Flashbacks: yes or no?

TxRad said:

He has for almost a dozen years now. A lot of us have but other commitments have cut our time down.

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Well, I've been contriburing for the last three, and I've never seen a clear, concise suggestion like that from him. I would have a very different opinion of him if that was what I regularly saw.

I get that it's tough. I work 40 hours. I have a daughter. I write approximately 18k words a month (or at least, that's my average over the last few years). Fitting in reading a story or two (or three) a week for other people and contributing to a conversation is a huge drain.

psiberzerker said:

Okay, Cunfusion/Twist is to me bad writing. Personally, I don't like it, and it puts me off. probably, because i'm more confusion resistant than the average bear (In the Gayest sense) because i don't think linearly in the first place.

Confusion/Twist is how Shamalan writes, and it works on his own joints for varying degree, but then The Last Airbender basically got crushed by the wrong guy trying to adapt a children's cartoon, and being unable to abandon his habit of confusing the reader.

i prefer not to confuse the reader, but misdirect them. Lead them to the assumption that they do know what's going on, when in fact they do for the most part, and they stay engaged. (A lot of readers will just give up in confusion, and never reach the resolution.)

However, this confidence also allows the reader to overlook the Minor details, which I can callback in the denouement. These are typically the psychological aspects, like the particular ticks of a "Hero" that turns out to be a Power Assertive Malignant Narcissist (Holmes&Holmes) but because the trappings of that overlap with the heroic trappings like "Courage," and "Confidence" the reader wants to see the hero as Just a hero.

Not also someone who's capable of say, aquaintance raping with qualuudes. (Just a random example, not a story I've actually written out yet, but more of a Work in Progress.) Here's where the Full Blown Flashback Sequence is in order, because the victim is going to be surpressing the memory anyway, until she can't any more...

Unfortunately, I can't publish that here, anyway. So, I don't mind the massive spoiler.

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It doesn't necessarily have to be a matter of confusion, as much as an unanswered question that is at the heart of the drama of the story.


In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls, we know at the outset that the protagonist has a difficult and odd relationship with the owner of the restaurant he manages. We don't know why, and that's a central part of the story. The novel reveals to us why through a series of flashbacks, told in parts throughout the novel. The flashback method is a way of creating, and resolving, suspense.

Same thing in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. We know right from the beginning there's something wrong with Patty's relationship with her mother, but we don't know why for a while. The story goes back in time to explain why.

The key is that the use of time-shifting has to serve the purpose of the story. If it does, and as long as it doesn't unintentionally confuse the reader and bog down the story, it can be a good thing.

So, I believe it has come down to Pacing. Yes? Agreed or not, let me get the ball rolling at this point.

Specifically with flashing back to an Aside. Not just a nod, or even a brief synoptic paragraph, but a Highlanderesge narrative, where there's either multiple skips, or it's told out of linear order, for some reason.

In this instance, it's ordered by Emotional Impact, which is a bold choice, and a Risk. So, how do you minimize that risk? (If you fail, you lose the reader.) First of all, you're writing these seperately, AND you can shuffle them around before publishing. This is crucial, read it again. Shuffle them around, edit them, then read them again.

For continuity, write them chronologically in the first place. That's how you avoid thing like things being remembered before they're happening, or that coffee ring being on the table before that cup was filled. Each section has to stand on it's own. Take Pulp Fiction for an example.

Each one is a story, in it's own right. You have to watch it again, and again, to see the stuff in the foreground, and the background which shows what's going on in someone else's story, at the same instant in both timelines. Again, this is maximum difficulty, maximum risk.

Make sure you don't break up any beats. This is critical, you're building for something here, if you do breakfast, dinner, lunch, okay, but don't put the lettuce from the sandwitch on the breakfast plate, don't split up any scenes. When you get back to them, people need to remember where they set down their coffee cup.

