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

[Logos&Eidos]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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?

 

[Demesnedenoir]

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.

 

[Penpilot]

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.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

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.

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.

 

[spectre]

@penpilot

" I got a talking to by my instructor."

What'd he say?

Sent from my Alcatel_4060O using Tapatalk

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

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.

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!

 

[FifthView]

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.

 

[Jackarandajam]

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.

 

[Jackarandajam]

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.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

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.

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.

 

[Penpilot]

@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 École 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.

 

[spectre]

@penpilot

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

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[psychotick]

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.

 

[Penpilot]

@penpilot

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

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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.

 

[La Volpe]

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.

 

[Logos&Eidos]

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.

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.

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.

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".

 

[Jackarandajam]

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:
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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.
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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.

 

[Heliotrope]

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