Flashback reveals the importance of the past and its ongoing effect on the present. List of Terms Action. Ad Hominem. Alter Ego. APA Citation. Comic Relief. Deus ex machina. Double Entendre. Dramatic irony. Extended Metaphor.
Fairy Tale. Figures of Speech. Literary Device. Pathetic Fallacy. Plot Twist. Point of View. Red Herring. Rhetorical Device. Rhetorical Question. Science Fiction. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Turning Point. Urban Legend. Literary Terms. Thanks so much! Johnnie, if your story is being told in present tense, your flashback should be in past tense. If your story is being told in past tense, your flashback should be in past perfect tense. Is that what you were thinking?
Thanks for answering, Mary. I thought the flashback began in past perfect for a novel written in past tense , then switched to past tense and ended in past perfect. Thanks again! Johnnie, technically you are correct. If the story is in past tense and the flashback is a long scene, the first sentence of the flashback should be in past perfect tense, then switch to past tense to avoid becoming too ponderous , as you said, until the last sentence, which should go back to past perfect tense.
Mary, so many good points here! I love a good flashback when it adds layers to the characters and depth to the story. Perhaps I need to move it, but the series of flashbacks throughout the story give the reader hints as to how the male and female lead came to be in their current situation so that when the heart monitor stops beeping, the reader checks her heart as well.
I hope! Meghan, it sounds like you are revealing only a little at a time in your progressive flashbacks, which is good. Like you said, it might be worthwhile to take another look at the first one and determine if it might work better to blend it in to a later flashback, keeping more of the mystery going a little longer.
Just a thought. It sounds like the books you mentioned had large portions of backstory that detracted from the current story. This makes my question almost comical.
The first book I wrote—and the only novel length one—was actually an entire flashback. The prologue opens one year after the events that took place in the rest of the book. This was done for two reasons. The first chapter is a Thanksgiving holiday scene filled with the sisters and their families, so I wanted the reader to be able to connect to the three sisters first before adding in their husbands and kids.
First, the backstory IS your story. Second, I wonder if it would be better to eliminate the prologue, folding anything vital into the epilogue. What do you think? Thanks for your comments, Mary. I think the epilogue idea will be better.
My main concern was in introducing so many of the characters in the first chapter. I think it might need to be reworked so that only the three sisters are introduced in the opening chapter and the extended families come in afterwards. Thanks for the refresher! I love how Katie Ganshert used them in her novels. They are full scenes — shorter than her other scenes, and more like vignettes — and I believe are written in present tense, which differs from the rest of the book, which is written in past tense.
They are particularly poignant scenes that show something about the main character and why she is the way she is. I found these particularly effective…and powerful. Jeez, it sure is nice when I read an article and can do a fist pimp when I get something right. I was worried about the flashback in the novel I currently signed with a publisher.
In my opinion, it not only heightens the ending with a major reveal, but it also brings conclusion to the story. Congratulations on your publishing contract, Annalyse.
And congratulations that you held off the flashback until so late in the story. Obviously, the publisher thought you succeeded in your intended purpose for it. He went from the present to two different times in the past, those times being a couple of months apart.
It was difficult to know which of those times he was flashing back to. And, there were multiple flashbacks, with the older one moving toward the later one. As much of the book was in the past as the present. What kept you from abandoning it? The fact that I had written my baseball book which you saw chapters of , and was planning a sequel to, and so I figured I needed to stick it out and see how the experienced expert did it.
I just had a flashback to an earlier blog you wrote a month ago and I noticed, yours was a perfect FB and you followed all your rules to a Tee. Practice what you preach. I always say, well actually my dad said that a lot, he was a minister. End Note: I remember one of his sermons had a flash back to an earlier time, no wait! All his sermons were a flash back to an earlier time. Never mind. Your flashback is confusing me, Donnie.
Your bible knowledge is showing there. I once read a book in which the flashbacks were told in present tense, while the rest of the story was told in past tense. I was enthralled. It gave the flashbacks such immediacy.