In Ronin, Deniro "Ambushed" Sean Bean "With a Coffee Cup." He didn't set that down, walk away, tell this war story about this one time, in Afghanistan, and Then Ambush him with a coffee cup. That was a brief, powerful demonstration, and it happened in about 2 minutes. Don't break anything up.

Re write it. Read it again, and rewrite it again. The single best advice I can give anyone doing anything half this ambitious is check your work, have a peer check your work, check it again, try something else, have a peer check your second draft...

Even in a 1 off stroke story on a smut site. Check your work, then publish. It gets better every time you read it, only if you see your own mistakes, and learn from them. By the time someone more qualified actually reads your story, and ciricisizes it, is almost certainly too late.

SimonDoom said:

In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Empire Falls

Same thing in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom.

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This goes under Know Your Audience, excellent examples, BTW. However, I just used several classic Movie examples, for a reason: It's a hell of a lot easier to look up the Coffee Cup Ambush on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpbv4oCv100

Than look up a Pulitzer prize winning novel, and read it cover to cover. Before anyone calls me out on that, again. (From experience on literary forums.)

What about starting a story at the end and then going back to the beginning? The whole damn story is a flashback.

I’m playing around with a story like that right now. Actually took some advice and I’m writing it mostly linear with the intent of cutting and pasting it later.

Apisto42 said:

What about starting a story at the end and then going back to the beginning? The whole damn story is a flashback.

I’m playing around with a story like that right now. Actually took some advice and I’m writing it mostly linear with the intent of cutting and pasting it later.

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I love experimental storytelling like that. Like Memento, or Primer. It's really cool to mess with narrative and expectations.

(Not good advice for beginners, but yeah!)

Apisto42 said:

What about starting a story at the end and then going back to the beginning? The whole damn story is a flashback.

I’m playing around with a story like that right now. Actually took some advice and I’m writing it mostly linear with the intent of cutting and pasting it later.

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Okay, work that into the story somehow. I mean, why is it told backwards? When I did it (Not the whole story) I had someone go back over his childhood trauma to track down the men who did it to them. With the evidence he had a the time.

So, this is really good for an Investigative/Mystery/Crime Proceedural, because it's basically how you have to do it IRL. You start with a crime scene, let's say it just happened, and through the clues, you find traces back to people that can tell you what happened. (Witnesses) A matchbook leads you to a bar, where the bartender says "Yeah, I saw her," and describes the car that dropped her off...

Nobody in the bar knows the victim, who didn't have ID (Let's say her purse was stolen) so while they run her prints, the detectives start out retracing her steps, starting where they ended.

That's Why you would tell a story in reverse. Otherwise, it's to prove a point, and the reader might not stick around to make it to that point.

*Sorry. Wrong thread.*

Uh oh.

Okay, since we've got a lot of writers brainstorming here, And I just realized how to do a story I haven't started yet, let me go with a topical example. (Inspired by another topic on this forum)

A cuckhold discovers evidence that his wife is cheating on him, again. This excites him, again. The wife knows that he's excited by the thought that another man is sleeping with him, so this has become a bit of an unspoken game in their relationship.

He loses interest in her (Sexually) until he suspects she's cheating, then build up sexual tension with escalating reclamation fucks until he finally traces it back to who's semen he's been discovering in her underwear. (That the other man keeps buying her.)

I know the twist, I'm just not sure whether to publish the story first, or spoil the ending, but that's a non murder example of why you'd want to interlace 2 stories from the same start. From the first moment he suspects, to tracing back her movements, and try to discover who she cheated with, while moving forward with his investigation/cat and mouse with his wife.

Who continues to sleep with her lover to keep producing evidence for him to discover...

So are you going to tell her story linearly and his backwards? Start the story from her POV, then he discovers evidence and you move to his POV and work backwards?

