Terry Pratchett leaves subtle hints to the resolutions of his stories – or a piece of the resolution, at least. They aren’t obvious. It is only in re-reading the book (maybe for the nth time) that you’ll suddenly see that an innocent comment isn‘t so innocent. The clues may be hidden in the midst of conversation as in Hogfather:
Or it could be in the midst of exposition as in Maskerade:
My favorite is in The Fifth Elephant:
I’ve been aware of the clues planted in the Discworld books for some time, but I haven’t been able to find them in the most recent books. Has Terry Pratchett moved away from doing them or have I just been so wrapped up in the story that I haven’t been paying attention?
Early in Wyrd Sisters, Granny Weatherwax says “You’d have to be a born fool to be a king.”
In Men At Arms there are several references to Angua that have a double meaning. They initially appear to be about how she’s the first woman to become a member of the Watch, but of course the real issue is that’s she’s a
I am not an English major, but I believe the technical term you are looking for is “foreshadowing,” and that is only one of the tools a real writer has in his bag of tricks.
It’s doubly important for Pratchett, because his Discworld books take place in a world that explicitly runs on the Law of Narrative Causality, so all kinds of expectations, conventions, and clichés get invoked, subverted, and played with in the foreground as well as the background.
Of course, the books are full of foreshadowing. I’m specifically looking for examples where a throwaway line on page 10 (or whatever) isn’t referred to again until page 350. (Not many authors can resist overusing this technique.)
And does anyone know when this stopped? Or is it still going on and I’m too dense to see them?
You should take a look at the Annotated Pratchett File. It hasn’t been updated for several years now so there are no annotations past Monstrous Regiment (or A Hat Full of Sky if you’re counting the juvenile novels), but up to that point there are good notes pointing out some of Pratchett’s clever foreshadowing and explaining the more obscure or Anglocentric jokes and references.
The annotations for Monstrous Regiment may have an example of what you’re looking for. Early in the book, Strappi tells the troops “Hands off – well, you lot wouldn’t be able to find 'em…”, a reference to the wake-up call “Hands off cocks, on with socks!” On the face of it Strappi’s alteration to this expression is simply an insult, suggesting that the regiment is a bunch of unmasculine idiots (too underendowed and/or too dumb to locate their own genitals). But of course this also foreshadows the fact that
every member of the regiment is a girl disguised as a boy, so they don’t have cocks anyway…and their spare socks are stuffed in their trousers to disguise this fact.