful bow. An emotionally and intellectually satisfying gift to a reader.


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## Chessie (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> A conversation is a wonderful way to bring things full circle. Have a character deny something exists, and then show them it does.



Right. And in the case with Scully, she denies the fact that she's been kidnapped by aliens/the government (and is therefore kidnapped several more times, which leads to her cancer). So that particular conversation actually foreshadows some serious shit that's coming her way in the rest of the series, since it all takes place during several years.

Far as foreshadowing in my work...I typically do it in layers. I don't always see/know/understand what it is that I'm doing when I put something like that in. I'm dense like that. It's only after the first draft or two that I have a larger concept, the bigger picture if you will, and am able to tighten those sorts of intricacies.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

I'm dense too.


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## Chessie (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> I'm dense too.



Lol is this why we've been at this for so many years and sometimes it feels like an uphill battle?


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## Ireth (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> where do I read these books, Ireth? I'm dying to see them.



I'm hoping the current round of revisions will be the final one; then I can work on polishing it up to send out sometime in the new year.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

@ Chessie. I hear you, girlie. Frustrating to the max. But just look how far we've come, right? It's time for a breakthrough. 

"Make it work."--Tim Gunn.


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

@ Ireth So they're not posted anywhere, in part, even? Well, if you ever want another set of eyes on them before submitting or whatever, you let me know. I'm already excited about them, so I'd be happy to give feedback or whatever you need to get them finished


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## Ireth (Dec 3, 2016)

Caged Maiden said:


> @ Ireth So they're not posted anywhere, in part, even? Well, if you ever want another set of eyes on them before submitting or whatever, you let me know. I'm already excited about them, so I'd be happy to give feedback or whatever you need to get them finished



I'll definitely keep that in mind! Thank you!


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## Caged Maiden (Dec 3, 2016)

Oh, that would be splendid. I've seen how much work you've given to these stories, and am really excited about the concepts. Your writing has a really authentic tone and I loved the flash you did with the vampires for my challenge.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 3, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> I don't think about foreshadowing in my stories as much as creating the rules for the story world. I try to demonstrate the rules with scenes and dialogue, limiting exposition and info dumps. This allows readers to create their own expectations, which might be right or wrong. The ending of the story must adhere to the rules, but it need not be what the reader expects, creating what may feel like a bolt from the blue for readers, but also leave them satisfied with the read. If the ending of the story is basically a new rule, it may leave the reader feeling cheated. If the ending is an unexpected application of an existing rule, that's bound to be a much more satisfying read.



@ Michael K. Eidson
You may have done foreshadowing in a manor that appeals most to me, making the world,the setting contain the possibilities that can happen in the world.

I was already thinking along those lines, would you be willing to share at least some of your techniques?
And if at all possible examples of others writers having used a similar method?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 5, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> @ Michael K. Eidson
> You may have done foreshadowing in a manor that appeals most to me, making the world,the setting contain the possibilities that can happen in the world.
> 
> I was already thinking along those lines, would you be willing to share at least some of your techniques?
> And if at all possible examples of others writers having used a similar method?



Okay, sure. Let's say you want your MC at the climax of your story to have an epiphany about the Bad Guy by using the ability to experience Bad Guy's past. For this to seem believable within the story context, earlier in the story the reader needed to see that experiencing the past of someone else is possible, and see a demonstration of the rules that the MC will have to abide by during the climax. The reader does not have to be given every detail about the rules. That would require an info dump or lots of otherwise unnecessary examples. But some relevant demonstration of rules needs to be given to the reader.

So early in the story, the MC learns that experiencing the pasts of other people is possible and is told by her Mentor that she should be able to do it. The MC tries to use the ability, but only gets vague impressions of her Mentor's past. On her first attempt, she catches a brief glimpse of a moving curtain. On her second attempt, she sees a blurred figure flying by, like watching a bird through a fogged window. On her third attempt, she feels like she's suffocating, but sees nothing. Her Mentor tells her to focus on the emotion of fear while trying it. She tries it and still fails, saying she doesn't know how to make herself feel fear without provocation. So she goes through a period of practice in which she tries and tries to feel fear while trying to exercise the ability she supposedly has. Eventually the memory unlocks in her head of the time when her foot was caught in a bear trap when she was four years old, alone in the wilderness, unable to help herself. She was rescued, of course, but she'd spent a day and a night fearing for her life. Her young mind had blocked the memory soon after.

But now MC has a source of fear that she can draw on. So she tries again with her Mentor. She finds herself in her Mentor's head at a time when he was drowning. She realizes the curtain had been water closing over her head, and that she'd seen the bird with water-logged vision. But it wasn't her that experienced these things. This had happened to her Mentor as a boy.

Before her Mentor can teach her more, some emergency requires his attention. He must leave, and it's too dangerous for the MC to go with him. She doesn't see him again for the rest of the story. But she does keep practicing, focusing her fear, and steadily improving in using her ability despite not having her Mentor's guidance.

