The Art of Foreshadowing

Allright kids, today I'm going to teach you about the art that is Foreshadowing.

First, you take four light sources and shine them on one object or person. POW. Four shadows appear.

Congratulations! You've just foreshadowed! Yes yes, I'm well aware that it's foreshadow, not fourshadow. Don't worry, I don't think you're (that) stupid ^_^ Listen, you can't judge a book by it's cover, okay ;O Just because it's 'fore' doesn't mean that it cannot mean 'four'.

It's foreshadow because of the word's Latin origin. You see, it was believed that if you saw all sides of a person's shadow at the same moment, you would be able to tell their past, present, future, and forever. The main use of this was to discover the all-mysterious fortunes that would befall people in their future, mostly to warn someone about bad luck. Thus that practice was called foreshadowing. Sadly, the last surviving foreshadower died many years ago. She did not foresee her sad, unmarried life :(

... :P

Ok, ok, now for the (real) term that's more recent and practical, foreshadowing is "a literary technique used by many different authors to provide clues for the reader to be able to predict what might occur later on in the story." The same is true for conversations, which is actually what I'm focusing on today.

But do you want to give away information of what you're about to say in a conversation?

As always, the answer depends on the context.

Sometimes, foreshadowing is good because it leads the audience in an encouraging way. Something to do about positive reinforcement and my theory on achievement (which I have yet to think of a clever name for). Basically when you succeed or get something 'correct', you (often unconsciously) get more positive feelings and motivated ^o^ To put it in more simple terms, foreshadowing is good because it creates the yellow light on the traffic light to tell us to hurry up before the red light comes on :D

a.k.a Step On It!

Foreshadowing is bad (see? You knew there was going to be a bad when you read the paragraph above, right?) when it gives away too much information. The best, concise example would be when you would give away the punchline of a joke. That sucks :( A much rarer case where foreshadowing is bad is when the other party knows what you're about to say all the time and that makes you predictable and boring, a very horrible handicap for lecturers.

Four mana, Four eyes, Four cards, two cards, wait, what?! -_-

The problem with foreshadowing is that it is uncontrollable at times, because seriously, who thinks before they say things, especially in a conversation? :P And I'd also like to warn you that foreshadowing is also dependent on the recipient! People might predict what you're about to say all the time! Then they'll either get bored, turned off, have too high of an expectation, or form judgments about you before you even finish your sentence! Bad, bad :(

In my opinion, foreshadowing should be avoided at all costs. Sure, it'll cause some confusion, sure, it might cause me some trouble, but making things more interesting sounds like fun ^o^ (and I'm sure I won't think of this again after I finish posting v_v horrible attitude thanks to being a Malaysian student, study, then forget everything after the exam ^w^v)

...Maybe that's why I always go off tangent after awhile *o* my airheadedness is justified! XP

Let me end today's lecture by telling you about a conversation I've had approximately a million times.

So I was talking to my friend about a cute girl, and then the conversation died down for awhile. Not long afterwards, I started a sentence with "You know those power singers that every group has?" and right as I was saying the sentence, I knew that both my friend and I knew that I was going to say "yeah, she's that powerful singer!" and what's interesting was my friend actually reacted with "Oh! I see *o*", and honestly don't know if that was a reaction out of a conversation norm, or genuine realization. And the fact that I don't know that is killing me! T_T

I'm sure if I had that conversation with you and you realised I thought this much about two sentences we exchanged, you would think I'm crazy ;__; but then again, if you didn't think I was crazy to begin with, you didn't know me well enough :P