Across the electronic gulf in the early years of the twenty-first century the Writers in the Storm web page was likely being watched keenly and closely by intelligences searching for ways to improve their art and craft of writing.
With thanks and apologies to H. G. Wells, welcome to The Shadow Before, some thoughts on foreshadowing, and Mars.
Heads
The beginning and ending link your story together. They help to make it a whole, instead of simply a series of incidents. And one of the strongest techniques for the first part is foreshadowing.
Let’s take a look at what foreshadowing is, what it can do for you, and why it’s so useful.
An overview
Foreshadowing is a narrative device where the storyteller gives advance hints and clues about what is to come later in the story.
Foreshadowing most often appears early in a story. It helps develop the audience's expectations about upcoming events.
Foreshadowing can show detail or it can explain the whole story.
When it doesn’t work, it’s often either too obscure or too heavy-handed.
Torso
Ready? Off to Mars, as envisioned by Robert A. Heinlein in 1949.
“The thin air of Mars was chill but not really cold. It was not yet winter in southern latitudes and the daytime temperature was usually above freezing. The queer creature standing outside the door of a dome-shaped building was generally manlike in appearance, but no human being ever had a head like that. A thing like a coxcomb jutted out above the skull, the eye lenses were wide and staring, and the front of the face stuck out in a snout. The unearthly appearance was increased by a pattern of black and yellow tiger stripes covering the entire head. The creature was armed with a pistol-type hand weapon slung at its belt and was carrying, crooked in its right arm, a ball, larger than a basketball, smaller than a medicine ball.”
A Caveat
Now before you start writing me to complain, I know this is not the real Mars. This is the Mars of Perceval Lowell and canals, where a dying race created enormous irrigation projects to move water from the poles to their cities. In real life it ain’t like that, but Red Planet was written over seventy years ago and as a story it works as well today as it did when Truman was President.
A brief digression will shed some light on this.
In 1888 Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli announced that he had observed what he called canali on Mars, and drew a sketch. To Schiaparelli, these were purely natural features of the landscape. “Canali“ is Italian for channels. Translated into English, the word became “canals,” Lowell believed it, and the rest is history.
Some analysis
Let’s take Heinlein’s opening apart and see how in a few sentences the Grand Master sets up the whole book.
It’s cold, but not winter so it’s going to get colder.
The helmet has tiger stripes, so residents decorate their headgear.
There is air, just not much. You can go outside with a respirator.
There are Martian natives.
And the hero is carrying a weapon.
Those are basically the important story elements of Red Planet.
In this case foreshadowing works well; it sets the reader’s expectations. When changes turn up, like being trapped outside at night to freeze to death, they don’t come out of the blue to break the narrative flow, nor does the writer have to stop to explain what’s happening.
Foreshadowing across multiple books
Working on this essay, I realized that foreshadowing can stretch across a whole series. In One For the Money Janet Evanovich opens with “There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me—not forever, but periodically.” And that’s it, the heart of one of the most famous series of thrillers ever.
Prologue
Ok, here’s another famous one, from The Bard himself.
Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
That’s right, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet opens with direct foreshadowing of the entire tragedy.
Shapes of the Shadow
Just as shadows are longer in the afternoon, foreshadowing comes in different degrees, and the examples in this post illustrate that.
Heinlein sets up the elements of the story — climate, aliens, weapons.
Shakespeare encapsulates the whole story.
Evanovich lays the foundation for over twenty novels.
When you think about your “Heads,” think about how much you want to reveal, and should it be background or plot? Here’s some free advice: most of us should avoid telling the whole story up front. That requires enormous skill.
Too Much is — Too Much.
A personal rant. Note that I have filed off the serial numbers to make this next example unrecognizable. I have a policy of not criticizing work by name. In reviews of course I do, but this is different and I don’t want to distract from the message. Ok. Here’s the opening of the story.
Our young, talented Hero who is going steady with a really nice young woman, meets the slinky Bad Girl, ditches his girlfriend, and destroys his talent while he’s having a good time. Yikes. I got that far and bailed.
You see the rest of the story, too, don’t you?
At the last minute he comes to his senses and . . . Ok, l could be wrong, but I was not motivated to invest the time to find out. If foreshadowing is too heavy-handedly applied, your reader will think she knows the story and quit reading.
. . . And Tails
Or tales. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
Kids who are bullied learn to watch for shadows coming up behind them on the playground because it may be the neighborhood bully looking for lunch money. Many readers have learned to keep an eye out for early clues, and writers have learned to provide that shadow.