Later, MC uses her ability on Good Boy, focusing her fear. She experiences a moment in Good Boy's past when he was hiding in the bushes as a child, afraid to make a sound because Bad Guy is searching the area. MC hears the twigs breaking under Bad Guy's boots, hears his heavy breathing through his full-face mask, sees his black armored form moving slowly by as he scans the area, his eyes passing over Good Boy's hiding spot, making MC afraid that Bad Guy will see her. It's not really the MC that is in jeopardy of being discovered, of course, but the use of this ability makes her feel like it. She uses her new-found empathy with Good Boy to bolster his confidence to take on a dreadful task that lays before him.

There are other occasions during which MC uses her ability, focusing on fear each time to make the ability work.

Skip ahead to the final confrontation. MC has been captured by Bad Guy. His Henchman is preparing the device whereby he will kill MC. There's nothing MC can do except to use her ability to experience another's past, hoping she will find something useful. She tries to use the ability on Bad Guy, focusing not only the fear of her four-year-old self, but some real fear for her life now too. She gets nothing on Bad Guy. Why doesn't it work? She tries again and fails. She tries on the Henchman, and experiences the time when he agreed to become Bad Guy's henchman. Back then, Bad Guy had threatened to kill Henchman's family, adding that no one needed family anyway, that having a family only served to cause heartache.

MC talks about the Henchman's past, trying to persuade him to not be the bad person he's become. But he keeps on with his task, paying her no mind. Bad Guy, however, clenches and unclenches a fist as MC talks. Thinking Bad Guy might be more vulnerable now, MC tries again to experience some moment of his past, but her fear-focused ability still doesn't work on him.

MC recalls in the very beginning of her training, she'd been able to get vague impressions without focusing on fear. She tries her ability on Bad Guy without focusing on fear. This time, she gets something! She's running through a forest for an instant before the scene evaporates. She tries again and gets a glimpse of small footprints on a pond's muddy bank. She tries again. Young Bad Guy is kneeling at the edge of the pond. MC sees the reflection of his younger face, stricken by grief. Has she seen that face somewhere before?

MC puts all her inner strength into maintaining her link to Bad Guy's past, but this fails. Now she feels drained. But she tries again, knowing this might be her last attempt. She uses her ability not on Bad Guy, but on herself, not focusing on fear, but love. And she gets a good long look at that face, that familiar face, not grief-stricken now, looking down at her four-year-old self, a kind face, a loving face, a long-forgotten face, the face of the father who four-year-old MC left behind when she fled into the woods to cry when her mother died.

Back in the present, she tells Bad Guy that she knows where he can find his long-lost daughter....


Okay, so, we can talk about how much of the above is foreshadowing and how much of it is laying down rules. But the foreshadowing that occurs here comes about by applying the rules. One of the most important rules for this story turned out to be that the MC could get vague impressions of a person's past without having to focus on fear. That rule is mentioned only briefly in the beginning of the story. The focus on fear takes over the story. But in the end, the focus on fear isn't what works. It's that briefly mentioned rule about getting vague impressions that comes back to save the day. We also see that fear is not the only emotion that works for the MC. Nowhere was it said that another emotion would work, but it wasn't ruled out either. By recalling that the main rule (focusing fear) was not the only rule, MC thought to try something new. She extrapolated a new -- related -- rule, that another emotion (love) could serve as the focus for her ability. This extrapolated rule (focusing on love instead of fear), isn't used to solve the main story issue, but is used rather to help give the reader a satisfying closure to the story by prolonging the final experience the MC has in her past self's head looking at the loving face of a father who, after the staggering loss of his wife and daughter, became the Bad Guy of the present.

As for other authors who do this, consider the first Mistborn novel, _The Final Empire_. That book has plenty of rules about Allomancy and other things. That story would not be the same without those rules. But it goes deeper than merely laying down the rules for the magic systems in that story. At one critical point in the story, it's important for Vin to recognize the significance of one person's manner of dress. I consider a world's fashions as part of world-building. The means by which the necessary knowledge of fashion is conveyed to Vin might be considered foreshadowing, but such foreshadowing goes hand-in-hand with the world-building.

I consider any _event_ in a story to be evidence of a _rule_. Showing an event happen is equivalent in my mind to demonstrating the rules. Stating the rules in a huge info dump is boring to me. I like demonstrating multiple rules and drawing the reader's attention away from the important one, but not so far away they forget it. Then bring that rule back to the fore to save the day. If that's foreshadowing, well...okay then.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 6, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Okay, sure. Let's say you want your MC at the climax of your story to have an epiphany about the Bad Guy by using the ability to experience Bad Guy's past. For this to seem believable within the story context, earlier in the story the reader needed to see that experiencing the past of someone else is possible, and see a demonstration of the rules that the MC will have to abide by during the climax. The reader does not have to be given every detail about the rules. That would require an info dump or lots of otherwise unnecessary examples. But some relevant demonstration of rules needs to be given to the reader.
> 
> So early in the story, the MC learns that experiencing the pasts of other people is possible and is told by her Mentor that she should be able to do it. The MC tries to use the ability, but only gets vague impressions of her Mentor's past. On her first attempt, she catches a brief glimpse of a moving curtain. On her second attempt, she sees a blurred figure flying by, like watching a bird through a fogged window. On her third attempt, she feels like she's suffocating, but sees nothing. Her Mentor tells her to focus on the emotion of fear while trying it. She tries it and still fails, saying she doesn't know how to make herself feel fear without provocation. So she goes through a period of practice in which she tries and tries to feel fear while trying to exercise the ability she supposedly has. Eventually the memory unlocks in her head of the time when her foot was caught in a bear trap when she was four years old, alone in the wilderness, unable to help herself. She was rescued, of course, but she'd spent a day and a night fearing for her life. Her young mind had blocked the memory soon after.
> 
> ...



