Coffee break exercise: Foreshadowing

Create a sense of something that's yet to happen in this week's creative writing exercise

Foreshadowing is a useful literary device that enables a writer to create a hint of something significant that will happen later in their story.  To get a feel for how it might work, spend five minutes creating the idea for a pivotal scene that could happen in the middle of a story - it might be a meeting, or a murder, or a betrayal or a discovery, but it must be something that would have an impact on your plot.

Now spend ten minutes making notes of what you could do to lay a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader, connected to the scene you've just imagined, to make them think 'I wonder what that means?'

When you read through what you've written, does it tempt you to start writing that story?

If you want to know what makes a short story a winner, read some of the prize-winning entries in Writing Magazine's creative writing competitions.