I would never have thought to try such a thing. Pretty sure she did that. Lindsay mentioned them earlier. Katie obviously did the reverse-tense flashbacks effectively since three of you have commented about them in this one post. Or both. More so than the actual storyline did, apparently! Your next story sounds wonderfully complex, Andrew. Three thousand words…sounds like an explosion of inspiration.
But done correctly, flashbacks can take you back in time and give you vital pieces of info. I did use a flashback prologue for my Viking novel, and will probably do that in my second one, as well. I love the psychological drama a flashback can provide. And I had some good advice once, that the flashback should always be moving the storyline forward.
The girl dropped her gun and almost started to turn, before realising that the English was being used to try to trap any unwary British agent. She stood motionless, her heart beating like a steam hammer. His gun loosed off a short burst of fire as he crumpled.
Fortunately for her, the recoil caused it to fire upwards so the worst that she received was a torn sleeve to her jacket, and a very small graze to her upper arm that nonetheless hurt like hell. They both ran blindly through the woods, away from the village, but in different directions as they tried to make good their escape.
They could hear the sound of shots and confused shouting in French and German behind them, as their comrades fled as best they could from the German patrol that had stumbled upon them. It was every man for himself. The following day, after laying low in a farm building overnight and through a good part of the day, the girl stole some clean clothes from a washing line, then buried her own blood stained clothing and made her way carefully back to her home.
He was picked up by a patrol the following morning after being wounded during an exchange of fire as he tried to get away. Her taxi driver was waiting there, seated at an outside table watching her as he drank his coffee.
They returned to his cab for the journey back to the railway station where she would catch the local train to take her back to rendezvous with the rest of her coach party. The taxi driver asked her, in poor English, if the man had been family. She thanked the man, then air kissed his cheeks in the French manner before running, surprisingly nimbly for someone of her age, into the station to catch the approaching train.
The right of Chris Graham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act Love the old woman character!
There was more telling 3rd person than I would have done, but most of it was parceled out well, usually when a character would have been reflecting on their past and recollecting the things the narrator was telling. When it was over, I was jolted back to the action in progress.
Flashbacks are an obvious, and comparatively minor, example. The worst one I ever saw was when a recovering protagonist was subjected to a historical parable that went on for chapters… If I were him, I think I would have just given up and died. Hmm, sounds to me like its possible the original version shifted via the input of these folks. Production on this film was troubled. They lost directors and actors like crazy in pre-production. Thanks for this post! Yes, indeed. Same goes for any other device includes prologues that are separated from the main narrative in any way.
This is kinda the same reason the current show Arrow lost me. The flashback scenes with Oliver Queen on the island added some pertinent mystery, but not nearly enough for the time they robbed from the main narrative. I was on a trans-Atlantic flight and had a menu of TV shows and movies to choose from. Presenting backstory through subtext would keep the spotlight on its real purpose, what it means for characters now. Like you said, it works best when the act of remembering has a direct effect on what comes next, to bring it back to what matters.
Sure, some memories actually are dramatic. This is brilliantly put. Thanks so much for this article! My MS has a character who had a stutter as a child and mucked around in class to try to cover it up. The school principal told his parents to get him some speech pathology to make adjusting to his new school easier. I put this scene in to a explain his slight stutter when he gets nervous or excited in the main story ; b show how he learned resilience as a child despite being a bit of a loner ; and c why his parents stuck him into an acting troupe as it was cheaper than speech pathology.
Is this a good approach? Never say never, but since both flashbacks and dreams can be areas of major trippage in themselves, combining them can sometimes just compound the problems. The exception would be if the dream is brief and raises more subtext than it explains away. I was interested to read this posting as it made me question my motives for using flashbacks. Jane starts off as a local, gets kidnapped, escapes, talks her way onto a Confederate warship and finally becomes both a naturalised Confederate citizen and a Space Fleet officer.
She is always slightly out of place, although she moves in Confederate society, and is accepted because of her natural charm, when crisis strikes she is the one who knows how to drive a combine harvester or milk a cow. Jojo is the same. Despite growing up in a world where promiscuity is common and women are often victims, she is very fussy about who shares her bed, and anyone trying to make her a victim is in line for an immediate trip to the crematorium.
