Every book, no matter what the style or genre, has some element of mystery, whether that’s “whodunnit” or “What happens next?” While surprise is fun to play with in a story, the major plot and character movements should really come from somewhere, set up with foreshadowing, or clues.
And let’s face it, these clues are a tough balancing act. We have to let the reader know there’s something coming for them, that these events that don’t seem significant will be—but at the same time, we can’t build small things up too much, or we’ll disappoint our readers instead of rewarding them with the payoff, and probably more importantly, we don’t want to give away the coming twists.
Whether you’re writing a mystery or romance or literary fiction, there’s always something we’ll want to “bury” so our readers don’t realize its significance at first. In this series, we’ll look at what these clues might be and several ways to hide them!
What do you think? What kind of “clues” do you see in non mysteries?
Photo by Jake Bouma
When I critique now, I look for accomplishments and rewards characters have been earned, or goals they’ve achieved, and then I read on waiting for the author to throw rocks knocking the character down, destroying all her hopes and dreams, leaving her in a pile of rubbish with loss written all over her face! Is that what you mean? The good stuff is a clue to me of bad stuff that’s going to come, like it or not!