Ignoring famous pitcher Satchel Paige, who said, “Don’t look back; something might be gaining on you,” we have come from the sands of a Mars that never was (but should have been IMHO) through Trenton to ancient Verona, looking at shadows. Teenagers with alien friends, star-crossed lovers, all their stories benefitted by the shadow before.
The best way to learn this part of the writing craft is by studying examples, and that's where you come in. Do you have a "favorite shadow?" Have you created one? Now’s your chance to tell us about it in the comments!
About James
James R. Preston is the author of the multiple-award-winning Surf City Mysteries. He is currently at work on the sixth, called Remains To Be Seen. His most recent works are Crashpad and Buzzkill, two historical novellas set in the 1960’s at Cal State Long Beach. Kirkus Reviews called Buzzkill “A historical thriller enriched by characters who sparkle and refuse to be forgotten.” His books are collected as part of the California Detective Fiction collection at the University of California Berkeley.
Developing unique characters is the most important thing a writer does, especially in genre fiction. Characters shape the action and trajectory of a story. They make the reader and audience care about the story. And, ultimately, they make a story unforgettable.
When we read Pride and Prejudice, we don’t imagine what it’s like to fall in love with someone we don’t like at first sight; we imagine what it’s like to be Elizabeth Bennett falling in love with Mr. Darcy, or to be Darcy trying to earn Elizabeth’s love.
Why Use Personality Theory?
Researchers tell us that reading fiction helps people develop empathy. Readers don’t develop empathy by solving the mystery, falling in love, or going on an adventure. They develop empathy by connecting with characters and living the story through those character’s experiences.
Creating memorable characters requires developing their personalities deeply and widely. Listing a character’s physical attributes and exploring their backstories and emotional wounds helps us describe them and understand their motivations, but doesn’t necessarily help us show their actions on the page.
Fortunately, using personality theory with its well-documented traits is a fantastic way to bring our characters to life on the page.
The 16 Personality Types
Based on the Myers-Briggs theory and originally developed from psychologist Carl Jung's turn-of-the-century work on extroversion vs. introversion, these types are the most dynamic system for understanding personality traits and how they manifest in people and in characters.
Professional psychologists study and develop personality theory from extensive observation and research. Versions of Myers-Briggs theory get taught in university courses. Corporations and the military use it to determine job placement for new hires and recruits. Writers use it to create characters.
The Basics of Personality Theory
Before we explore using personality theory to develop characters, it’s important to understand two important words underlying it: tendency and preference.
The 16 personality types are scored on a spectrum. Classification depends on how someone tends to be. Of the hundreds of individual traits, a single person can exhibit all of them at some time or another, depending on where they fall on the spectrum. The theory asserts that some types prefer to be punctual more than other types, not that tardy types are incapable of arriving on time for their own wedding. Also, personalities, like tendencies and preferences, can change for an individual as they mature. The flexibility of the system actually makes it the best theory for shaping authentic fictional characters and their arcs.
The Paired Traits
The 16 Personalities/Myers-Briggs theory combines four sets of paired traits on a spectrum from low to high to produce 16 unique types:
Extroversion vs. Introversion: how a person tends to interact with the world socially.
Sensing vs. Intuition: how a person tends to gather evidence to make important decisions.
Thinking vs. Feeling: how a person tends to value specific types of evidence.
Perceiving vs. Judging: how a person tends to resist or embrace decision-making.
Those traits are then represented by the associated letters. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is an ENFJ—favoring extroversion, intuition, feeling, and judging, while Mr. Darcy is an ISTJ, favoring introversion, sensing, thinking, and judging.
Most people slide one way or the other in each category.
Introverts vs Extroverts
Some people tend to be extroverts, meaning they are happiest when around other people in social situations, while others tend to be introverts, meaning they are happiest when alone or around only a few people at a time.
Extroverts can still like reading a book, but they’ll tend to talk about the book with other readers before, during, and after. Introverts can enjoy large social gatherings like family reunions, but they’ll tend to be the first going home at the end of the night.
Sensing vs Intuition
When faced with a decision, an individual who tends toward sensing asks for other people’s opinions—sometimes a lot of other people’s opinions—before they make up their mind. An individual tending towards intuition is more inclined to follow their instincts when they make decisions.
Thinkers vs Feelers
Thinkers place greater value on facts and objectivity, while feelers place more importance on emotions.
Perceivers vs Judgers
Perceivers are slower to make decisions, preferring to keep their options open, while judgers prefer to make quick decisions before moving on. Judgers also have fewer regrets if the decision turns out to be a poor one.
