Use Foreshadowing to Keep Readers Reading

The trick to writing good fiction is giving readers a reason to keep turning pages. Your goal is to tantalize them with the promise that good things are yet to come, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to use foreshadowing.

As the word itself suggests, foreshadowing casts a shadow of things to come across the early chapters of the book. Readers can only see a vague outline of what’s coming, but because they know something’s coming, they wait with bated breath to find out what it is.

An Example of How to Use Subtle Foreshadowing

Daphne du Maurier’s multi-generational saga Hungry Hill follows an aristocratic Irish family down through the 19th century. The book opens when the family patriarch John Brodrick is finagling the financing of a copper mine he wants to install on the beautiful, pastoral Hungry Hill.

The opening of the mine itself is a straightforward event, but du Maurier skillfully weaves a web of foreboding around the mine and its future, leading the reader to sense that great tragedy will befall this family if the mine is installed as planned.

Much of the story that follows is unrelated to the mine. It meanders leisurely through the years and the family’s various episodic misadventures. As a result, the book could easily have lost its focus and its interest for readers.

2 Questions to Strengthen How You Use Foreshadowing

Because du Maurier spread a layer of foreshadowing at the very beginning of the book, readers know more is yet to come—and they keep reading.

If you find your story flagging, ask yourself:

1. Have you given readers a reason to keep reading?

2. Do they know grand things are yet to come?

If not, consider inserting some strategic foreshadowing into earlier scenes.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! How do you use foreshadowing early in your story to promise readers good things are coming? Tell me in the comments!