How can someone see their own future? Leaving aside time travel, narcotics and dreams how might somebody get a glimpse of their future. By looking at the lives of their parents or at the lives of older folk who have shared their environment maybe, but how else? Thanks.
Fiction would seem to be the obvious one. I'm sure everyone at some point or another has read a book or seen a movie and said "this was/is/could be me."
weirdly i'm watching the film "Network" now - and that was scarily prophetic. So i'm going to say +1 on some fictional work...
Maybe the person could find an old diary or something that was written by someone a few generations older, who's now passsed away. The MC could be intrigued by how exactly similar their lives and circumstances are. Then, later, the MC could discover the life story of the person after the time period of the diary, and shockingly discover the person's ill-fated end (or whatever the case may be).
precognition fortune teller's 'reading' psychic's vision/whatever i don't see now looking at the lives of others could do that, since we don't all follow in our parents' or others' footsteps...
That's true and a good point, but it could serve as an indicator. Sort of a "If I don't change my situation, this could be me, because I'm going down that road" type of thing. That's what I had in mind when I read the original post, at least. I didn't mean that someone would blindly end up like their parents simply because they are the parents.
I don't know if your character's a very 'sensitive' person, or hard and logical, but sometimes people just know. This probably translates awfully into dramatisation, but I think it could be quite hard-hitting - to explain a bit further, it could be a dreadful feeling of foreboding, or inevitability, backed up by that person's having very brief feelings of what was going to happen in the immediate future, in a few seconds - and having it backed up. It happens to me quite a lot, brief flashes of what's going to happen in a few seconds, and I can tell you, it's really VERY creepy. Aside from that, I think the ancestor's diary's a great idea... backed up with a photograph of said ancestor looking spookily like your character, if that's not too cliche... or the character could live in an area where a certain profession or character was inevitable, and it was difficult for youngsters to break away from social expectations?
Oh, I'm thinking of doing a contemporary Christmas Carol. So the character lacks sensitivity, and broadly, (well-handled) cliches and the damn obvious will suit the piece pretty well. Cheers Noya.
No problem, glad I could be of help. Sounds very interesting, will you post a bit up for us to have a look at??
-psychic ready -clairvoyance -out of body experiences (an odd choice I know) Those are the only other choices I can think of.
You could have a "contrasting" character their age or, preferably, younger, who's making all the wrong choices, and your MC is all, "look at them, they'll never get anywhere in life... oh, crap, that's me!"
i've seen this in a movie before, called the premonition and it's a top movie( u should see it.) but anyway, what a premonition is, is that you have, you could call it a flashforward into the future, and see what is going to happen, hope it works