@ Michael K. Eidson 
Thank you your answer, who else uses this type of foreshadowing besides Sanderson, yeah I've read all of Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive.

This environmental foreshadowing is what I'm interested in.
Because the other more common type of foreshadowing isn't appealing to me, the last thing that I'd want to do is expose elements of the plot before they come into play, though I'm fine with tell people what I want them to know. The game of coyly hiding information from the audience is unappealing and more than a little insincere; is a plot point is truly supposed to be this big shocking turn then there should be indication that it's coming.


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## Heliotrope (Dec 6, 2016)

Logos, all good stories have this style of forshadowing if you look for it. It is not a fancy trick used by certain authors. It is used by everyone, regardless of genre or style.


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 6, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> Logos, all good stories have this style of forshadowing if you look for it. It is not a fancy trick used by certain authors. It is used by everyone, regardless of genre or style.



I'd not call it a fancy trick either, but I would propose that some authors execute the technique better than others. It's been a while since I read them, but Isaac Asimov and his robot stories come to mind, and his Foundation series.


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## Trick (Dec 6, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> who else uses this type of foreshadowing besides Sanderson



Many authors do this well but the first one that came to mind is Jay Kristoff because I just read Nevernight, which had several instances of this that worked well IMHO.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 8, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> Logos, all good stories have this style of forshadowing if you look for it. It is not a fancy trick used by certain authors. It is used by everyone, regardless of genre or style.



I want "environmental foreshadowing"  to be my primary avenue for foreshadowing.
The idea of giving away story elements before the story would naturally reach them, is
something that I don't like. Personally I am beginning think that this teasing out of story beats
has left us all spoiled and more than a little confused.

People complain about a transparent plot and they complain about ones where the elements are completely opaque
and catch them off guard. Me personally I only want to tell the audience things they need to know, the hows and whys of setting and the intended destination of characters. 

I may have mixed metaphors at some point and I'm sorry for that.

A "bolt out of the blue" is meant to catch people off guard, it isn't something that people shouldn't see coming.

A "Bolt from a storm cloud" is culmination of the storm/plot brewing up.

How do I get the most out of both?  






Michael K. Eidson said:


> I'd not call it a fancy trick either, but I would propose that some authors execute the technique better than others. It's been a while since I read them, but Isaac Asimov and his robot stories come to mind, and his Foundation series.



What constitutes good execution of this methodology? 



Trick said:


> Many authors do this well but the first one that came to mind is Jay Kristoff because I just read Nevernight, which had several instances of this that worked well IMHO.




To you what made his use of it so good?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 8, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> What constitutes good execution of this methodology?



For me, the fundamentals are clarity of rules (best if "shown" rather than "told," or revealed through dialogue), consistent application of multiple rules, exploration of multiple rules throughout the story, and unanticipated but fully acceptable application of one or a few rules near the end of the story.

The question becomes one of what you consider as being the "rules" of your story. They don't have to only be environmental or magical. You could have the behavioral patterns of a character as a set of rules. This is why Heliotrope can claim that all good stories do this.


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## FifthView (Dec 8, 2016)

I think it is natural for readers to think ahead.  Given a set of events, reactions, physical limits, and so forth, the world and characters are "built" for the reader, and the reader can begin to anticipate events and reactions when new conditions occur.  This of course doesn't mean that a reader will (or must be allowed) to anticipate _correctly_.

I've been watching the anime _Naruto_ lately, and in the first two seasons the creators do something rather great with that character.  He learns new abilities, tries new things out, and we begin to anticipate how he'll put together this knowledge and succeed in defeating a foe in combat.  But Naruto so often whips up some _new use_ of previous abilities that seems both surprising at the time and entirely plausible given what we've already seen from him.  The overall effect is to show how incredibly clever he is.  (Even when he copies what he has seen others do, he does so with a twist, combining what they have done with his own peculiar style of fighting.)

