: Term for future-tense technique that isn't exactly foreshadowing Not sure if this has a name, but I think it's best demonstrated with some examples I've seen: Nadia and her family both considered

@Welton431

Posted in: #Technique #Terminology

Not sure if this has a name, but I think it's best demonstrated with some examples I've seen:


Nadia and her family both considered her thereafter to be without a family, something all of them, all four, for the rest of their lives, regretted, but which none of them would ever act to repair [...] because the impending descent of their city into the abyss would come before they realized that they had lost the chance.



Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid



The events that would deal Macondo its fatal blow were just showing themselves when they brought Meme Buendia’s son home. [...] She succeeded in convincing Santa Sofia de la Piedad that she had found him floating in a basket. Ursula would die without ever knowing his origin.



100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez


Or for a totally convoluted example I just came up with,


MC left the administrative building feeling victorious. In the not so far future, a tornado would tear through the area, demolishing the building. The town would later put up a playground in its place.


Basically, I think the technique is characterized by using "would" and describing an event that will happen in the future, typically beyond the end of the book's events.

Is there a name for this technique?

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@Rivera824

@Rivera824

I think more than one term would apply here.

From wiktionary,


flashforward (plural flashforwards). A dramatic device in which a future event is inserted into the normal chronological flow of a narrative.


This certainly applies, though as with flashback it suggests that you might experience a brief scene. I would argue that these sentences contain a vivid though spare scene, no action sequence required.

You might also think of it as an instance of foretelling on the part of an omniscient narrator, foretelling being a form of prophesy more frequently found in direct speech. It differs from foreshadowing because it's a direct statement of what the future will bring, rather than an oblique hint.

If this occurred in a way to suggest that the future events would unfold counter to characters' expectations, then it would be a form of dramatic irony, because it has been revealed to the spectator/reader.

There is an answer to a different SE question under English Language and Usage that offers a few other terms, none of which I like quite as much, here: SE: Literary term for referring to a future event in the story line

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