prolepsis

I just saw the word prolepsis in a book review, and it made me think. Narrowly defined, it means stating a thing as true before it actually is (“dead man walking” would be a classic example), but more generally it refers to foreshadowing.

You know, like reading a novel that starts “It was the summer that changed my life.”

This struck me, because I never do this, which was certainly not a conscious decision.

Also, I just did do it in what I posted a few minutes ago. So, encountering this word made me think.

One way of looking at it is that I shouldn’t do it, because I don’t do it — that’s done by writers who are different types of writers than me. This is obviously not a valid basis to make any artistic decisions.

(As always, I take inspiration from Robert Altman, who spent the last chunk of his career in movies deciding which projects to film based on, “Well, I’ve never done that before.”)

And I think the foreshadowing fits here, because this is the first thing I’ve written in decades where the narrator isn’t Marshall or third-person me. And Mike, the narrator, worries very much about the future, and he would tell the story that way.

Or possibly it’s just because I wanted to juice things up a bit, to reassure readers that the torturing of the characters (so often recommended these days by web-based fiction experts) will soon begin.

The story started here. The torturing is coming soon.