Spoilers versus Foreshadowing

Like most, I despise spoilers. Especially in more popular genres, the main draw of a story comes from mystery. Not knowing what’s going to happen. Not knowing who’s the murderer or what a mysterious message means.

If you already know the answers, then it feels useless experiencing the story again.

At the same time, writers always talk about the need to use foreshadowing. You need to hint at what’s going to happen. You need to provide clues that might lead the audience to correctly guess the solution. If you don’t, the audience feels cheated and if events just happen at random.

So what’s the difference? When does giving information mean spoiling (a very bad thing) and when does it mean foreshadowing (a very good thing)? How do you use this to craft better stories?

Vague Knowledge

After years of doing creative projects, I created my own theory of “vague knowledge”.

(I have a better term for this in my mother tongue (Dutch), but haven’t found an equally catch alternative in English. The literal translation would be “doubt knowledge”.)

The idea is simple.

• You want to give the audience information. (Which is clear and true.)
• But with a vagueness built-in. (Which opens the information up to interpretation or multiple possibilities.)

If you give people “vague knowledge”, it feels like progress, without giving it all away. It’s foreshadowing, not spoiling.

This is related to a saying from earlier in the course: “Give readers WHAT they expect, but not HOW they expect it.”

If you foreshadow, it should be in a way that leaves multiple paths as to how it plays out. If you give away the ending, there should be many interesting paths to reach that ending.

If you also give away those other details—telling exactly what happens and how—you are spoiling instead.

But remember that it is vague knowledge. You still need to give new information, in a clear way, which is true. You can’t just give information that is completely false to mislead the reader, or such vague statements that they teach nothing at all.

Foreshadowing is knowledge, but not all of it. It’s one puzzle piece, out of many.

I see three common ways to do this.

• Giving information double meaning (see the section below, this one is the strongest)
• Giving something that isn’t clear on its own, but hints that it’s part of a bigger whole. (“It will all make sense once you have all the pieces”.)
• Giving something can still be changed. (One character claims X, a few chapters later another character claims Y. Then it’s about figuring out who is lying and who is telling the truth.)

The double meaning

The most effective way to accomplish this, is through a double meaning. Find information that will be interpreted differently when viewed through a different perspective.

As you practice this, it will come more naturally over time. These are very simple to implement, once you have an idea, but very effective. For a simple reason:

If you put multiple meanings into one sentence or concept, the audience cannot know which is the right one (that the story will execute)!

It’s even better if you intentionally frame your whole story to lead the audience to the wrong perspective on events. You have the great power to subtly influence how your audience responds to any information given to them, and you should use it well.

A matter of perspective

To summarize this: foreshadowing is almost always a matter of perspective.

• Either the perspective (that tells the information) misleads the audience.
• Or the one receiving the information is precisely the one who wouldn’t understand it immediately. (For example, a non-wizard receives information about a dark magic spell. They will not realize what it means, no matter how clear the information is.)

Also note that perspective can mean the timing of the story. You could start a book with the ending. After that first chapter, you go back to the beginning and explain “how we got there”. If you write that end scene well, the reader knows how the story ends, but is interested in HOW we got there.

Purposefully design your perspective to make sure all information told is foreshadowing, not spoiling.

Example from game dev

This is from my work in game development. Vague knowledge is also a useful tool there.

I once made a game in which you could scan your surroundings for enemies (on your turn). At first, this was a precise scan: it would tell you exactly who was where. (“An octopus at A6, a ship at B4, …”)

Seems logical, right? Well, it didn’t work. The knowledge was too specific and complete. It made the game both overwhelming and too easy. Instead, I changed it to a simpler response: it tells you how many enemies there are, nothing else. (“Two enemies in range of two tiles.”)

Turning knowledge into vague knowledge made the game both simpler and better.

Hopefully you immediately see how this also works for a story. Maybe your hero has a gadget that scans the area. It’s much better to make it report “one enemy nearby”, than to make it report the precise locations and details of each. Introduce it as a limitation of this rudimentary device.

Now the reader can imagine the possibilities. What type of enemy? Are they close? How are they going to find them? You’ve given them knowledge, but instead of spoiling what happens next, you made them excited and gave them options.

The spoiling test

To make this a little easier, I simply created a simple test for what is a “good” story (to me).

If you spoil the ending, and people still want to experience the whole story, it’s a good story.

An “okay” story is usually only fun once. After reading or viewing it, you had a fun time, but you forget about it and move on.

A really “great” story should have more depth than that. It should have themes, complexity, characters with whom you just want to spend more time. It should have elements that mean you want to experience the story again, even if you know the ending.

So that’s a good test. Write a bit at the start of your story that gives away the ending. If you’d still be interested in getting the whole story, it’s probably a strong one.

Conclusion

In a sense, telling stories is like a magic trick.

You carefully pick the elements you want to show the audience, projecting the idea that you’re giving them a glimpse into the truth. You turn around the box to show there are no secret parts. You promise, at the start of the trick, that your lovely assistent will leave the box unharmed (and not sawed in two).

But the trick itself has to be experienced by the audience. That’s where the tension and sensation is. That’s what it’s all about. Stating what was going to happen made it more exciting, not less.

And the real magic? The real trick? The audience didn’t see it the first time, for they were distracted by all your promises about what would happen or how it would end.

And that’s why they want to see the trick again, and again, because maybe next time they do discover the secret behind it.