Is it? 
It just felt like right wind-down when the story finished and I didn’t quite know how to end it.
That second part is key. If you don’t have a natural place for it to end, full-circle makes it a proper forcing point.
I’ll give an example where it’s not always ideal to go full circle–a segment I needed from the beginning of book 1, that is necessary to end book 4, but there’s a 5th book that picks up from what ends 4. And 4 is going to be a very messy ending.
Now, I did do different aspects that went full circle through the whole series. It’s good writing to not leave loose ends.
So, I’m not even saying don’t do it. It’s really only a problem when you have a point that you cannot offset like that.
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Example from The Young Ones
Somehow, through her rummaging, Maddie was the one who found something very interesting. She held a thick, dark blue book with a title written in cursive white ink. “‘Sheen-ee-i.’” Maddie turned to me. “Hey, Hathy, what does this word mean?”
I glanced at the title. The word was Shenéi. Maddie had pronounced it wrong. It’s actually pronounced through a mix of the words ‘shen’ and ‘eye’. “‘Shenéi’ means ‘Prophecies’,” I said.
“Sweet.” Maddie flipped open a random page. “Huh, it’s written in modern Lyriumian. Weird.” She cleared her throat. “‘Year: 771B523M557T355. Prophecy #1 – The Sun will fade and the Beast will rise.’”
“That’s depressing,” Imogene said, coming to stand beside her. “Do a different one.”
Maddie shrugged and did so. “Hey, here’s one from this year. ‘Year: 771B523M557T247 – The Vessel of Time will stand on the crossroad of life and death as a darkness of old threatens the Worlds.’”
A bit of both, I guess. Sometimes it contributes to the plot (the second one in the example) and sometimes it doesn’t (the first one)
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Okay, I did some foreshadowy thinking here.
One thing I noticed about my understanding is that I thought foreshadowing always had to be foreboding and this is probably because I used to read Warriors. See, Warriors often has a prologue that is a huge foreshadowing of some horrible thing about to happen in the series.
Here, you see, “horrible thing”. It was never a good thing. And the foreshadowing was also obviously mysterious, involved a big part of lore, and was sometimes even magical. Often happened in a dark place like a dark forest, or at night. Or, the foreshadowing was a prophecy that sounded like death was approaching.
So, I thought all foreshadowing is somehow mysterious and foreboding.
But some of you have foreshadowing in the form of little off-handed jokes characters make which is something I never thought could be a foreshadowing moment.
What are the types of foreshadowing you guys have used in your stories?
@alcoholandcaffeine @Churro @alenatenjo @JellyGhost @J.L.O
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As I said, with Mini Moo, the one thing where Anise chews out guys for dating so quickly, then goes and dates so quickly. It’s a very negative thing when it’s brought up, but it’s the culmination of the story between the MC and the ML. It comes with negatives–but those negatives aren’t in THEMSELVES. It’s a pretty happy ending. What this type is, is self-skewering, not dramatic.
The one I could guarantee is a 4 book long foreshadowing is the death of the MC’s husband. It’s an abrupt end to the story, it’s going to be unexpected and senseless, so yeah, highly dramatic happens. And there’s a book after that, too.
But let’s say there’s a funeral at the start of the story, and it’s a wonderful, perfect, outdoorsy day, and one of the characters says, “Why can’t the world mirror my heart?”
It would be perfect for a wedding to be on a rainy day, a child to be born during a hurricane, a cancer announcement being broken to a family on a peaceful 4th of July with fireworks and a bbq. It doesn’t have to be complex. It doesn’t have to be negative. It just has to feel like we’ve come full circle back to it. And all these things could be done in the same story, while that thought is said once, at the beginning. It doesn’t have to be a 1-off.
It could be insanely inanane, like this:
"So, I was driving with this dude at work, and he kept running all the red lights. I asked him “wtf, man?” and he goes “It’s fine, my brother taught me to run red lights.” And he kept doing this, thought I was going to piss myself with a few close calls. Finally, we’re getting close to work and we get a green light, and I started to relax when this asshole slammed on the breaks! Again, I went “wtf, man/” and he said, “My brother might be comming!”
From telling this joke to living with a bad wreck because of either faulty lights or someone not paying attention, at the most inconvenient time, would be foreshadowing. If it’s told in a string of bad jokes throughout the story, no one will know which joke is coming back to bite the backside of everyone.
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I don’t really use the dark and foreboding kind because I don’t really write that sort of thing. I mostly use it for plot twists, I guess. Suspense and intrigue. Right now, for example, I’ve got a character with some interesting details in his backstory, which are only going to come out later on in the story. Until then, though, the people who know about his backstory are constantly suspicious, and saying things like…are you sure about this guy?
For me, foreshadowing is like I said in my first post - Chekhov’s gun. I usually write things as they come to me, then as the story expands, I try to make sure that everything, or most everything, has a purpose, and in this way, elements I introduced at the beginning of the story help me build out later parts of it.
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Forebodings, visions, book quotes, inside jokes
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I’m trying to do the same!
Sometimes there’s things that if I try to give it a purpose, it sounds forced 
Slightly off topic but do you have times when you try to give something a purpose and then many sessions later, realize it’s not going to work out? If you have those moments, what do you do then? Get rid of it or keep it even though it doesn’t seem to have a purpose?
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These full circle moments, when I see them in books it’s like "oooooooooh 
" Idk, like a feeling of satisfaction and amazement at how well it came full circle.
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Hence the smol disclaimer of ‘most everything’ 
Some things are too minor or irrelevant to reappear later. Though if it feels like they are packing a punch at the beginning, and then fizzle out, maybe you don’t need them there in the first place 
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This is the thing that’s going on with something in the beginning of my current draft I realized that maybe I can somehow do without it though it packs a punch…but I’m not entirely sure what to do if I take it out.
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They become red herrings.
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That is also an interesting way of looking at it! But I suppose it depends on how much of a red herring it is 
There’s a fine line between plot twist and disappointment.
Do you wanna elaborate a little bit? Maybe one of us can help out? This is All Things Writing, after all, specific writing help is mainly what it’s intended for 
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My personal best way to foreshadow is when even I don’t know I’m foreshadowing.
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I’ve noticed that, too.
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