Geo
Troubadour
So, as much as everyone that has had a book/movie spoiled by an ungraceful comment may disagree, it turns out we love spoilers, just not big ones.
In trying to learn more about foreshadowing, I discovered this great paper in psychological science that talks about how much people like to find clues (mini spoilers) along what they read.
http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld/Publications_files/Spoilers.pdf
Apparently how much we like a story correlates nicely with the number of spoilers along the text. My problem, of course, is that I kind of suck at choosing the right spoilers. Why? because I want the reader to feel cleaver by discovering the breadcrumb trail I'm leaving for them, but I don't want it to be too easy. I don't want everything to become obvious from the beginning.
So what happens is that half the time my clues are too obscure to be found (beta readers complaining that not everyone has the analytical mind of a scientist have become a repetitive comment in my latest project), so in an effort to find a middle ground (not too hard/not too easy) I would like to ask, how do you apply foreshadowing to your work?
In trying to learn more about foreshadowing, I discovered this great paper in psychological science that talks about how much people like to find clues (mini spoilers) along what they read.
http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld/Publications_files/Spoilers.pdf
Apparently how much we like a story correlates nicely with the number of spoilers along the text. My problem, of course, is that I kind of suck at choosing the right spoilers. Why? because I want the reader to feel cleaver by discovering the breadcrumb trail I'm leaving for them, but I don't want it to be too easy. I don't want everything to become obvious from the beginning.
So what happens is that half the time my clues are too obscure to be found (beta readers complaining that not everyone has the analytical mind of a scientist have become a repetitive comment in my latest project), so in an effort to find a middle ground (not too hard/not too easy) I would like to ask, how do you apply foreshadowing to your work?