Other considerations
As we mature, we often become less extreme, and even, on occasion, slide across the middle to an opposing trait. An introvert, after years of working in a job that requires public speaking may cross over into extroversion. A feeler may eventually place more value on facts and logic after training to be a critical thinker.
All of these traits can be applied to our characters’ development as they act and react throughout our stories. Matching a character up with one of the 16 types helps us create recognizable but complex characters, not unlike the people we know in the real world.
Six Ways to Use Personality Theory to Create Better Characters
1. Expand & Deepen the Characters’ Personality Traits
The 16 personalities do a deep dive into important aspects of human life: individual strengths and weaknesses, relationships, work, responses to stress, decision-making strategies, career choices, etc.
For example, Elizabeth Bennet is extroverted and highly social, witnessed by her enjoyment at dances. Her passionate desire to marry for love demonstrates her preference for feelings over ideas. She is intuitive, trusting her instincts about Darcy and Wickham, even when her sister Jane warns her against making rash judgements. Only when presented with indisputable facts about both men’s actions is Elizabeth willing to revise her initial judgements.
2. Avoid All-Good & All-Bad Characters
Because the 16 personalities identify both positive and negative traits for each personality, using their descriptions helps a writer build more complicated characters. Elizabeth tends to be overly idealistic, and that negative trait makes it difficult for her to understand initially why her friend Charlotte would marry the horrible Mr. Collins. She is also condescending towards Darcy, another negative ENFJ trait, mocking him after his stinging comment about her not being attractive enough to entice him into dancing.
3. Assign Each Character Consistent, Authentic Actions
It’s one thing to say an ENFJ wants to create a positive impact on the world, but sometimes difficult to figure out how that trait reveals itself in her actions and reactions. But at various times, Elizabeth enjoys seeing her efforts pay off by standing back to witness and appreciate both her friend Charlotte’s contented life and her sister Jane’s renewed romance with Bingley. The fact that Darcy actively helps Elizabeth achieve her sister’s happiness only reinforces her change of heart about his core values.
4. Tie the Protagonist’s Wound or Misbelief to Their Weak Traits
ENFJs also like to right every wrong. This tendency leads Elizabeth into believing Wickham’s lies about how Darcy wronged him. It blinds her to Wickham’s duplicity, convincing her that her instincts about Darcy must be right, further strengthening her prejudices. Elizabeth’s already deep resentment towards society’s rules about marriage is irrevocably connected to her personality type, and even moves her to reject Darcy’s first proposal.
5. Enhance the Character Arc
One of the best things about the 16 personalities system is that it’s not static. People develop and evolve, moving towards the center of each spectrum as they become older and wiser. Feelers learn to place increasing value on facts and to consider them fairly instead of reacting emotionally to stressful situations.
Elizabeth learns to do this when Darcy discloses Wickham’s true nature with facts about the villain’s predatory nature with young women. Knowing how the opposing descriptors work and exhibit people’s personalities helps writers persistently move their characters from an unhealthy extreme on the spectrum to a more moderate one, and in Pride and Prejudice, allows Elizabeth to experience her true feelings for Darcy.
6. Choose Complementary/Contradictory Personalities for Rivals and Lovers
Jungian psychologists theorize that people are attracted to similar personalities in their friends—we can hear the extroverts screaming “let’s party!” while the introverts think “let’s not”—and are attracted to opposite personalities in their partners.
Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth’s extroverted, charming personality and her confidence. He is an introvert, a thinker, and slow to trust his instincts about Elizabeth. As an ISTJ, Darcy is nearly Elizabeth’s exact opposite. The only trait they share is being judgmental. Readers witness this trait expressed in Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth, in which he lists every reason he should not marry her, analyzing and then passing judgement on Elizabeth’s suitability to be his bride. Elizabeth reacts emotionally with her own scathing judgement over Darcy’s cold, arrogant attitude.
Ancient Greek philosophers encouraged us to Know Thyself
If you’ve never taken a Myers-Briggs or equivalent test, free tests and resources about the theory and the 16 types are easily found online. The challenge is to answer the questions quickly and honestly, resisting the urge to choose answers that are still aspirations.
One of the best sites, https://www.16personalities.com/ offers a free basic test and explanations of the different types. The site also maintains a growing database of articles and surveys on personality traits. In addition, the researchers behind 16 Personalities have further expanded the types, tagging each with assertive and turbulent classifications to address how optimism and pessimism can affect each personality type.
Do you use Myers-Briggs when you're developing your characters? What tools do you love to use for characterization?
Want to learn more? Next Monday, Selene begins an online class called "Build a Romance Blueprint in Four Weeks," where she will cover the nuts and bolts of using the 16 Character Types for your stories.
