Flash-forwards add a creative and atypical element to a traditional storyline by showing what is to come-a thing that most stories strive not to reveal. They are a valuable literary technique particularly in terms of their ability to grab the audience’s attention and build their enthusiasm. The first section that describes the woman waking up is a flash-forward of the action that will come later in the story.įlash-forwards are important because they reveal significant parts of a story that have yet to occur, which heightens the audience’s interest and anticipation about the plot’s outcome. The second section is the current narrative. Now, assume that the stories continues from the section paragraph above, leading up to the woman’s accident. Once she reached her car she tossed her shoes and everything else into the passenger’s seat, threw the car in reverse, and sped out of the exit of the car park without paying. The woman grabbed an untidy stack of papers from her desk, picked up her purse and heals, and ran out the door of her office.

I’ll never make it on time.’ she thought to herself.

The touched her forehead and brought her fingers in front of her eyes. Her head was throbbing, and her face was resting in a warm, sticky pool. She woke up to the sound of the ambulance. Because they reveal action before it occurs, flash-forwards build anticipation in the audience and a desire to follow the story until it reaches the outcome that they know is coming.

They present parts of the plot to the audience that are certain to happen later in the story-in one way or another. Flash-forwards usually reveal something significant about a character, plot, setting or idea by showing what is going to happen before it has actually happened. The term arose in literature as the opposite of a “flashback ” combining the words flashback and forward to give name to the technique with the same idea but in reverse. It takes a narrative forward in time from its current action. In literature, film and television, a flash-forward is a short scene in which the action jumps ahead to the future of the narrative.

Literary devices flashback examples