All about the Flashback

[BuckyDuckman]

Alright, fellow writers, let's lay it out your tips, tricks, and advice about how to effectively handle flashbacks in the middle of your narrative.

I recently started a new story and immediately found myself in the middle of a flashback. At some point, it occurred to me, "This needs to be the opening of the story. It's not a flashback, it's actually the beginning of the story." '

I'm a bit scarred when it comes to flashbacks because of something my mother once said, "I hate flashbacks. Just tell the damn story, okay?"

When do you realize, "Yeah, this flashback probably deserves to be a stand-alone moment, with brackets or * * * or something to designate when it starts and when it ends.

Versus -

"Yeah, this is an important little aside that fills in important detail, but it doesn't need its own space. I can get into and out of it easily enough."

Lastly, what are your tricks for signaling to the reader "this is the start of a short flashback" and "this is the end of that short flashback."

Help a brother out, okay?

 

[SisterJezabel]

Alright, fellow writers, let's lay it out your tips, tricks, and advice about how to effectively handle flashbacks in the middle of your narrative.

I recently started a new story and immediately found myself in the middle of a flashback. At some point, it occurred to me, "This needs to be the opening of the story. It's not a flashback, it's actually the beginning of the story." '

I'm a bit scarred when it comes to flashbacks because of something my mother once said, "I hate flashbacks. Just tell the damn story, okay?"

When do you realize, "Yeah, this flashback probably deserves to be a stand-alone moment, with brackets or * * * or something to designate when it starts and when it ends.

Versus -

"Yeah, this is an important little aside that fills in important detail, but it doesn't need its own space. I can get into and out of it easily enough."

Lastly, what are your tricks for signaling to the reader "this is the start of a short flashback" and "this is the end of that short flashback."

Help a brother out, okay?

I used to think linearly and if you read a lot of my early work (I've only published 25 stories!) it will start with a happened, then b, then c, then d and we all lived happily ever after. Now I'm more likely to start with C and bring in A and B as backstory. Intelligent readers can work out when it is a reminiscence or flashback. Starting with C can also grip readers and drag them into your web!

To signal, it is often as simple as starting a paragraph 'It was strange to remember how naive we were as teenagers, holding hands as we walked between classes and making out after prom. As his dick pumped away I remembered the timidness of our first time,,,'

 

[SamScribble]

Lastly, what are your tricks for signaling to the reader "this is the start of a short flashback" and "this is the end of that short flashback."

Help a brother out, okay?

I've written several stories with multiple flashbacks. I just weave the flashbacks into the story. Check this one out: https://www.literotica.com/s/gail-force

Good luck

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think writers should shy away from flashbacks where they make sense. I think they often make sense. Sometimes it makes no sense to tell a story chronologically, because you start with material that isn't directly relevant to the main body of the story. I tend to think that the way to start a story is to jump right into the action that takes place during the main time frame of the story, and then to jump back at the right time to relate past material.

Here are some ideas I have about this:

1. The flashback should follow a triggering incident that makes the narrator remember something, or at least in some way directly relates to something that happened immediately before the flashback.

2. Have the narrator explicitly recall the incident, and then lead into the incident.

3. I usually write in simple past tense, and I suppose if one wants to be grammatically correct one could relate the flashback in past perfect tense, but I don't do this. It sounds terrible, and it clunks up the prose with too many "hads." So my advice is to write the flashback in simple past tense.

4. I don't use chapter breaks to indicate the flashback. I just jump right into it with narration.

5. Don't make the flashback any longer than it has to be. Keep it short and get back to the main time frame.

6. When you switch out of the flashback, use words to make clear that you are doing so, and come back to the present.

For example:

I wrote a story about a brother and sister taking place at a birthday party she prepares for him. There is an incident from the past that is relevant to the story, but I thought it would be dull and clunky to start with it, so I started the story when he arrives at his sister's apartment.

After a little time passes in the main time frame, she walks off to the kitchen to check on dinner. He notices a photograph, and remembers that it was taken on a hike four years earlier where something happened between them for the first time.

I introduce the flashback with a single sentence in past perfect, and from then on switch to simple past tense.

He recalls the incident. I finish the flashback with these three paragraphs:

"In the car on the way home, and during the four years that passed, neither Aaron nor Emma ever talked about what happened on the mountain. But Aaron never forgot about it.

"Now, in his sister's apartment, Aaron looked at himself in the photo, four years younger. In the photo he wore his hair longer and wavier than he did now. But it was his eyes that Aaron noticed. In the photo, Aaron stared directly into the lens, at the photographer. His sister. And his eyes shone with the unmistakable look of love.

""I'm back!" Emma called, breaking the spell that held her brother."

So by the end it's totally clear that we're back in the present. There's no need for any asterisks or mechanical markers or anything like that. I prefer to handle as much as possible in narrative and dialogue and leave out anything else that interferes.

There are lots of ways to do this. But this is how I did it.

