To Flash Forward or Not To Flash Forward?

After reading hundreds of good scripts and thousands of bad ones, I have strong opinions about Flash Forwards (but they are reasonable!)

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During my years of working in literary management, I read thousands of scripts.

Reading a new script from someone I don’t know always starts the same way:

First I open the PDF and look at the page count. So far so good.

Does the font look normal? Does this feel like a professional screenplay? (First impressions really do matter!)

Then I read the first sentence. Does it evoke an image? An action? A visual that launches a specific, compelling question in my mind?

I always want a script to be good. As a reader, I’m on the writer’s side. I want to be entertained, and I want to bring the writer good news about my beliefs about their future potential. As a consultant, I love a challenge. I want to read a great script that has a couple of hard-to-identify problems that I can really sink my teeth into.

But I am also a cold-hearted cynic after working in this business for so long.

I am dubious that any script is going to blow me away when I first start reading it.¹

It’s from this position of skepticism that an opening sequence must win me over.

(And I know all professional readers feel the same way).

When the first moments of a screenplay are a high stakes yet unexplained threat, or a character is engaging in shocking behavior, I immediately know what comes next.

I write in my notes, “Let me guess… CUT TO: 48 HOURS EARLIER.”

My exact time frame usually isn’t right, but I can almost always see a Flash Forward coming.

And it’s a disappointing feeling.

My internal reaction is always something along the lines of “UGH.”

I am not alone in my dislike of Flash Forward cold opens. But there was a time when they were considered an innovative storytelling technique. It was referred to as in medias res, and was viewed as an exciting way to start a movie or TV show.

But then Breaking Bad happened.

Breaking Bad has arguably one of the greatest TV pilots of all time. No disputes there. It started in the middle of the story and then went back to answer the question, “How did we get here?”

The problem is that too many writers saw it and thought they could do it too.

Suddenly everyone wanted to use this exact same technique in all their own hooks.

There was no need to start your story as late as possible. You could start your story at the climax and then go back and explain whatever you needed to. There was no need to craft a strong structure that came from a Central Dramatic Question. You could just freeze frame on some absurd image and say “You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation.”

But, typical of the life cycle of any creative storytelling technique², audiences and readers got savvy to it, grew tired of it, and now it feels lazy.

But I’m not saying you can’t use a Flash Forward.

Just that it needs to feel justified.

So let’s dig into when a Flash Forward should be used, why it should be used, and how to make it actually engaging for your reader.

What is the purpose of a flash forward?

Flash forwards should be used to accomplish both of the following objectives:

Objective #1: Establish a compelling question for the sequence.

I have explained in previous deep dives why a Central Dramatic Question is essential to your script.

If done correctly, your Flash Forward can launch this question in a way that is compelling to your reader. Meaning, we are legitimately interested in sticking around all the way to the end of the script to find out the answer.

“What the heck is going on here?” is not a compelling question.

A compelling plot question is specific. There is a clash between what we would expect to see and what we are seeing played out on screen.

In a pilot, the CDQ can be launched right away in the cold open. You see this often in murder mysteries. (“Who is the killer?”) In a feature, the CDQ for the movie is generally launched by the end of Act One, meaning the Flash Forward launches a Sequence Question that will be answered later in the story (but way before the end). The purpose of the Flash Forward is to get us interested just long enough to take us into the real plot question later.

One of my favorite examples of a Flash Forward that works brilliantly is this opening scene from the Yellowjackets pilot episode (TW: violence).

source: Paramount+

I bring it up because a person running through the woods clearly in danger with no other context is a Flash Forward I see in amateur scripts all the time. And usually, I don’t care about this person. Why? Because I don’t know anything about them. Why are they in danger? Who are they? How did they get here? With no context, there is no reason for me to get invested in whether they live or die.

But Yellowjackets is interested in more than just that she is in danger.

It’s the unexpected nature of what is chasing her that launches a disturbing mystery. And this mystery will escalate for the rest of the series.

It’s the specific, surprising details in the scene that launch the compelling questions:

1. Cult-like symbols on trees lead us to believe that this woman is being pursued by some sort of native tribe.

2. We see her fall to her death in a pit of spikes, further evidence that this is an uncivilized cannibal group.

3. But then when a terrifying masked person examines the body, that person is revealed to be wearing pink Converse. These aren’t the shoes of some heathen. They’re modern shoes. Childish shoes. American teenage girl shoes.

