A hint early in a story of something that will happen later: an image, a line, a rule or a mood that prepares the audience, so the event feels inevitable when it comes rather than convenient.
Foreshadowing prepares. A character learns to pick a lock in act one, a storm warning plays on a car radio, a joke about drowning lands a little too hard. When the event arrives, the audience feels it was coming, even if they did not predict it. A twist rewards a second viewing; foreshadowing makes the first one feel earned.
On the page it has to read as something else first. A hint that only exists to hint is a signpost, and readers skip ahead to the payoff it announces. Give each one a present-tense reason to be in the scene, a beat of character or conflict, and let its second meaning surface later.
Foreshadowing and Chekhov's gun are two views of the same contract: the hint is a promise, and the story owes the payoff. Writing backwards helps. Name the reveal, then go back through the draft and find where the audience could first have sensed it, and how many times.
They overlap. A plant is a specific thing set up to pay off later: an object, a skill, a rule. Foreshadowing is broader and can be a mood or an image that hints at what is coming without being used directly.
Yes. If the audience can name the payoff the moment they see the hint, the scene that delivers it has nothing left to give. Hide the hint inside a beat that matters for another reason.
Start from the event and work backwards. Find two or three earlier moments where the audience could sense it coming, and make each one do another job in its scene too.