I would say that the way to use environment/setup in a surprising way revolves around establishing _potentials_ but without making those potentials narrow.  This might involve being rather vague, merely suggestive, of potentials; i.e., don't spell it all out.  Also, complexity would help, or suggesting a wide variety of potentials.  So often, creativity and surprise involve new combinations of familiar things.  A reader might be able to anticipate some events but not all events if the set of potential combinations of factors is .... limitless.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 12, 2016)

FifthView said:


> I think it is natural for readers to think ahead.  Given a set of events, reactions, physical limits, and so forth, the world and characters are "built" for the reader, and the reader can begin to anticipate events and reactions when new conditions occur.  This of course doesn't mean that a reader will (or must be allowed) to anticipate _correctly_.
> 
> I can do dice in motion, in  fact that's exactly how I want to do it and the more I think about things from the writer's side the way that things should be done most of the time.
> 
> ...



@ FifthView 
Here's my question how do to that without having a Convenient-Idiot as the protagonist?
By Convenient-Idiot I mean characters that are largely ignorant of things that should be common knowledge/sense in their setting, for instance the basics of magic in a setting were magic is a trade as opposed to a closed practice who's workings and perhaps existence are known to a privileged few or gunpowder that burns blue or levitating vehicles?

This also ties into description and point of view.
When I envision my setting and the stories that I want to tell, the audience is looking in at the world almost as though they are watching a documentary and while they are made privy to what they POV characters think and feel, the audience isn't seeing the world through the characters eyes; thus description isn't limited or filtered through character perception, information unless stated to come through a character can be treated as objective. 

What point of view and style captures how I want the story to be experienced?


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## Michael K. Eidson (Dec 12, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> Here's my question how do to that without having a Convenient-Idiot as the protagonist?
> By Convenient-Idiot I mean characters that are largely ignorant of things that should be common knowledge/sense in their setting, for instance the basics of magic in a setting were magic is a trade as opposed to a closed practice who's workings and perhaps existence are known to a privileged few or gunpowder that burns blue or levitating vehicles?



Even experts in a field learn new things all the time. I can write a story with a competent, educated, knowledgeable protagonist and still have that character not know how to deal with every situation. It's easier to create tension in a story when the protagonist has a lot to learn, which may be why so many authors like writing stories with protagonists who are still learning the basics. If you have two experts going at each other, the kinds of problems they must deal with for the story to be dramatic may be more difficult for the author to devise, but as a reader I find these kinds of stories more enjoyable when done well.

Watch some of the Dr. Who shows. He's no one's idiot, but he often lacks some key piece of information that he must deduce or discover or make an educated guess about to save the day. Sometimes he even guesses wrong, but the wrong guess helps guide him to the right path later.



Logos&Eidos said:


> This also ties into description and point of view.
> When I envision my setting and the stories that I want to tell, the audience is looking in at the world almost as though they are watching a documentary and while they are made privy to what they POV characters think and feel, the audience isn't seeing the world through the characters eyes; thus description isn't limited or filtered through character perception, information unless stated to come through a character can be treated as objective.
> 
> What point of view and style captures how I want the story to be experienced?



Description doesn't have to reveal everything, even when it's from an omniscient perspective. If you demonstrate some of your rules, you don't have to explicitly state them all. The POV doesn't really matter. If the story flows, the style shouldn't matter either.


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## Logos&Eidos (Dec 12, 2016)

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Even experts in a field learn new things all the time. I can write a story with a competent, educated, knowledgeable protagonist and still have that character not know how to deal with every situation. It's easier to create tension in a story when the protagonist has a lot to learn, which may be why so many authors like writing stories with protagonists who are still learning the basics. If you have two experts going at each other, the kinds of problems they must deal with for the story to be dramatic may be more difficult for the author to devise, but as a reader I find these kinds of stories more enjoyable when done well.
> 
> Watch some of the Dr. Who shows. He's no one's idiot, but he often lacks some key piece of information that he must deduce or discover or make an educated guess about to save the day. Sometimes he even guesses wrong, but the wrong guess helps guide him to the right path later.
> 
> ...





I asked about view point because I'd been researching the subject, I wanted to find a style that suited what felt most natural to
me, instead of trying to force my thought process my Voice into a style that didn't fit, the very popular third person limited.
I found third person objective/cinematic and a book on the subject helped out .

There was also the fact that  I want my audience to experience the story the way I see them, as outside observes rather than the erroneous "participants".


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## FifthView (Dec 13, 2016)

Logos&Eidos said:


> @ FifthView
> Here's my question how do to that without having a Convenient-Idiot as the protagonist?
> By Convenient-Idiot I mean characters that are largely ignorant of things that should be common knowledge/sense in their setting, for instance the basics of magic in a setting were magic is a trade as opposed to a closed practice who's workings and perhaps existence are known to a privileged few or gunpowder that burns blue or levitating vehicles?



I personally enjoy the novice type of character.  It's a very useful type of character; readers can discover the world even as the character discovers it and learn with that character.

But extremely competent and knowledgeable characters can work great as well.  Michael is absolutely right:  no one knows _everything_. So being careful to decide context–exploit the savant's weakness and blind spots–is one method for creating surprises, tension, and so forth when using a knowledgeable character.  Take as an example Sherlock Holmes, who has a vast reservoir of knowledge and yet in every story he still has a mystery to solve.  The fact that mystery can still happen for such a character is a great metaphor for the blind spots that the extremely competent have.  A person who is an expert in one field, or several, may be completely stumped when faced with elements outside that field or even with aspects of their own field that are just beyond the very edge of current understanding in that field.