4. The person turns and reveals that they are wearing a high school soccer jersey. This isn’t some native tribe. These are high school girls out in the woods hunting one another.

I really do want to know how they got into this situation.

The question for the series is: Who is the girl that is killed? (The necklace she’s wearing becomes significant by the end of the pilot episode).

It also launches the season 1 question: Did these girls survive by eating one another?

And the pilot question: How did a high school soccer team end up in the woods hunting each other?

Just showing a girl being hunted and trying to cut it off with a suspenseful, “Is she going to get out of this alive?” wouldn’t have been interesting because it wouldn’t have been a radically different experience from what we’re used to seeing on screen.

And we don’t care about whether a person we don’t know escapes danger.

The occult mystery surrounding this tribal system, on the other hand, is the basis for what makes the entire show so fun to watch.

Objective #2: Establish the tone of the story immediately.

The reason Breaking Bad and Yellowjackets both launch in medias res is because if they started chronologically, they would be pretty boring stories about a normal world.

The audience would have experienced whiplash once the writer later introduced the level of violence that ends up happening. Or worse, they wouldn’t have even gotten that far because they would have gotten bored and turned off the show before making it to the part where things got exciting.

But in a wold that is tired of Flash Forwards, you can often establish tone in other chronological ways before you fall back on this tired technique.

Many horror movies are great at this.

Pay attention to the opening moments of movies and TV shows that you watch.

Notice how they set genre and tone expectations as quickly as possible. This can involve leveraging sound or highlighting an everyday occurrence through a foreshadowing symbolic lens.

Or maybe you just need to make the story more interesting at the beginning.

Challenge yourself.

Try a plot question first. See if you can use a linear moment to establish the tone.

If you truly think that a Flash Forward is the only way to do both of these things, then that’s okay. Sometimes you’re right. It is.

The Flash Forward is available to you. It’s a storytelling technique as valid as any other.

Just make sure you’re only using it as a last resort.

Why should a Flash Forward be your last resort?

Leaning on Flash Forward inherently has drawbacks.

We’ve already discussed the two most important ones:

Downside #1: It is overused.

We as an audience have seen so many Flash Forwards that it feels like a disappointing, uncreative choice. And the first feeling someone has while reading your script should ideally not be disappointment.

Downside #2: Without context, who cares?

There are 8 billion people in the world.

Millions of them die every day. Many of these deaths are tragic. But unfortunately, the human brain does not have the capacity to care about every single one. Not unless we know something about the person.

This compartmentalized empathy applies to characters too. Your reader is less likely to care about someone they never had a chance to meet.

The are also two other downsides to Flash Forwards that I want you to consider.

Downside #3: You make your audience live out the boring part instead of the exciting one.

Sure. Maybe it is essential that you go back to THREE WEEKS EARLIER and explain how we got here.

Or is it?

If you genuinely think that people won’t care about the story if it opened at its chronological beginning, then why would we want to spend most of the Pilot in that world?

Yes, I am aware that there are counterexamples that disprove the rule here.

But consider at least trying to start your story at the linear, most exciting part. Or make that everyday life more interesting in and of itself.

There are so many other structural devices at your disposal here. Try to get your reader invested in your plot structure right away instead of just distracting them from the fact that your beginning is slow and boring.

Downside #4: It could be a spoiler.

If you use a Flash Forward, then you rob yourself of the ability to use life or death stakes for that character.

We are never going to worry whether the character survives an encounter if we know that they are present in the Flash Forward. And if that’s okay with you, fine.

But if you want your audience’s engagement in the story to hinge on tension and suspense when it comes to potential injury or death, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by giving away that someone makes it to the end safely.

The Flash Forward Checklist

If you want to start your story in the future and then cut back to the present, ask yourself the following questions first:

1. Why am I using a Flash Forward?

2. Is this objective necessary for setting up a Central Dramatic Question?

3. Are there any other structural ways to achieve this objective? - You can’t say “no” unless you actually write that different version and then decide it doesn’t work.

Once you’ve tried all your other options, Flash Forward might still be the only way.

If that’s the case, then go for it!

There are no rules. I am simply trying to help you write a script that gets readers excited from the very beginning to the very end. ☺️

1. I love to be pleasantly surprised, but this is, by definition, rare.

2. See also: “Breaking the narrative fourth wall” and “the Mockumentary.”