z Flashbacks, of course, are much more common. Many detective stories
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used as replacements for, or in combination with, exposition, especially
when you’re trying to present the reader with important or dramatic
information about the previous history of a character. Toni Morrison
uses this technique to show the dramatic birth of a character in her
novel %HORYHG.
Foreshadowing
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the future, but foreshadowing is a hint or a series of hints that a writer
plants in the narrative early on to prepare the way for what comes later.
In many cases, the success of the narrative’s resolution depends on how
carefully the writer has prepared the way for it. You want the resolution
to be unpredictable but satisfying, and pulling that off requires a balance
between withholding information and revealing just enough so that the
reader doesn’t feel cheated at the end.
z Some foreshadowing is fairly mechanical, such as making sure you
introduce all the characters, context, and props you need for a story to
pay off. The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov famously said that if
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pistol must go off in the third act. This is a fundamental insight about
creating plot.
o Part of what Chekhov means is simply that you have to play
fair with the audience: You can’t have a character suddenly
waving a pistol around without giving some hint early on that
waving a pistol was at least a possibility.
o But Chekhov is also saying that you need to pay attention to
what details you include and when you include them. If you
show a pistol on the wall, and nobody uses it, you’ve set up an
expectation in the reader, then thwarted it.