About Selene
Selene Grace Silver resides near the beach in Southern California with her romantic Scottish husband. Trained to read and write literary fiction, she never quite abandoned her early love of the romance genre.
After 20 + years teaching English, writing, and literature at the high school and college levels, she’s retired to write fiction full-time. She’s had to adjust her writing style and craft to suit genre fiction, which includes learning to plot and write complex characters. For Selene, an INFJ, writing is a journey of constant self-improvement. She occasionally teaches online, including the upcoming Orange County Romance Writers’ class Build a Romance Blueprint in Four Weeks.
To read a short prequel to the small-town beach romance series she’s developing, sign up for her newsletter. She’s also on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
Years ago, I was a panelist at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books discussing legal thrillers. My fellow panelists were men, lawyers-turned-authors, and big names in the genre. When Q&A came, a perturbed woman stood up in the back of the huge UCLA auditorium and confronted me:
“How can you write legal thrillers when you’re not even a lawyer?”
To which I responded:
“I sleep with one.”
My flippant answer brought the house down. Maybe pillow talk with my husband didn’t count as credentials, but both the woman’s question and my response encompassed the truth about writing procedurals:
Those who read them want authenticity, and those who write them better have a way to deliver.
What you’re really writing
There is a difference between a procedural and a book in which the main character is a doctor, lawyer or cop. The difference is that a procedural lawyer’s personal relationships are secondary to the system she is fighting; a romantic heroine who is a lawyer is navigating an emotional landscape. The procedural demands an author’s systemic authority; the second calls for an emotional authority.
To write the procedural, get in the trenches.
There are five things I recommend you do to prepare yourself for writing procedurals.
Educate yourself
Knowthe basics of the profession you are writing about. Titles and procedures will change in local, state and federal jurisdictions. Doctors labor under an umbrella of federal regulations, but licensing can be different at the local level. A rookie procedural mistake, for instance, is to misidentify an attorney’s title in the jurisdiction you’re writing about.
Research
Every police department, law firm, hospital, and court system have detailed websites where you will learn about the hierarchy, job titles, and anything else you need to know about the environment your character will inhabit. You can also find legal/medical journals and newspapers that will outline current concerns of the departments.
Be Curious
To make the trial in Silent Witness believable, I had to understand how secondary systems fed into the basic murder mystery. These included: child protective services, theme park safety regulations, coroner’s procedures, will provisions, political campaigns, and fathers’ rights. A procedural works best when all the pieces of the puzzle fit together believably.
Observe
Courts are open to the public, police departments have ride-along programs, college and university professors can help with forensics, anatomy, and police studies. Arrange to visit the crime lab. Pay attention to sights, sounds, smells, and employee interaction. Look for the cubbyholes and inquire about them. It is amazing what you’ll learn.
Engage
Take a weapons safety course from your local police department. Enroll in the ATF, DEA, or FBI Citizens Academies. Volunteer at a hospital and get to know the different departments and people who work in them. Accept jury duty happily.
If you engage a professional with a question, make sure you can clearly state the problem your story and the outcome you wish to have. By doing your homework, you will know exactly the right questions to ask to move your story forward and show them that you respect their time.
Final Thought
Remember, a little information goes a long way. Do not try to sound like a doctor, lawyer or cop, you simply want your characters to sound that way.
You are an author and you are drilling down so that you can learn to enhance both your plot and your characters with realistic dialogue, plot points, and scene setting. Your readers will love you for it.
Question
About Rebecca
Rebecca Forster started writing on a crazy dare and found her passion. Now a USA Today and Amazon best selling author, Forster is known for her legal thrillers and police procedurals. Over three million readers have enjoyed her Josie Bates thrillers in the Witness Series alone. With over 40 books to her name, Rebecca had a long career in traditional publishing before becoming an indie author. Her fast-paced tales of law and justice are known for deep characterization and never-see-it-coming endings.
In an effort to make her work as realistic as possible, Rebecca has graduated from the DEA and ATF Citizens academies, landed by tail hook and spent two days on the nuclear submarine U.S.S Nimitz, engaged in police ride-alongs, and continues to court watch whenever possi
Rebecca has taught at the acclaimed UCLA Writers Program and various colleges and universities. She is a sought-after speaker at bar and judges' associations as well as philanthropic groups and writing conferences. Rebecca is also a repeat speaker at the LA Times Festival of Books.
Rebecca has just released The 9th Witness, the final book in her acclaimed Witness Series, Josie Bates Thrillers. Find all her books at any online bookstore or here: https://www.rebeccaforster.com/.