> This also ties into description and point of view.
> When I envision my setting and the stories that I want to tell, the audience is looking in at the world almost as though they are watching a documentary and while they are made privy to what they POV characters think and feel, the audience isn't seeing the world through the characters eyes; thus description isn't limited or filtered through character perception, information unless stated to come through a character can be treated as objective.
> 
> What point of view and style captures how I want the story to be experienced?



Omniscient third provides more opportunities for keying into a character's thoughts, feelings, and subjective perspectives than objective third or cinematic approaches, but even with omniscient third you can choose what to describe and what not to describe.  Additionally, when keying in to these subjective perspectives, you can exploit the common tendency for people to become narrowly focused.  I.e., people tend to think from inside a box that is limited by their own biases, histories, experiences, and to overlook anything (or incorrectly interpret anything) that doesn't fall entirely into that box.

With objective third/cinematic, you basically have only three ways to clue a reader in to what a character thinks and feels: 


through dialogue,
through description of that character's physical actions and reactions, and
the less common approach of some sort of third-party access and reporting

#1 and #2 will usually be indicative, suggestive, but not a direct report of thoughts and feelings.  For instance, in _Captain America: Winter Soldier_, Cap is standing in an elevator and notices sweat running down the side of another occupant's face, along with other signs that the other occupants are tense.  These signs do not report an _exact_ set of thoughts and feelings; they can sometimes be interpreted incorrectly.  Dialogue may indicate thoughts and feelings in the way it always does; just think back to any conversation you've had with another person when you were trying to read their thoughts and emotions from what they've said.

#3 is something like what happens when Mantis touches Star-Lord in the new _Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2_ trailer and says aloud what he is feeling.  Or it could be something like one of those excerpts from, say, an autobiographical work heading a chapter, written long after the events in that chapter, that reveals what the character will be feeling or thinking in the scenes about to follow.

Objective third seems to fit what you say you are wanting to do, the impressions you are wanting to give readers, although you could use an omniscient third but simply limit omniscient description and storyteller interpretation of settings, contexts, and other elements.

I've always thought that movies are a great way for getting a feel for objective third/cinematic because that is their fundamental style of information delivery or portrayal of a story.  (Although, some omniscient perspectives and devices sometimes add to the objective delivery.)  So looking at ways movies can surprise, and the ways that movies fail when trying to surprise, would be helpful.  

I'd tie all of the above back into my previous comment by considering Chekhov's gun:

_"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."_

For me, movies often fail to surprise when they conspicuously place an element into the first few scenes because that element is going to be key for resolving the conflict later in the movie.  A lot of movies that involve some special ability (magical, physical, intellectual, technological), will show its quirky use early and then latter...._wham!_ it comes in handy.  This usually annoys me, although I can overlook it because I've grown used to this happening; it's almost a convention of some styles of movie making.

Other approaches can place elements early in order to build tension and suspense.  Horror movies will often open with a quick flash of evil at work before skipping to the ignorant and unaware characters who just happen to be moving into the house, arriving at the campground, getting ready for Halloween parties, etc.   This, basically, is a type of foreshadowing.

So if you want to surprise without using foreshadowing, you don't want to display Chekhov's gun so conspicuously.  You can mix it into a lot of other miscellaneous detail so that it doesn't stand out (complexity, ambiguity).  Or you can hang a fake Chekhov's gun on the wall–a type of false flag.  You can hang 15 of those guns on the wall, but the key element later will be the nails or contraptions holding them to the wall, not the guns themselves.  (I'm using Chekhov's gun metaphorically to stand for any elements in the story.  Items, characters, forces, cultural traits....whatever.)


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## spectre (Dec 13, 2016)

omniscient works good for that imo

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk


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## Logos&Eidos (Jan 7, 2017)

FifthView said:


> I personally enjoy the novice type of character.  It's a very useful type of character; readers can discover the world even as the character discovers it and learn with that character.
> 
> But extremely competent and knowledgeable characters can work great as well.  Michael is absolutely right:  no one knows _everything_. So being careful to decide context—exploit the savant's weakness and blind spots—is one method for creating surprises, tension, and so forth when using a knowledgeable character.  Take as an example Sherlock Holmes, who has a vast reservoir of knowledge and yet in every story he still has a mystery to solve.  The fact that mystery can still happen for such a character is a great metaphor for the blind spots that the extremely competent have.  A person who is an expert in one field, or several, may be completely stumped when faced with elements outside that field or even with aspects of their own field that are just beyond the very edge of current understanding in that field.
> 
> ...




@  FifthView

While Convenient-Idiots are useful, however after all these years of consuming stories especially shonen manga.
I've just gotten sick of them, a sickness that has only worsened when I realized that the purpose of a Convenient-Idiot is an exposition excuses;one that compromise the character when said Idiot is the protagonist is by having them not know things that ought to be common knowledge in their setting.  


