Rule for writing and life: A flim flam man (or woman) cannot work in a vacuum. It takes at least two participants for flim flam to be successful.

So, when a character (or you)is bamboozled, there will be plenty of red flags in the field.

They will look something like this:

 photo: Justine Belson

In writing, these red flags are called ‘foreshadowing’. The foreshadowing (red flags) must be there, or it won’t feel like a fair fight. No character (or you) can be perfectly innocent of what’s going on – they (or you) must, instead, embrace the deception.

A happy ending in such cases will look something like this:

 

Writing Prompt: Take a situation in your life in which you were bamboozled, and write it into fiction, observe every red flag, and how each served to foreshadow what was coming. And since this is fiction, write the ending that suits you.