My chosen approach would always be to present the dichotomies of these characters in their current situations and use the juxtaposition to create subtext. Then use the most important answers as revelations within their character arcs and plots.
Thank you, thank you, thank you… for posting about flashbacks! Oh my word, do people use them way too often and so flippantly! Just guessing here. I wish more people who write for the movies would take these things to heart.
Great point regarding subtext. My theory on flashback-overuse is that flashbacks are just too much fun for writers. We tend to love any excuse we can get to ramble around in our story worlds and our character backstories. I used the flashback partly for worldbuilding, and it made my beta readers love her and relate to her. The consequences of the events in the second flashback provided an important clue, and it underscored that the heroine is clever and resourceful enough to handle the current crisis the story revolves around.
And they occur early in the story, when the BFF and the reader are asking the questions the flashbacks answer, when showing the answers would have the greatest impact. Consequences are huge. Any scene that creates consequences—and therefore, cause and effect—automatically ups its importance to the plot. The major downside of NaNo for me is I tend to splash backstory on the page just to get the wordcount up.
I LOVE the tip that the flashback needs to be not only relevant to the story but crucial at the moment to actually further the plot by its very revelation. I can work with that! My problem is finding the balance. But I know that backstory can be horribly abused, so in my attempt to reduce it and rely on subtext, I think I leave out too much.
My critique partners always want more explanation. Any tips or archived posts about finding that balance between too much and not enough? I could go crazy with the tweaking…. Finding balance is hard in large part because that balance is always going to be very unique to the individual story. Following the rule of thumb about including backstory when it moves the plot is a good start. But so is listening to your beta readers.
I started my story with a sort-of flashback. Though I think that one could be taken out. Sometimes we just have to write things like this to get them out of our system. I was doing that to not do a backstory dump. One time I had my main character watch a video of what happened. It can be tricky.
The present-day time-line serves as a framework, and advances one character to the point of being able to resolve her longer story. The challenge has been providing good transition points between the two e. A good way to handle transitions is to look for similar beats or motifs at the beginning and end of the respective plotlines. Sometimes just a light touch can be a good way to ease from one to the other in a seamless manner.
This time the flashbacks actually moves the story forward. I found your article to be very interesting. Thank you for sharing it. I use flashbacks sometimes but only if they move my story along. The novel opens with my MC driving a high mountain road. She is absolutely is terrified. The time shift explain her adult fear, and also to draw out the suspence of the opening chapters.
I hope it does. The very format of the show ends up violating the primary flashback rule about the flashbacks needing to be necessary to move the plot. Whether flashbacks are the right choice for your story really depends on whether what they bring to the table is adding to the overall experience rather than taking away from it. Also, it hopefully serves to half show and half hint at how close to the breaking point the tragic event pushed him.
Quite early on in my story, I have two characters briefly remember some aspects of their earlier lives and earlier relationship to one another. This is two separate scenes, broken up by other aspects of the plot. I did it to add dramatic irony, because the reader then knows things about each character and how they think that neither knows about the other.
So it adds a new dimension to their interactions with one another. Brief is in general the key to successful flashbacks. Good info here. I think being able to pull off a flashback is somewhat intimidating. Not to mention a good one that moves the plot and adds to the story. I always thought having a character think back — or merely cutting back to previous events during a scene, gave things an interesting twist. They can also be useful, on a much smaller scale, for opening hooks for chapters.
However, as always, they need to be used with restraint. One of them even provides a little misdirection, as someone tampers with his dream and scams him. They come to understand, if only subconsciously, that the author is in full control of the narrative and is using the flashbacks for a very specific artistic reason. My MC in my NaNo is amnesiac, so naturally he has flashbacks. But most of them are very short- generally something that happens brings to mind a buried memory of a similar situation in his past, usually just something someone said to him.
