I'm curious to know what everyone does to indicate a flash forward in their stories if they do it. I've authors use a bold period between paragraphs like this. Elaine told her brother to leave. .Elaine's brother was quiet. Some just make two lines instead of one like this. Anna went to bed. In school, Anna took notes.
I think having a separate paragraph would do it. You should also have other signs of what the time is.
In a manuscript you would use a centered, "#," but in a printed book a perspective change or leap in time is denoted by a few line breaks. You could also just start a new chapter. Or if the time jump isn't that far, you can just start a new paragraph.
A scene change does not absolutely require a break mark (the centered single # in manuscript) or a new chapter. It's a good idea if you are making a large hop in space or time or POV, though. A scene change is a scene change, though. Your job as a writer is to manage the transition for the reader, and that is true whether the scene change represents taking a break for lunch or shifting to a small room on another world twenty years later occupied by an alien historian.
i tend to use flashbacks more than flash forwards and place a row of * in the centre of the page to mark a change in time
I don't think it matters whether you use a row of asterisks, stars, or spaces. What matters is how you start the next paragraph and make it clear in the narrative or dialogue that a shift has occurred. I hate it, and find it really distracting if I have read half a paragraph before I realize. If there was one 'correct' way to do this there would be a 'rule' and we would know what it was, as with so many things. Just make it clear in some way so that you do not lose the poor reader.
I think he was talking about a short break in the narrative time chronology, not a flash forward to a scene in the distant future. I was confused by the thread title as well.
Not to nitpik but, if you don't mention something like, "The next day" it sounds like a description of an Anna activity, "Anna always takes notes in class." The point is what's on the page tells the reader some time has passed. If it's more time than a simple scene change, it might need more. I've been putting the '#' in my draft even if the time shift is short, but in the final draft I may just use line spaces in some of the scenes. I think the asterisks are visually nice.
