Screenwriting : Foreshadowing and Surprises by Mark William Chambers

Tough question to answer. Depends how big the setups and payoffs are. I think more than one or two big setups for your A and B plot lines would be too much but it really depends on the genre, length of the film etc.

Forshadowing: the use of indicative words, actions, phrases and hints that set the stage for a story to unfold and give the reader/viewer a hint of something that is going to happen without revealing the story or spoiling the suspense. Great writers and filmmakers use foreshadowing masterfully, which I guess would be the "middle ground" answer to your question. In a couple of my "Desert Island Films": Cinema Paradiso - Toto learns the skills of running a film projector from Alfredo in the beginning of the film. When Alfredo is blinded in the fire, Toto becomes the town's projectionist and can continue the power of cinema. And the parts of the films that Alfredo is forced to censor...gulp...you know later what he really did with them, and the significance of that act at the end....what a very special and very beautiful film Cinema Paradiso is, and at so many levels. The Godfather - Michael, the returning war hero, "never meant to be in the family business"....well, you know the rest. David Fincher is a master at foreshadowing, too. The scene in Fight Club, when The Narrator is fighting himself at his job, and the scene in 7even...where we only see Tracy's head in a film frame....as is Quentin Tarantino....the watch scene in Pulp Fiction had more purpose, as evidenced in a later scene....masterful. And the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock. All the great writers and directors are also brilliant at foreshadowing, of course. So many great ways to use foreshadowing. Through music. Through vision. Through words, or objects. Foreshadowing is a great tool for writers. Kudos to you, Mark, for starting an awesome thread - I hope you get some extra karma points for the Best Topic of the Month. Technique topics are the best.

There is a skill to foreshadowing. The thing about a plot twist (surprise) is that it isn't something that happens at the twist, it is something that has always been true and is revealed at the twist moment So (SPOILERS!) in THE SIXTH SENSE the Bruce Willis character is dead on page 7 of the screenplay. He is a child psychologist, and one of the patients he failed shows up at his house and shoots him. But him being dead isn't revealed until near the end. He doesn't suddenly die when it's revealed - he's been dead since page 7. And once you know he's dead, you can rewatch the movie and see that it has always been true since page 7. That anniversary dinner with his wife where she is cold and distant and doesn't respond to anything he says? He's the one who is cold at that point (as in dead). Why don't we notice it? Because writers are Magicians and part of the skill of our work is creating a strong diversion which keeps the audience from seeing the twist until it is revealed. That diversion in SENSE is that the Bruce Willis character gets a new patient - a deeply disturbed little boy who claims to see dead people. So Willis doesn't want to screw up with this kid the way he screwed up with that other kid. While the audience focuses on the the new kid's problems ("Nothing up my sleeve!") they don't notice things like - we never see Willis open a door, he's always already in the room (ghosts can't open doors unless they take lessons from that scary Train Ghost). Here's the thing about twists - because Willis has always been dead since page 7, he can't be shown doing anything a dead person couldn't do. That means you have to know that he's dead when you write those scenes (or do a major rewrite once you realize he's dead - and that can be problematic because for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and your whole story might end up changing). So it all comes down to the skill of the writer in creating a great (organic) diversion... and all of the other writing involved in the script. The other foreshadowing thing is also accomplished with skill - and here's my usual example on that: In ALIENS there's this scene where all of the Space Marines are joking and goofing off in the briefing, "Is this gonna be a bug hunt?" and then Ripley speaks - trying to stress how dangerous these things are, and her emotions get the best of her and she comes off as a frightened civilian who's probably afraid of her own shadow. She may even cry in that scene, can't remember. But she's still shaken up from her past close encounters... and the Space Marines have zero respect for her. Heck, she previously freaked out about the ship's android (I mean, Artificial Person). So how can Ripley win the respect of the crew? When they are loading the drop ship, she asks if she can help. Apone is skeptical, but says "sure" - hey, they're gonna watch this woman completely screw up, it'll be good for a laugh. But Ripley has been working on the docks with Power Loaders, steps into the rig and precision loads some stuff - impressing Apone and winning a little respect from the crew. This is a great little scene where we cheer her on for showing them she's not just some emotional wimp that they'll have to babysit - there are some things she can do like load cargo. When you first see the film, you don't realize this scene is really setting up the end battle - because it has two purposes: Now and Later. Now it's about Ripley trying to win some respect from the crew, Later it ends up being the plant that shows her skills with that loader for the final battle. Again, the skill is making it seem like the scene is all about the now and there is now later purpose.