I'm kinda sick of a lot of genre and literary conventions, a sickness that grows with my understanding of the technical side of writing grows;though I do not know all the conventions by name. For example the humble hero or the prideful hero who inevitably is made to deal with humility. Why can't my hero be an a somewhat anti-social, arrogant prick who never learns the value of friendship or is ever humbled; which isn't the same as never experiencing set backs?

Why do stories have to end as soon as the hero has their stuff together and is ready face down godlings? The answer is that many stories are a metaphor for growing up with varying degrees of obviousness and once the protagonist has"grown up" the story is done. Why not a story the says you've beaten the Evil Over Lord/Grown up now what? Is there a follow up to the Hero's/Heroin's Journey where the Protagonist must deal with the consequences of Victory/Maturity?

The Second Novel of the Mistborn Trilogy, is closest thing that I've seen to answering that question.



Next spontaneously developing the ability to draw and just making a graphic-novel.
Third-person Omniscient is the POV for me, Third Person Objective feels too limited and Third Person
Limited gives the impression that the story is coming from the perspective  of a character. To me the story is window into events and not through a specific character's eyes.



here is a part of me that wants to Checkov with his own gun. The story takes place with in a world, the world doesn't exist solely to serve as a stage for the story to unfold thus there are things present that have no relevance to the events of the story. Imagine how empty a scene in graphic-novel,video game, or film would be if the only things on screen were things that had to do with the plot; there would be massive voids where bits of the world should be.



Coming back to  foreshadowing(which has left us all spoiled) we have returned to my query.

A Bolt of the Blue: Something that happens with next to know warning.

A Bolt out of Storm cloud: Something that has been precipitating.

How do you get the most out of both bolts and use the second as little as possible?


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## FifthView (Jan 7, 2017)

Logos&Eidos said:


> Why do stories have to end as soon as the hero has their stuff together and is ready face down godlings? The answer is that many stories are a metaphor for growing up with varying degrees of obviousness and once the protagonist has"grown up" the story is done. Why not a story the says you've beaten the Evil Over Lord/Grown up now what? Is there a follow up to the Hero's/Heroin's Journey where the Protagonist must deal with the consequences of Victory/Maturity?



This reminds me of _The Chronicles of Riddick_, a guilty pleasure of mine I've watched multiple times.  Riddick does face down "godlings," but at the end of the movie he's just sitting on a throne he never expected nor wanted looking out over the crowd of former enemies who are now his followers with a "WTF do I do now?" kind of expression on his face.  We know from spending time with his character that he is definitely _not_ the right person for the job, heh. One of the reasons I love that scene so much is that it had a strong Conan the Barbarian feel; I'm sure I've seen a cover of some comic with almost exactly the same pose for Conan as the Barbarian becomes the King.



> [T]here is a part of me that wants to Checkov with his own gun. The story takes place with in a world, the world doesn't exist solely to serve as a stage for the story to unfold thus there are things present that have no relevance to the events of the story. Imagine how empty a scene in graphic-novel,video game, or film would be if the only things on screen were things that had to do with the plot; there would be massive voids where bits of the world should be.



Basically, I approach my settings similarly.  I like to plan out a novel in some detail before I start writing it, and this includes an understanding of other areas of the world, various customs and worldviews of the people of that world, etc., that might or might not appear in the novel as the need arises–in minor ways.  

For instance, I find it helpful to know whether a character might naturally "think" a metaphor when he encounters something new by using some beast, holiday, or whatever that will otherwise never make an appearance in the novel.  He might experience a small scratch from a poisoned dagger, not enough to die from the poison (perhaps it's not fatal), and think that the pain shooting up his arm is exactly like the pain he felt once as a boy when a Vendarlic scorpion once stung him.  Vendarlic scorpions might never be mentioned anywhere else, and indeed I might never again reference that specific trip he made in childhood to Vendar, but I like having an awareness of the fact that those scorpions exist somewhere in the world and/or an awareness of the fact that my MC once traveled to Vendar when he was a boy.  (In actual practice, I'd probably just make up the Vendarlic scorpion on the spot; but I'm more likely to already know the background info on my character's childhood.)

Having those ready-made references handy while writing is a major help to me.  So I like always having a greater awareness of the milieu, the larger context, while I'm writing.  These "out of the blue" references (heh) also help to give the impression of an authentic world, a richness to the world.

Now, of course, if Vendarlic scorpions are going to play a major role in the plot fifteen chapters later, then this early off-hand reference will become foreshadowing.  But if the scorpions are never mentioned or used again in the novel, then it's just flavoring for the world.  The secret, then, is to build a rich, detailed world, with enough such references made off-hand, so the reader begins to experience them as _flavoring_ and won't expect whatever significant reappearance you utilize later, if any.


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## Heliotrope (Jan 7, 2017)

Logos&Eidos said:


> Why do stories have to end as soon as the hero has their stuff together and is ready face down godlings? The answer is that many stories are a metaphor for growing up with varying degrees of obviousness and once the protagonist has"grown up" the story is done. Why not a story the says you've beaten the Evil Over Lord/Grown up now what? Is there a follow up to the Hero's/Heroin's Journey where the Protagonist must deal with the consequences of Victory/Maturity?



