Writing Forum

I see prophecies as a means of foreshadowing which has been somewhat overused in fairytales and epic fantasy. I also think it is a bad way of doing foreshadowing since it, as Stephen pointed out, makes it clear that something is definitely going to happen, whereas good foreshadowing makes promises to the reader without them realizing it before the promises are fulfilled.

However, you improve this by making the prophecies somewhat vague, adding false prophecies, adding prophecies that might/might not be contradictory, or adding different prophecies that might/might not predict the same event. This way you can have prophecies whilst still keeping the readers on their toes.