Flashforward (prolepsis)
Narratology & storytellingNarrative anticipation: the story reveals or glimpses a future event before reaching it.
Example
Announcing on page one the death that won't arrive until the final chapter.
Prolepsis projects the narrative ahead of its chronology: it announces or shows an event that hasn't yet occurred in the story's present. From the simple notice ("he would never see him again") to a full scene moved to the opening, it trades the suspense of what for the tension of how.
It's the engine of coffin-openings and prophetic first sentences — like that of One Hundred Years of Solitude, which strides across decades in a single line. Prolepsis commits: what is announced must come to pass, and how the story honors its promise becomes the real subject.
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