Lev Grossman does this with _The Magicians_ as well. I'd suggest you step away from Manga for a while and read some more "literary fantasy" you might be suprised what you find. The stuff you are talking about is not as rare as you think it is. 

Also, if you want to write an asshat that learns nothing from his adventures then what is stopping you? The reason certain "rules" exist is because many readers like the concept of redemption and change and that is the stuff they buy, but if you don't want to conform to that expectation then don't. Do your thing. Have as many bolts out of the blue as you want. You don't have to try to convince anyone that you are right. Just do it.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Jan 7, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Lev Grossman does this with _The Magicians_ as well. I'd suggest you step away from Manga for a while and read some more "literary fantasy" you might be suprised what you find. The stuff you are talking about is not as rare as you think it is.
> 
> Also, if you want to write an asshat that learns nothing from his adventures then what is stopping you? The reason certain "rules" exist is because many readers like the concept of redemption and change and that is the stuff they buy, but if you don't want to conform to that expectation then don't. Do your thing. Have as many bolts out of the blue as you want. You don't have to try to convince anyone that you are right. Just do it.



To add to this, neither of these things is particularly new. There are plenty of books with arrogant MCs that never get humbled or deal with humility. Neither is there a dearth of books of "adult" people that are highly competent going through life nor is there a dearth of books where the character isn't coming of age. The Alloy of law for example is a book that isn't a coming of age story. Nor are the sequels. The story line for Logen Ninefingers in the First Law books, dude is grizzled and competent no coming of age. And in other media you have Rogue One. No coming of age growing up story there either.


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## FifthView (Jan 8, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Lev Grossman does this with _The Magicians_ as well. I'd suggest you step away from Manga for a while and read some more "literary fantasy" you might be suprised what you find. The stuff you are talking about is not as rare as you think it is.



Just popping in with a note:  I discovered last night that season one of _The Magicians_ has officially appeared on Netflix.  I'd watched the first episode on Amazon when it was free, but wasn't very impressed so I never bought the others.  Now that S1 is free, I'm going to have a look.  (I never read the books.)


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## Logos&Eidos (Jan 9, 2017)

FifthView said:


> This reminds me of _The Chronicles of Riddick_, a guilty pleasure of mine I've watched multiple times.  Riddick does face down "godlings," but at the end of the movie he's just sitting on a throne he never expected nor wanted looking out over the crowd of former enemies who are now his followers with a "WTF do I do now?" kind of expression on his face.  We know from spending time with his character that he is definitely _not_ the right person for the job, heh. One of the reasons I love that scene so much is that it had a strong Conan the Barbarian feel; I'm sure I've seen a cover of some comic with almost exactly the same pose for Conan as the Barbarian becomes the King.
> 
> 
> 
> ...









@ FifthView

The world itself being the foreshadowing is what I'm trying to do.
The ratio of what to give away to the audiance and what to hold back so that it hits with no warning beyond the fact that world works that way, is what I'm trying to find.

 If I had the right literary term I''d be using it, i'd make this conversation easier.







Heliotrope said:


> Lev Grossman does this with _The Magicians_ as well. I'd suggest you step away from Manga for a while and read some more "literary fantasy" you might be suprised what you find. The stuff you are talking about is not as rare as you think it is.
> 
> Also, if you want to write an asshat that learns nothing from his adventures then what is stopping you? The reason certain "rules" exist is because many readers like the concept of redemption and change and that is the stuff they buy, but if you don't want to conform to that expectation then don't. Do your thing. Have as many bolts out of the blue as you want. You don't have to try to convince anyone that you are right. Just do it.



@ Heliotrope
I have watched the Magicians, didn't try to read the book when I first learned about it though. It just pinged as pretentious as well as being a mean spirited jab at the supernatural child adventure story genre, especially Harry Potter. 

The last adult fiction that I completed I think should be classified as Indie,Arcan the missing nexus.
Prior to that I'd started reading Dark Tower...and didn't get back to it.

I can look up the Hero's Journey easily along with the seven basic plots, but has anyone done a write up of what happens after the Hero's Journey? Once a child becomes an adult, followed the coming of age narrative  
 to its conclusion where do you go with the character?



Brian Scott Allen said:


> To add to this, neither of these things is particularly new. There are plenty of books with arrogant MCs that never get humbled or deal with humility. Neither is there a dearth of books of "adult" people that are highly competent going through life nor is there a dearth of books where the character isn't coming of age. The Alloy of law for example is a book that isn't a coming of age story. Nor are the sequels. The story line for Logen Ninefingers in the First Law books, dude is grizzled and competent no coming of age. And in other media you have Rogue One. No coming of age growing up story there either.



@ Brian Scott Allen

While reading The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller.
I came across the bit information that said most plots are in fact some form of maturation  
narrative.

