Hi Angela,

So very true about readers being primed to watch for clues. That’s why I love the technique of burying clues in the middle of sentences and then distracting readers with the rest of the paragraph. 😉

Our audience is hardwired to pay attention & look for clues, and so this is such a fun element to play with, IMO.

Hi V.M.,

Can you add something else to the scene to give it another reason to exist?

If you’re not sure how that works, check my website, where I have a checklist of different ways to make scenes matter: https://jamigold.com/2012/06/how-to-make-the-most-of-a-scene/

P.S. If you want to know more about foreshadowing, especially what makes it different from putting “spoilers” into our story, check out my companion post: https://jamigold.com/2022/12/foreshadowing-vs-spoiling-whats-the-difference/

The title is His Daughter’s Hand
That is the whole premise of the story. Magic is in play by having a gypsy put dreams in a man’s head so he wants to have a woman from the dream. He falls in love with her and her father tells the man she is special and she can do things no other woman can. How else can I foreshadow the ending without telling the ending?

Hi Richard,

Do you mean that your story doesn’t have magic, but the reader assumed the mention of “powers” meant that magic was involved?

If so, that brings up a great caveat regarding foreshadowing, much like how subtext can be tricky:

We don’t want to spoon-feed ideas to our readers by stating everything plainly, but anytime we leave things open to interpretation, some readers will interpret things differently than we intend. Every reader comes to our story with a different background and perspective, so it’s just a fact of life that some of those variations will lead to different interpretations. (In this case, maybe this reader reads a lot of paranormal stories, so she’s especially attuned to seeing those types of clues.)

While some misinterpretations don’t matter (it’s usually not a big deal if readers visualize a situation slightly differently than we do, etc.), some misinterpretations are definitely a problem. Especially when they lead readers down the wrong path of expectations.

One trick I’d recommend for preventing misinterpretations would be to use a technique that interrupts readers’ thoughts down that wrong path. That is, we find a way to call out the potential misinterpretation and correct the idea right then and there in the story.

For example, in your story, after the father’s line, the daughter could say something along the lines of “You mean like magic?” Then he could respond with whatever clarification makes sense, such as: “No, but you have an amazing heart and way of looking at the world.”

Finding these potential misinterpretations is yet another reason why beta readers and editors can be so important. We usually can’t see how others might interpret things differently because we have our own perspective, so getting feedback from different perspectives is essential.

Hope that helps!
(and even if I didn’t catch what caused the issue in your story correctly, hopefully that whole explanation helps give you ideas)

Jami