Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 18:53:37 -0400 From: Words from the Monastery Subject: EXERCISE: Foreshadowing Foreshadowing (pg 144) Foreshadowing: That literary term you had to memorize the meaning of and then identify in novels in the ninth grade. Remember the first time you realized a fortune cookie had foretold something that eventually happened to you? For a least a second you reconsidered the way the world operates. It happens repeatedly in life; we look back at an even or a conversation and a clue to what unfolded becomes clear. Omens are clunky in writing when they appear for no reason other than to alert the reader to what will happen later. The ones that work weave seamlessly into the narrative without calling attention to themselves; they are as subtle as the foretellings that appear in our lives. Omens are believable in writing when they reflect those intuitive moments when a statement or an image strikes you as an impending truth. Normally, you dismiss the even or make a mental note to pay attention to whether it pans out, and then, like your characters, you go on about your business. Today consider a situation that you had an intuition about. Go over the details of the situation to pin point what took place that clued you in. Speculate, in writing, on the unfolding of events that led up to the realization of your hunch. "The future enters into us in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens." Rainer Maria Rilke Room to Write Daily Invitations to a Writer's Life Bonni Goldberg G. P. Putnam's Sons ISBN 0-87477-825-5 -- volente Deo, Anthony D http://members.tripod.com/~jackechs/ http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/4640/ http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/5757/ "Don't you dare gloat, you miserable little biscuit whore." -- Frasier Crane