WV 005 - Why do some stories feel like the author was just making it up as they went along? Steven Duncan/Writer Type Thing PO Box 483 Lone Oak, TX 75453 www.writertypething.com
These videos have been great dude. Glad to see things going well for you right out of the gate. Eager to hear more about some of your first novels and even what you are working on now.
I think you're too obsessed with foreshadowing. For me the most reasonable use of "it was like they were just making it up as they went along" would be a lack of coherence or consistency
They all play into each other. Connection goes right along with coherence and consistency. Coherence is "logical interconnection; overall sense or understandability" and "congruity; consistency." You focus on the consistency side, he's focused on the interconnection side. Foreshadowing gives the entire story a connected feeling and a pleasing flow.
He's just confused forshadowing with setups and payoffs. A forshadow is a themeing technique, setups and payoffs are a plotting technique. Ripley does both of these perfectly (and is honestly a 10/10 show that more people should watch). Having Ripley mention his love for Caravaggio and that conversation becoming a conversation through the show on how Caravaggio went on the run because of a murder and eventually disappeared is strong forshadowing, it's not a setup though. The story is comparable to Ripley's eventual story but it's not directly relevant, only thematically. It doesn't feed into the plot, but it does feed the conversation the show wants about crime. On the other hand Ripley stealing Dickie's dressing gown and pen is a setup. Where he only stole a gown before, the pen sets up the escalation, Ripley's love of finer things, and his repeated stealing of specifically Dickie's things. The pen's constant compliments reinforce that the theivery was a good idea to Ripley and the slow progression from dressing gown to pen to wearing Dickie's clothes, using his voice, and eventual first pay off in Episode 3, but each payoff sets up a new conflict that keeps getting payoffs to eventually lead to the payoff with the ring. The ring itself allows development and subsequent setups and payoffs that eventually culminate with another setup, Ripley's hatred of Marge, to pay off into Ripley's interactions with Marge regarding the ring at the end of teh show revealing new levels of character writing for both of them. The show would be no-where near as effective or internally consistent if it went straight from Ripley pretending to be friends to wearing Dickie's clothes, and it wouldn't allow the escalations that allow setups for futher payoffs to allow further setups to further payoffs. A more basic example is the show spends so long showing Ripley struggling with the stairs to Dickie's in ep 1, to set up their difficulty to pay off with the investigator hating climbing the stairs and refusing to return to Marge toward the end because "he showed the courtesy of climbing your stairs once". This allowed a separation of communication between the two that allows further fog and incomplete information to hinder the investigation. The coherance comes from these setups and pay offs. Things can't "and then" happen, it needs to be "then because" of something and that "because" is a setup, or what he calls a foreshadow. When multiple setups culminate in a payoff together it's a beautiful thing.