Ah, the joy of putting your character through a disillusionment arc…. Love it! This is one reason I heart amnesia stories so hard: the backstory subtext is everything. In real life, we have conversations where something the other person says triggers a flashback. In a novel, just as in real life, that can make the conversation take off in a whole new direction, revealing new information that builds the characters and develops the plot.
Ideally every scene should be so dramatic it can stand on its own as flash fiction. Beware of using the flashback to explain something that reduces the tension. It should raise more questions than it answers. Of course, sometimes these relivings are necessary in fiction, for the shape of the narrative, but we have to be careful not to stray from realism in indicating a character stops smack in the middle of a conversation, for example, to relive a lengthy experience blow by blow.
Two examples: firstly, a short story of about words was, in fact, three flashbacks to describe the three cities which, in fact, were two. I think I may turn this into something longer but I feel that if I do the whole story will flounder around like a shark in a garden pond.
Secondly, I discovered what I consider to be the main use of flashbacks by accident. I was writing a story aimed at children aged about It ended up as half a thesis of 44, words because I got carried away with a flashback but what I had written was the whole history of the main character, who is made of plastic and lives in a wooden house, along with a full description of his world.
The flashback gave me understanding and knowledge of who and what I was writing about. Then I understood much better, on a complete rewrite, that part of the story was suitable for year olds, part was suitable for year olds, and part of it was just waffle.
It was an editing education and it ended up as a story for year olds. I now write two novels for each story … one containing the indulgent back story for my benefit, and the crisper version for my readers. Perhaps one day I might publish them. There are a few flashbacks in my story. I was watching Forrest Gump the other night. That movie is almost all flashback. Most people probably have.
As a reader, I almost always get bored when a flashback comes on. Honestly, I think the Golden Rule is the Golden Writing Rule too: do unto readers as you have other writers do unto you.
In my story. Actually, I think this sounds brilliant. Back when I was writing my first novel which will never see the light of day, for reasons I will make clear!
That novel is resting peacefully on my hard drive. I do hope to use the protagonist in a better-constructed work someday because I really like him. But the rest of it? Honestly, you were a braver writer than I would have been.
My prologue of some words is a flash forward to give a brief introduction to the main characters and their future relationships, to get the readers guessing. My heart was pounding as if it might explode out of my chest.
I retched and instantly felt faint. I had to get out of there…I planted myself face first on my bed and just started to bawl my eyes out into the pillow. I needed to have his uneasiness linger, so the next day he mentions having a dream during an afternoon nap. Hannah ran over and dropped to her knees in front of me. I continued to wipe my face as I tried to collect myself. She was still kneeling, her face a foot in front of mine. Hannah stumbled back as her hands went to her face. I took a deep breath as I collected my thoughts.
So she got in the car with this dude and left. Giving to someone you love, making them happy. However, being in the cemetery is a vehicle for him to talk to his dad about various ancestors also buried there, and dad utters a statement which sets up another thread later on. Great example of how to do it well.
I cry nearly every time I read my own words about it. I have one, that starts to give a hint as to why Merryn is doing the awful job of moving the crippled evil? It started when she was tossed in prison when she spotted a white rat.
Her, her mom, her people and the god are all intertwined in the plot and need to be told some of it. Using a visual symbol like the rat to lead in and out of a flashback is a nice technique. I just got a post in my Facebook feed that this year marks the 75th anniversary of Citizen Kane. That was the first movie that used flashbacks.
The first scene is Charles Foster Kane dying. The rest of the film is told from the perspective of a reporter trying to find out what Rosebud is. The reporter interviews people, and their memories are played out on the screen. It is considered a classic. Zane sat up straight and his eyes narrowed. His family was good people and ruled their kingdom with kindness and fairness.
All was good and happy in the kingdom. Ruben was an only child and was pampered and spoiled by his doting parents. Then one day the king fell and injured his leg, he had to stay in bed to heal. He was very depressed and so his loyal subjects brought him all kinds of gifts to cheer him.
Alas, none really worked. Until oneday a peasant from Hope Island brought the king a beautiful yellow bird. The bird would sing to the grumpy king, making him laugh and cheerful.
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