And what all the cucks will really want to know is this: is she going to ride his face? Lol

psiberzerker said:

Okay, since we've got a lot of writers brainstorming here, And I just realized how to do a story I haven't started yet, let me go with a topical example. (Inspired by another topic on this forum)

A cuckhold discovers evidence that his wife is cheating on him, again. This excites him, again. The wife knows that he's excited by the thought that another man is sleeping with him, so this has become a bit of an unspoken game in their relationship.

He loses interest in her (Sexually) until he suspects she's cheating, then build up sexual tension with escalating reclamation fucks until he finally traces it back to who's semen he's been discovering in her underwear. (That the other man keeps buying her.)

I know the twist, I'm just not sure whether to publish the story first, or spoil the ending, but that's a non murder example of why you'd want to interlace 2 stories from the same start. From the first moment he suspects, to tracing back her movements, and try to discover who she cheated with, while moving forward with his investigation/cat and mouse with his wife.

Who continues to sleep with her lover to keep producing evidence for him to discover...

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I would read that

AwkwardMD said:

Uh oh.

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Yes, I'm transitioning accounts since I met my volume goal (1,001 entries) with sr71plt and dropped a post under the wrong name. Just working at closing one out and opening a new one (which is noted in the relevant story account profiles). In transitioning, though, there's some overlap in bring background to bear. The goal is not to post to the discussion board anymore at all. That's hard to go cold turkey on, though. It probably won't be reached until I stop reading the board. For those who wondered, however (if any did), the pen behind sr71plt (habu and Dirk Hessian, among others, in the marketplace) is still posting stories here--under KeithD.

AwkwardMD said:

I would love to see you contributing actual advice in the story feedback forum, where people are (metaphorically) dying to have experienced writers read their work and help them improve.

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I have posted to the Feedback forum for the last decade and more. And I have responded to private queries. Don't remember not have responded to any that were sent to me. That said, I'm here to write not to tell others how they should write. I've been more active in giving professional editorial advice on presentation/spelling/grammar/and so forth. Most of what I have posted on content analysis has been in defense of the writer when given what my training and experience tells me is bum, limiting advice.

If there's anyone else who has devoted most of their time to posting more than 1,300 stories across categories in multiple pen names in the last twelve years who gives more to Literotica and thinks I have an obligation to give more in other areas of writing here, they can PM me. I'll go look up how a horselaugh should be spelled.

Apisto42 said:

So are you going to tell her story linearly and his backwards? Start the story from her POV, then he discovers evidence and you move to his POV and work backwards?

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Some of the Evidence will be witnesses of what happened, so there's a kind of Shaharazad theme going on here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNymNaTr-Y

Other than the cum stained underwear, the only thing he can do is retrace her steps. Literarilly, one of the best ways to flashback without breaking up the narrative is to ask "Where have you been?" She's going to lie, but then he can ask his neighbor, her sister (Whom she was out with, and in on it with) leading back to where they came from, who saw them there...

So, the story can progress linearly, while he finds people who can tell him what happened. then someone else who can tell him what happened before that... Tell the story of him retracing her steps, until she got to the Start, where he finds another man's semen in her underwear. (And fucks her to satisfaction to reclaim her.)

Also, anyone that calls them cucks has no idea what they want. "Cuck" is a porn search term, used by virgins who learned everything they know about women from porn, and other guys who lie so they can't get laid.

Congratulations on meeting your goal!

sr71plt said:

I'll go look up how a horselaugh should be spelled.

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Whinny.

sr71plt said:

I have posted to the Feedback forum for the last decade and more. And I have responded to private queries. Don't remember not have responded to any that were sent to me. That said, I'm here to write not to tell others how they should write. I've been more active in giving professional editorial advice on presentation/spelling/grammar/and so forth. Most of what I have posted on content analysis has been in defense of the writer when given what my training and experience tells me is bum, limiting advice.

If there's anyone else who has devoted most of their time to posting more than 1,300 stories across categories in multiple pen names in the last twelve years who gives more to Literotica and thinks I have an obligation to give more in other areas of writing here, they can PM me. I'll go look up how a horselaugh should be spelled.

