Writing.Com General Discussion

Yes, but:

a) that was a movie, and they play by different rules (remember, it's an audio-visual medium, not a literary one)
b) the only good reason for doing that is because the beginning is so boring that you need to give the audience a reason to stay in their seats until things pick up. No amount of trickery is going to fool the reader - if they read thirty boring pages, they'll put the book down. It works in movies because the audience only has to wait thirty or forty minutes.

I know there are a lot of 'new' authors who have followed this movie trend, but the proper place for the end of the story is at the end. If there is something lacking at the beginning of your story, such as a hook or some excitement, re-think the beginning of your story rather than put a band-aid on it. I've sometimes seen a snapshot of the end in a prologue too, which just doesn't make sense. The prologue is for stuff that comes before the story proper, stuff that's needed for the reader to make sense of what is going on in the story before the characters do, or to build context.

Yes, I know I'm quite opinionated on this, and there will be people who disagree with me, and I accept that. However, I would point out that nothing in your story should be there without reason, and titillating your reader simply isn't a good enough reason - you could quite easily do that without borrowing from a future scene. You're a writer, so use your skills. Even a mundane coffee-shop scene can be entertaining enough to keep your readers interested, if you imbue it with humour, satire or elegantly describe how your MC is dissatisfied with his humdrum life.

If you are writing a screenplay, then obviously movie rules apply. However, I would leave the decision as to whether the first scene is a taste of the future to the director in the editing room. A prospective sale is not going to happen on the basis of the future scene at the beginning, since anyone can do that - what they want to know is how do you get to that scene, and why it is important.