Plot Consultant

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8 Plot Tips how to use foreshadowing in the middle of stories to best benefit the action at the climax at the end of your story

The middle challenges the protagonist in an unfamiliar territory. Throughout all the setbacks and obstacles, the middle also provides the protagonist with opportunities to learn, discover, rediscover a gift, clue, belief, ability, skill that serves her in her final confrontation at the end. The act of discovery is often used as an act of foreshadowing in stories.

8 Plot Tips how to Foreshadow in the Middle What’s Coming at the End of a Novel, Memoir, Screenplay

  1. The skill and ability or idea and belief the protagonist learns comes out of the external plot of the middle and is directly tied to one or more of the characters in the middle as part of their shared subplots together
  2. The skill and abilities play into the plot in the final ¼ but neither the characters nor the reader know that at of learning, exposure, experience in the middle
  3. The reader is engaged with the dramatic action and whatever skills and ability learned is on the sidelines – secondary to the main action and not the intended goal of the protagonist in the scene. For instance, not I’m going to learn how to pick a lock. Instead, she learned to pick a lock because of what’s happening in the story Only to find out later in the final ¼ of the story how valuable this lesson of picking the lock becomes as she has the ability to save herself and save the day thanks for that lesson.
  4. Attempt to make the lessons part of the front story and save the protagonist from using the new skill until it appears all is lost at the climax
  5. Sometimes the foreshadowing is actually the protagonist teaching the reader (through teaching a character on the page) in the middle what she needs to understand in order to uncover clues as the protagonist does in solving the mystery at the end
  6. Decide the:
  • Skills
  • Abilities
  • Beliefs
  • Knowledge
  • Wisdom
  • Learning
  • Lessons
  • Tricks
  • Clues
  • Behaviors
  • Manners
  • Stunts
  • Talents
  • Powers
  • Moves

(as many as needed) needed for the protagonist to succeed at the climax

7. Decide which of those she’ll need at the end and be without in the Beginning and the Middle as either:

  • her unaware of her own gifts
  • never learned
  • needs to learn in the dark middle

8. Decide who is going to teach her what she needs to learn and how to integrate that into the plot without giving away the importance of the skill to come at the end