A flash-forward is a scene or passage that jumps ahead of the main timeline to show something that has not happened yet, then returns to the story's present.
Where the term comes from
Merriam-Webster defines a flash-forward as an interruption of chronological sequence, in a film or novel, by the interjection of events of future occurrence. The Wikipedia article on flashforwards gives the formal name as prolepsis and describes it as the mirror image of the flashback. It also separates it from foreshadowing: foreshadowing hints at what is coming, while a flash-forward shows it. The article calls the device primarily postmodern, but offers earlier examples, including a poem by Keats published in 1818 and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol in 1843, where Scrooge is shown his own future and then has the chance to change it.
An example
A novel opens on two paragraphs set three years ahead. Nuria Castellan is standing in a witness box, being asked to describe the last time she saw her business partner. She says, "He was laughing," and the courtroom goes quiet. Then the book jumps back to the day before the partnership began. For the next hundred pages the reader knows that something will go wrong and that Nuria will be the one called to explain it. The early scene did not tell us how, or why, or who is to blame. It placed a question over every friendly conversation that followed.
Common mistakes
- Revealing so much of the outcome that the reader has no question left to ask.
- Showing a future that the later story contradicts. A promise made out of order is still a promise.
- Giving no signal of when the jump happens, so the reader cannot tell whether they are in the present.
- Using it only as an opening hook, with no scene later that picks the thread up.
How to check your manuscript
For each flash-forward, write down what it promises in a single line. Then find the scene in the main timeline that delivers it, and compare the details side by side: names, objects, who is present, who has changed. If the later scene differs, decide whether the difference is the point of the book or a slip. Next, read the flash-forward as a stranger and write the question you are left with. If you can write one, the device is working. If you cannot, it may be telling too much. The entry on foreshadowing shows the quieter alternative, and the story structure guide helps place the payoff.
In Musael, continuity checks follow who knew what and when, which is helpful when a future scene shows facts that the present timeline has not yet reached.