prolepsis

My dear friend Dr Gillian Boughton-Willmore has recently been at a literary conference, where apparently the buzz word was prolepsis. A classic example is Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier where in the opening chapter we are shown the characters at the very end of their story. Another example is The Dark of Summer by Eric Linklater (one of my favourite novels and greatly undervalued I think), where once again we are given the final scene of what turns out to be an extraordinary journey for the protagonist. Gillian explained to me that using prolepsis gives the reader the sense that they are in the hands of an author who is in control of their material from beginning to end. 

The result has been that I have decided to intersperse the chapters in the novel I am working on with short scenes that take place in the future, all from the point of view of another character. I have no idea whether this is an improvement, but it has been fun to do!