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This is what I'm used to. 'Question everyone elses motives. No one does more than me. Undermine everyone elses credibility. Who watches the Watchmen?"

I get the feeling that you used to do a lot more, and I'm genuinely sad that I missed that. No one can deny the success you have as a writer.

psiberzerker said:

Some of the Evidence will be witnesses of what happened, so there's a kind of Shaharazad theme going on here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQNymNaTr-Y

Other than the cum stained underwear, the only thing he can do is retrace her steps. Literarilly, one of the best ways to flashback without breaking up the narrative is to ask "Where have you been?" She's going to lie, but then he can ask his neighbor, her sister (Whom she was out with, and in on it with) leading back to where they came from, who saw them there...

So, the story can progress linearly, while he finds people who can tell him what happened. then someone else who can tell him what happened before that... Tell the story of him retracing her steps, until she got to the Start, where he finds another man's semen in her underwear. (And fucks her to satisfaction to reclaim her.)

Also, anyone that calls them cucks has no idea what they want. "Cuck" is a porn search term, used by virgins who learned everything they know about women from porn, and other guys who lie so they can't get laid.

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I’d read that. Always have loved a good mystery.

AwkwardMD said:

'Question everyone elses motives. No one does more than me. Undermine everyone elses credibility. Who watches the Watchmen?"

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Skepticism isn't doubting everyone else's credibility, it's doubting your own. The only way to be sure is to be your own critic. Someone who's "Always right" is by default, always wrong.

Also, this reads like a Trump Tweet. Sad.

AwkwardMD said:

It did work, although I'm not too proud to say I missed that self-reference.

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Opening lines, Chapter One:

Would it have been better if the sky were blue and the trees were green and the wild flowers blossomed along the roadside? Or would the end of so much color in my life have made it harder to bear?

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Closing Lines, Chapter Thirteen:

I could hear the day's first birdsong, and from up the stairs, the soft sleeping sounds of a man who loved me. I sat for a long time and watched, as the sun sparkled through the trees and then rose to illuminate the houses and the cars, the lawns and the flowerbeds, and the world filled with color.

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AwkwardMD said:

I get the feeling that you used to do a lot more, and I'm genuinely sad that I missed that. No one can deny the success you have as a writer.

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As you have every reason to know, when I've posted to critiques on the Feedback board I've invariably been subjected to personal attacks by easy-button critiquers. That gets old hat awfully quick.

That's beautiful writing.

I regret that I posted in this thread.

There has been more heat generated than light.

Using flashbacks, however they are defined, is one of the possible techniques to tell a story. In my opinion, and that is all it is, flashback can be used however and whenever an author wants to.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. As has been said several times above - whatever works for that story is acceptable. Acceptable to whom? The reader.

But there are so many varieties of reader on Literotica that some of them will think an author is wrong however a story is told. You can't please everyone.

Whatever you write, including whether and how you use flashback, someone will say you are wrong.

Just write what YOU think is right. If you are criticised? Do you learn anything from the criticism? Or does it make you think there is some substance in the criticism? Or is it just their view against yours?

As with every story-telling technique, the use of flashback is one of the tools in an author's toolbox. Use it if you want to.

sr71plt said:

That gets old hat awfully quick.

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I gave up because of primadona "Authors" who couldn't take constructive criticism as anything but criticism, and generally have delusions of being a "Novelist." That's a bad sign for me. "Oh, I only write novels, because there's no market for short stories."

"How many novels have you sold?"

"Well, my first one's back at the editor..."

Yeah, I take the advice of Jack Chalker. (Great guy.) Look up how many Novels, and collections of short stories he's published.

Over anyone who's never actually sold a novel, or gotten it past the editors. Pro-Tip: The editors will kill you, long before a publisher ever sees your manuscript.

That's why I don't write novels. The Novelty wore off.