Foreshadowing is a very powerful tool for a fiction author. This literary device gives the reader advance hints about what will occur later in the narrative. Learning how to use foreshadowing in your fiction can give you a significant boost in terms of affective power.
The above description of foreshadowing might make you think it’s only relate to crime or mystery fiction. This is not true. As I’ll show you in this post, I use foreshadowing all the time in my literary-fiction novels.
More importantly, I’ll show you how I use foreshadowing and – even more importantly! – I’ll show you why I use it; what I can achieve with it.
Foreshadowing is about leading a narrative journey in both directions(more…)
Words are powerful, they can make or break situations big and small. From your Friday date to starting a war, the right (or wrong) words can be the difference between bliss and destruction. But have you ever wondered what’s the connection between language and context?
In other… words, words are powerful in unique ways, that go beyond the surface of things. Just look what I did at the beginning of this paragraph. Yet at the same time, language seems to rely on a wider context to operate efficiently.
Just to clarify, in this post I do not refer to linguistic but to sociocultural context. The issue is not whether the sentence “He did this to me, this way” says nothing without a context about “He”, “this”, “this way” (and even “did”).
Rather, the issue is whether words taken out of their context can have a seriously destabilizing effect. Take these sentences for example:
I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.
Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world.
Do not compare yourself to others. If you do so you are insulting yourself.
You probably don’t see anything particularly wrong with them. Indeed, they probably come across as good advice, not unlike what you’d see as a quotation – complete, with a sunset sky or butterflies behind it.
I’ve got a little surprise for you, though…
Words are drops; the surrounding water is the context. And it makes a hell of a difference whether you’re in your bathtub or the Pacific Ocean(more…)
