Quotes About Foreshadowing

The heat precedes the fire.

Sometimes stories are just previews of coming truths.

I feel like if you really know the ending right from the beginning, you can add so many subtleties and little things later that will pay off and be more consistent and more rewarding for the reader.

There ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. • I KINGS •

In life one rarely knows which remarks of the hundreds uttered in the course of a day will turn out to be auspicious. In fiction, foreshadowing is planted and flagged in some (hopefully or desperately) subtle way, drama demands it.

Sometimes, actors in films will play the ending of the movie, or even the middle, and you know where it's going - as an audience member, you can read the actor.

First, there is an old saying that "the future always foreshadows itself" via signs or signals of what is to come. Second, it is an accepted full part of wisdom to notice and take account of such signs. Third, human intelligence is considered one of the superlative attributes of our species, intelligence sufficient enough to recognize (theoretically anyway) disasters in the making. Fourth, however, there are no educational courses that might be called Recognition of Signs 101.

Withholding things in a story is no good if you aren't building to something substantial. It becomes foreplay without the main event, and no one wants that.

Yes, our world is real, but its temporal reality offers us but a glimpse, a faint foreshadowing of the greater reality that is to come.

On the way to Francis's, a pregnant dog ran across the road in front of us. "That," said Henry, "is a very bad omen." But of what he wouldn't say.

Readers know full well that when a writer takes pains to tell them a character doesn't expect the worst, she's about to get it.

foreshadowing is the storytelling companion of fate.

Um epílogo, disfarçado de resumo do passado, é realmente uma forma de nos alertar sobre o futuro.

What makes the first sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany such a good one is that the whole novel is contained in it.

You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends.

It was ordained at the beginning of the world that certain signs should prefigure certain events.

Coming events cast their Shadows before them. —Winston Churchill

Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen.

In our plays, if the Cthaeh's tree is shown in the distance in the backdrop, you know the story is going to be the worst kind of tragedy. It's put there so the audience knows what to expect. So they know everything will go terribly wrong in the end.

God commanded that the stones engraved with the Ten Commandments, a jar of manna, and the rod of Aaron (who was the first priest of the old covenant) be placed within the ark. Each of these reminders of God's covenant, placed within the ark, were themselves foreshadowing Christ. He was the fulfillment of the Law (see Mt 5:17; Rom 10:4), the Bread from Heaven (Jn 6:32–35), and the eternal High Priest (Heb 7:23–26).

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on a wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

A quick, sharp laugh from Quint broke the thread of tension. "What a pair of assholes," he said. "I seen that coming since you came aboard this morning.