 

[PennameWombat]

I don't think writers should shy away from flashbacks where they make sense. I think they often make sense. Sometimes it makes no sense to tell a story chronologically, because you start with material that isn't directly relevant to the main body of the story. I tend to think that the way to start a story is to jump right into the action that takes place during the main time frame of the story, and then to jump back at the right time to relate past material.

Here are some ideas I have about this:

1. The flashback should follow a triggering incident that makes the narrator remember something, or at least in some way directly relates to something that happened immediately before the flashback.

2. Have the narrator explicitly recall the incident, and then lead into the incident.

3. I usually write in simple past tense, and I suppose if one wants to be grammatically correct one could relate the flashback in past perfect tense, but I don't do this. It sounds terrible, and it clunks up the prose with too many "hads." So my advice is to write the flashback in simple past tense.

4. I don't use chapter breaks to indicate the flashback. I just jump right into it with narration.

5. Don't make the flashback any longer than it has to be. Keep it short and get back to the main time frame.

6. When you switch out of the flashback, use words to make clear that you are doing so, and come back to the present.
<snip>

Excellent advice. I don’t regularly use flashbacks but the above fits well with how I tried to do it. In A Mermaid Christmas Rachel sees her boss (Melon Bezerg) and wants to fuck his brains out. And more. She recalls her previous enthusiastic gangbang where she worked her way through every frat brother mostly three at a time.

And from that she decided she would always be in control of her sexuality and walked away from the sorority and excelled in law school. And that essentially led her to be where she was at that moment but also seeing so many powerful men in one place reignites her desire to have multiple of them ravage her together.

We jump back to the present and she doesn’t jump her boss. She does get her four-way, eventually.

Rachel momentarily regretted not wearing underwear, she felt her moisture at the scene. She wanted to grab Bezerg's waistband and shove his jeans to the floor and no matter how big his cock was, and she knew it couldn't be small, she'd show everyone here that she could plant a lipstick ring at the very base on the first swallow. After that, she'd push him to the floor and mount him. She'd lean over and kiss him and she'd offer her ultimate boss the freedom to offer her.

That handsome young French Prime Minister would be the first one in her ass, the most powerful man on earth up her cunt and the leader of a country still a major player buried in her ass. If he could get it up the VP could have her mouth. He was Oswald something or the other so it worked.

It would be the first time since that night at the frat.

She'd been a freshman undergrad and had pledged a sorority. All of the pledges were loaded into a minibus and told that they were to attend a frat party at another University in town. The better the 'reviews' received for each pledge the more highly they'd be considered. She'd met a handsome, well-built upperclassman, the Vice President of the frat. She'd had nothing on beyond a barely-there dress and heels and after a couple of glasses of champagne had found she was naked on top of the young man, his quite nicely-sized steel-hard cock up her very wet pussy as she'd kissed him enthusiastically.

 

[davion2308]

Yikes

Flashbacks should be (if they exist at all) quick explanations for a behavior or thought-process, nothing more.

I don't care for them and I think they interrupt the flow of the story. I like start to finish story telling without interruptions and I don't feel effective when I'm writing a flashback.

If they have to be there, ask yourself why? What didn't you explain earlier or why not move that scene to the front. If they do have to be there, italicize or make them stand out somehow so I'm not surprised by what happened.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Flashbacks should be (if they exist at all) quick explanations for a behavior or thought-process, nothing more.

I don't care for them and I think they interrupt the flow of the story. I like start to finish story telling without interruptions and I don't feel effective when I'm writing a flashback.

If they have to be there, ask yourself why? What didn't you explain earlier or why not move that scene to the front. If they do have to be there, italicize or make them stand out somehow so I'm not surprised by what happened.

This probably comes closest to my Mom's objection about flashbacks. While it's a fine rule for an author to have, I don't agree with it. As the author, you get to create any writing rule you want, including never using the letter "e" or something.

1. The flashback should follow a triggering incident that makes the narrator remember something, or at least in some way directly relates to something that happened immediately before the flashback.

This seems to follow real life. How often do we catch ourselves saying, "Yeah, that reminds of this one time . . ."

3. I usually write in simple past tense, and I suppose if one wants to be grammatically correct one could relate the flashback in past perfect tense, but I don't do this. It sounds terrible, and it clunks up the prose with too many "hads." So my advice is to write the flashback in simple past tense.

This is a struggle point for me. If it's a flashback, doesn't it sort of require lots of "had's?"

5. Don't make the flashback any longer than it has to be. Keep it short and get back to the main time frame.

Sound advice, but quite often a flashback reveals important motivation for the character that the author has kept from the reader. (I'm thinking specifically of the villain's monologue that explains why they're doing what they're doing. A tried and true trope that works, but I sort of hate.)

Also, "keep it short" feels so subjective.

6. When you switch out of the flashback, use words to make clear that you are doing so, and come back to the present.

I still find myself following the advice I read years ago in Writer's Digest, ground the characters in the moment, like at dinner, execute the flashback and end it with a callback to the present.