The Hero starts in place of weakness,cowardess,irresponsibility,pride, some trait deemed a sign of immaturity or hubris by society at large. And through the course of events is forced to literally or figuratively "grow up" and deal with the world, and once the hero has means to deal  the story ends soon there after;because the point of the story was the transformation and everything else served as means for that to take place.

While Alloy of Law isn't about a man growing up Wax is in his what early thirties at least, he is forced to confront and ultimately accept responsibility.  

Jen Erso of Rogue One goes through similar transformation. 


I can't speak for the The First Law series, I've only read the few issues that comic adaptation got.


I'm trying to learn the rules so that I can break them deliberately, rather than as a consequence of amateurish stumbling.

Is there a post Hero's Journey?


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## Garren Jacobsen (Jan 9, 2017)

Logos&Eidos said:


> While reading The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller.
> I came across the bit information that said most plots are in fact some form of maturation
> narrative.
> 
> The Hero starts in place of weakness,cowardess,irresponsibility,pride, some trait deemed a sign of immaturity or hubris by society at large. And through the course of events is forced to literally or figuratively "grow up" and deal with the world, and once the hero has means to deal  the story ends soon there after;because the point of the story was the transformation and everything else served as means for that to take place.



Well, I mean yes otherwise the story would be boring without some kind of growth, unless that story is a tragedy. But I disagree with the writer who said that cowardice or pride are signs of immaturity but that's a minor quibble. The writer is correct stories are about growth of some kind. Or, perhaps more accurately, change. Macbeth has change, if not necessarily growth but that is a tragedy. Same with Hamlet not a whole lot of growth but there is a whole lot of change. But in almost every story with a happy ending there is growth, which is a positive change. It is, in my estimation, inescapable.

But a story about growth is not a hero's journey per se. Like I said, every story is about change and growth. A Hero's Journey is just a specific type of story that deals with change. Take for example The Alloy of Law, that is not a Hero's Journey. Whatever similarities it has to the hero's journey is coincidental. So, is there a post hero's journey, I would say there can be stories post hero's journey. That could be a "sports story" where the hero gets a gang of misfits to work together to overcome some evil. However, the problem with these stories is that you will need to have the hero of the original hero's journey story become a less important character and be part of the ensemble and that often comes across as unsatisfying.


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## Logos&Eidos (Jan 10, 2017)

Brian Scott Allen said:


> Well, I mean yes otherwise the story would be boring without some kind of growth, unless that story is a tragedy. But I disagree with the writer who said that cowardice or pride are signs of immaturity but that's a minor quibble. The writer is correct stories are about growth of some kind. Or, perhaps more accurately, change. Macbeth has change, if not necessarily growth but that is a tragedy. Same with Hamlet not a whole lot of growth but there is a whole lot of change. But in almost every story with a happy ending there is growth, which is a positive change. It is, in my estimation, inescapable.
> 
> But a story about growth is not a hero's journey per se. Like I said, every story is about change and growth. A Hero's Journey is just a specific type of story that deals with change. Take for example The Alloy of Law, that is not a Hero's Journey. Whatever similarities it has to the hero's journey is coincidental. So, is there a post hero's journey, I would say there can be stories post hero's journey. That could be a "sports story" where the hero gets a gang of misfits to work together to overcome some evil. However, the problem with these stories is that you will need to have the hero of the original hero's journey story become a less important character and be part of the ensemble and that often comes across as unsatisfying.





@ Brian Scott Allen 

The whole part about cowardess and bride is from me.
There are stories that are more about what a character does than becomes: Indiana Jones,James Bond, maybe Jason Born.

While it is afield from what I started this thread to learn about, stories of heroes doing are what fascinate me in part because most stories end soon after the hero gains the strength to do;an anime I watch called Ergo Proxy did exactly the that. After years of seeing stories end right when they got good, I've started to wonder what happens next? 

What Story is told after the Hero's Journey ends?
Assuming that the Hero survives their final trail and doesn't lose their powers, they are likely a powerful an influential person in their setting. So what happens next? The Hero's and Heroin's Journey are  both metaphors for growing up, so what is the story for navigating the adult world.

Some have suggested that apotheosis is what follows the Hero's Journey?
Which leads me to ask what are the steps in an  story of ascension?


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## skip.knox (Jan 10, 2017)

>Which leads me to ask what are the steps in an story of ascension? 

Dante has a couple of tips on that. It's not a bad read, though _Inferno_ is rather more fun than _Paradiso_.


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## Logos&Eidos (Oct 27, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> >Which leads me to ask what are the steps in an story of ascension?
> 
> Dante has a couple of tips on that. It's not a bad read, though _Inferno_ is rather more fun than _Paradiso_.



I might just, I download Dark tower for research into stories that are told from a more cinematic perspective.

When it comes to what happens after the Hero's Journey, I've looked for but haven't found a named post Hero's Journey story map/guide, however I've noticed that there are many different stories that are using this nameless pattern...



Examples…


The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolution.


Kung Fu Panda 2&3.


Iron Man 2&3.


Capitan America 2&3


The second half of the anime series Tegena Topa Gurren Lagan.


The last two books in the Mistborn series.


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