7th Grade:
-DOL from internet comments. These can be quite funny.
-Turn in Journals and 5 "I wonder" statements from story yesterday.
-Powerpoint notes on Foreshadowing. There are 9 rules. Here is the information from the first 4 rules we discussed in class today: We will finish the rest on Thursday.
1.
Foreshadowing with a "Pre-Scene"
Picture the scene...
We are in the cockpit of an airplane. The plane hits turbulence
and the captain struggles to regain control. It doesn't last long, and
everything is soon seemingly fine again...
But the reader implicitly understands that this is going to be
anything but a trouble-free flight.
Or we are in a Wild West saloon. The hero walks in and orders
whiskey. Over in the corner, the baddie watches him drink. As the hero leaves,
the baddie spits on the floor. And that is it...
But we know that their next meeting will probably not be so
uneventful.
A pre-scene is simply a smaller version of a larger scene to
come. They are not significant by themselves, but they imply that there is
something more spectacular waiting to happen right around the corner.
In fiction, unlike in real life, everything happens for a
reason. Every cause has an effect. If the reader of a novel witnesses an event
that fizzles out before anything dramatic happens, they know that the drama will come later in the story.
2.
Foreshadowing by Naming an Approaching Event
Simply naming the event and indicating why it is likely to be
momentous is one of the simplest ways of foreshadowing there is. So you might
begin a chapter in a novel like this...
Fred
left the house at eleven o'clock and drove into town. He was meeting his father
for lunch at Brown's. Officially, they were just 'catching up', but they both
knew Fred needed money again - and not such a small amount this time, either.
Out of all my examples of foreshadowing, this one is hardly the
most subtle - but it does the job.
Fred is on his way to a difficult meeting and, as readers of
this story, we are looking forward to seeing how it plays out before either
character has even reached the restaurant.
For added impact, you could foreshadow this lunch date earlier -
the night before perhaps. Or else you could give Fred several other tasks to
perform in town before he meets his father.
That way, the reader will anticipate the upcoming meeting for several
pages, not just for a paragraph or two.
3.
Using Irrational Concern
A teenage girl leaves the house for an evening out with her
friends. Her mother makes her promise to be back before midnight. The girl
kisses her mother and tells her she worries too much. She'll be fine, she says.
...but us readers know she won't be.
·
In the real world, mothers worry over nothing all the time,
however old their children are (it's part of their job description).
·
In fiction, however, there is no such thing as irrationality. If
a character worries, the reader expects - indeed, demands - that these worries
are for a reason.
The obvious outcome here is that the daughter does not make it
home safely. But how about using some of that misdirection I talked about
earlier...
Here is how it might play
out...
Midnight has come and gone and the mother is standing at the
window. She hears the back door and runs to meet her daughter. But it is a
masked intruder carrying a knife.
The reader would have been expecting bad things to happen to the
daughter, but in the end it was the mother who was in trouble.
Foreshadowing, in this case, has enabled you to create both
suspense and surprise.
4.
Foreshadowing Through Apprehension
As a man gets ready for work, we see that he is tense and sweating.
His wife kisses him goodbye and wishes him good luck. The man throws her an
uneasy look and picks up his briefcase. We don't even know what is about to
take place yet, but we are certainly looking forward to finding out how it
turns out.
If a character in a novel is apprehensive about something, the
readers will also be apprehensive (assuming they care about the character, that
is).
In the previous example, I created both suspense and surprise.
Here, I have managed to create suspense and mystery. So not only are the
readers uncertain about how this upcoming event will work out, they don't even
know what the upcoming event is.
5.
Using Narrator Statement
When
Ruth Jones's alarm clock woke her at seven o'clock that morning, she had no
idea that today would be the longest day of her life.
Again, as examples of foreshadowing go, there is nothing subtle
about this. And it also pre-supposes the fact that you are using a disembodied
narrator, rather than showing the events of the novel solely through the viewpoint
character's eyes.
If you are writing a first person novel, or a third person novel
in which the "camera" is positioned behind the viewpoint character's
eyes throughout, this method of foreshadowing won't be an option.
6.
Showing the Reader a Loaded Gun
An old man is sitting at his desk looking at his stamp
collection. When he opens the drawer for his magnifying glass, his fingers
brush against a revolver. He finds the magnifying glass and closes the
drawer...
But us readers know that the gun wouldn't have been shown to us
at all if it wasn't going to be fired later in the novel.
I said at the top that these examples of foreshadowing are just
suggestions to give you the idea of how to foreshadow. You can use them any way
you like. For example...
·
It doesn't have to be a gun in the drawer - it could be a bottle
of poison or an unidentified object wrapped in brown paper or an unopened
letter.
·
Or how about making it the absence of
something - an empty bottle of heart medication, a fuel gauge close to empty.
7.
Foreshadowing Through Opinion
Here is the final line from a chapter in a first person
private-eye novel...
I
told myself there would be no more bodies, but I didn't believe a word of it.
When the leading character in a novel states an opinion, us readers
believe them. The private eye above might have no rational reason for believing
there will be more murders.
In the real world, he could well be wrong.
But in fiction, opinions and hunches and gut instincts on the
part of the hero and rarely wrong.
8.
Foreshadowing Through Prophecy
As a novel writer, you have the gift of being able to predict
the future. At any given point in the story, you know precisely what is coming
next (because you invented it!)
The characters in the story do not have this gift. But you can
give them (and the readers) premonitions about what happens next...
·
When a fortune teller looks into her crystal ball, she closes
her eyes and crosses herself.
·
When the leading woman reads her horoscope, it promises a
troubled week ahead.
·
When a man goes downstairs for breakfast, he sees his lucky
horseshoe has fallen off the shelf.
If any of these events happened to me personally, I wouldn't be
troubled in the least. To me, crystal balls and newspaper horoscopes are
meaningless. But as a reader and writer and teacher of fiction, I know there is
no such thing as "meaningless" in a novel.
Now for the last of my examples of foreshadowing...
9.
Foreshadowing Through Symbolic Omens
The
first thing Mary saw when she pulled back the curtains was a solitary magpie
sitting on the fence. She waited for a second bird to appear, but no magpie
came.
Any reader who knows the magpie rhyme "one for sorrow, two
for joy..." will immediately suspect the worst for Mary, even if Mary
herself is untroubled by the sighting and soon forgets about it.
The same thing would apply if Mary had opened her curtains to
see storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
In novels, symbolism
counts. Here is how Ernest Hemingway famously foreshadows an early death in the
opening line of A Farewell to Arms...
The
leaves fell early that year.
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O CAPTAIN! my
Captain! our fearful trip is done;
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The ship has
weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
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The port is near,
the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
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While follow eyes
the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
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But
O heart! heart! heart!
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Where
on the deck my Captain lies,
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Fallen
cold and dead.
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2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; |
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Rise up—for you the
flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
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For you bouquets and
ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
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For you they call,
the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
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Here
Captain! dear father!
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It
is some dream that on the deck,
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You’ve
fallen cold and dead.
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3
My Captain does not
answer, his lips are pale and still;
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My father does not
feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
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The ship is anchor’d
safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
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From fearful trip,
the victor ship, comes in with object won;
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Exult,
O shores, and ring, O bells!
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Walk
the deck my Captain lies,
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Fallen
cold and dead.
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Walt Whitman
– Published posthumously - 1900
- Assignment: This is a visually rich poem. Draw a picture that visualized the written metaphor of this poem. You don't have to be a great artist. Stick figures are fine if that is all you are capable of (like my own not-so-impressive art skills). What pictures does this poem bring to mind? Due Thursday.
-Don't forget, spelling test is tomorrow.
