Plant it in chapter two.Pay it off on purpose.

Foreshadowing is a promise, and readers keep count

The old rule says a gun on the wall in act one must go off by act three. The deeper point is that readers treat every lingering detail as a promise. A locked door, a scar nobody explains, a letter that isn’t opened: each one opens a small account in the reader’s mind, and they expect it to be settled. Settle it well and the ending feels inevitable. Forget it and the book feels careless, even if the reader can’t say why.

The trouble is that writers plant far more than they remember. Some setups are deliberate. Many are accidental: a detail added for texture that reads like a clue. A foreshadowing tracker’s first job is to notice both, so you can decide which ones to pay off and which to cut.

Four kinds of promise, four ways to keep one

Not every setup is settled the same way, so Authrot gives each promise a type, and the type decides how it is checked. A question must be answered: who sent the letter, what happened to the brother. A setup must be used: the sword in the lake has to be drawn. A clock must run out or be defused: the wedding in three days, the poison with a week to work. A debt must be called in: the favour owed, the oath sworn.

Thinking in types sharpens your own revision too. A question that is answered off the page is a cheat; a setup that is mentioned again but never used is a tease; a clock that is quietly forgotten drains the tension from every chapter it was meant to drive.

• Question: must be answered
• Setup: must be used
• Clock: must run out or be defused
• Debt: must be called in

Planting well: visible, but not loud

Good foreshadowing is seen and then forgotten. The reader notices the detail, files it away, and feels the click when it returns. Too subtle and the payoff seems to come from nowhere. Too loud and the reader solves the book in chapter three. The usual craft advice is to hide a setup in plain sight: give it a second job in the scene where it appears, so it reads as character or atmosphere first and as a clue only in hindsight.

Distance matters as much as subtlety. A setup paid off on the next page is barely foreshadowing at all; one paid off four hundred pages later needs a reminder or two along the way, or readers will have lost it. Each time a promise is touched again it is moved, and those moves are what keep a long setup alive. A promise with no moves for half a book is one you may need to bring back before you pay it off.

For mysteries and twists the stakes are higher still. A fair-play mystery lets the reader see every clue the sleuth uses before the reveal. Seeing each clue as a promise, with the chapter that planted it, makes it easy to check that the solution rests only on what was on the page.

How far each promise reaches

A promise also has a horizon. Some should pay off within a chapter or two: the knock at the door at the end of chapter seven should be answered in chapter eight. Some belong to an arc, and should close before that arc ends. And some are the long game, the question the whole story turns on, which may not be answered until the last book.

Horizons are what make overdue meaningful. A long-game promise left open for thirty chapters is fine. A soon promise left open for thirty chapters has been forgotten. Authrot shows a soon promise written past without a payoff as left hanging, and a promise whose arc has ended without it as overdue. If you are holding one open on purpose, mark it to keep open and it is never called late.

Where promises come from

When a chapter is read, the setups it plants are found and tied to the words that planted them, and later chapters that move a promise forward are recorded as steps along its trail. You can see a promise’s whole life on one card: planted here, moved here and here, due by the end of this arc.

You decide what each one is. Confirm its type, its horizon and where it hangs (an arc, a thread, or a new one made for it), and later readings leave your choice alone. Promises that nobody has given a home yet wait in their own list, overdue ones first, so the important ones don’t sit unclaimed.

Promises can also be planned before they are written. A chapter plan can carry the promises that chapter should plant or pay off, and an arc lists the ones it opens and should close. A promise that exists only in the plan is drawn as planned, so you can see the setups you still owe the draft as well as the ones the draft owes the reader.

Paying off, on purpose

When a promise is due, Has it paid off? reads the chapters after it and tells you whether it paid off and where, whether the story is still carrying it, or whether it was dropped. If it was dropped, you have three honest choices: give it a later arc, drop it, or write the payoff.

For the third, reminders help. Drop a reminder on the stretch of an arc where the promise should come back into focus, so the plan says where it returns. For a chapter you’ve already written, Weave proposes a short passage that brings the promise back there, waiting for you to add it or let it go.