There is trust that if knowing the ending would have made the story better, then the author would have put it at the start of the book- and that is indeed often done with certain types of books, and is a well known technique with some technical name which I forgot.
I’d interpret the study that more authors need to use this technique, not that readers should second-guess authors.
Well that to, but it wasn’t what I were thinking about… That thing where there is a prologue about something exiting happening, then 90% of the book is a flashback of the event leading up to it. Ugh, my memory is so horrible at coming up wth examples of things.
You might be thinking of “full circle” stories. An example of this is To Kill a Mockingbird which starts with Jem’s broken arm and eventually explains how it happened. More dramatic examples exist, certainly, including some of the HPMoR examples.
There is trust that if knowing the ending would have made the story better, then the author would have put it at the start of the book- and that is indeed often done with certain types of books, and is a well known technique with some technical name which I forgot.
I’d interpret the study that more authors need to use this technique, not that readers should second-guess authors.
foreshadowing?
Well that to, but it wasn’t what I were thinking about… That thing where there is a prologue about something exiting happening, then 90% of the book is a flashback of the event leading up to it. Ugh, my memory is so horrible at coming up wth examples of things.
You might be thinking of “full circle” stories. An example of this is To Kill a Mockingbird which starts with Jem’s broken arm and eventually explains how it happened. More dramatic examples exist, certainly, including some of the HPMoR examples.
yea that’s the one I think.
I hadn’t really thought of sharing spoilers as second-guessing the author before. Interesting way to think about it I guess.