Setting down his fork, Harry stared past Sally and became lost in remembering that one time in the jungle when . . .​

Picking up his fork, Harry focused his eyes on Sally's, seeing how sad she looked.​

Which seems to follow your second suggestion.

 

[SimonDoom]

If they have to be there, ask yourself why? What didn't you explain earlier or why not move that scene to the front. If they do have to be there, italicize or make them stand out somehow so I'm not surprised by what happened.

The reason not to start with the flashback is very simple -- it doesn't fit in time with the body of the story.

My bias is that most of the time a writer should begin the story with an action or dialogue scene that is contemporaneous with the main action of the story. If instead you start with an incident that took place years previously, it violates this principle. To me, most of the time, in a short story (maybe not a novel) it doesn't work as well to start the story with a scene that is years before and not a part of the main action of the story. It's probably less interesting to the reader. A flashback, if it's skillfully handled, helps shed light on the main character's motivation or conflict in the present day. There may be reason not to want to expose that right away. Sometimes it's better if there's a little mystery about the character at the beginning, and the flashback helps resolve the mystery before taking us back to the present day.

I don't ever use italics and generally don't like italics as a reader except in very small doses, such as to denote short lines of interior dialogue, or to emphasize a word or phrase. I strongly believe the best way to handle almost everything in a story is through the control of the content of your words rather than through fonts and formatting and symbols. But not everyone feels that way.

 

[davion2308]

I agree

A flashback, if it's skillfully handled, helps shed light on the main character's motivation or conflict in the present day. There may be reason not to want to expose that right away. Sometimes it's better if there's a little mystery about the character at the beginning, and the flashback helps resolve the mystery before taking us back to the present day.

I don't ever use italics and generally don't like italics as a reader except in very small doses, such as to denote short lines of interior dialogue, or to emphasize a word or phrase. I strongly believe the best way to handle almost everything in a story is through the control of the content of your words rather than through fonts and formatting and symbols. But not everyone feels that way.

I agree with the first part. They're tough to execute within the frame of the stories here and I know I suck at flashbacks so I leave them alone. But also not giving everything away early with flashbacks is nice to keep the reader engaged and guessing about motivation.

And i don't care for italics either but there has to be a marker, as was discussed above. Something triggering the flashback, then a change of format to show the flashback isn't a part of the current events of the story. "Dream sequence Fade Out" comes to mind with movies, where the screen goes fuzzy.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I'm a bit scarred when it comes to flashbacks because of something my mother once said, "I hate flashbacks. Just tell the damn story, okay?"

No disrespect to you or your Venerable Mom, but is she reading your work here? If not, write for yourself and leave VM with her own choices.

I use flashbacks on occasion. I think they're useful - OK, can be useful if properly employed.

Let's say your main character is a young woman. Part of her character was of course developed as a child. If you're writing a novel, you can start off with a chapter or twelve talking about her childhood, watching her graceful (or not) grow into adulthood. If on the other hand you're writing a short story (and most of us here are), then the first task is to get the reader interested. You grab their interest up front with something fun, something about her as an adult. Once you have their attention, a quick flashback cements their understanding of her adult character.

I've made it as simple as this:

Back up.

I never was much of a girly girl. My tomboy nature was Momma's despair at times.

 

[NotWise]

I think your original post is right; if you find yourself flashing back at the beginning of the story, then the flashback should probably be where the story starts. Maybe then put in a scene break marker and jump ahead.

I "solved" a transition problem in one of my early stories by jumping ahead in time then using flashbacks to fill in a couple events that I jumped over.

Among others, I had this comment:

Good but bit confusing

by [xxxx] on 10/31/2015
If the first page wasn't so confusing with jumping the scenes this would be a really great story. I had trouble following the setting, it was real now and then suddenly some other scene and so forth.

As a result, my personal guideline for using flashbacks is don't risk confusing the reader. As a result, I don't use them very much. There seems to always be an alternative.

I still find myself following the advice I read years ago in Writer's Digest, ground the characters in the moment, like at dinner, execute the flashback and end it with a callback to the present.

Setting down his fork, Harry stared past Sally and became lost in remembering that one time in the jungle when . . .​

Picking up his fork, Harry focused his eyes on Sally's, seeing how sad she looked.​

Which seems to follow your second suggestion.

In this example, for instance, I might write around the flashback by having Sally say "You look distracted. What's on your mind?" Harry can then tell her what he's thinking. If he can't tell her exactly what it was, he can tell her some version of it with the real story in the narrative that accompanies the dialog.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't think I ever used them. I have used a flash forward... making the first chapter a look at what's to come somewhere in the middle of the story. But I don't remember looking back into the past from somewhere in the middle of the story.

 

[AlexBailey]

I use a lot of brief flashbacks in the beginning of my series.

I was struggling with the whole tense shifting thing until I tried rewriting it in first person present tense. it makes narration and self-reflection simple, and flashbacks are easy to designate. It locks the story into one point of view but it seems like such a natural way to tell a story.

In part two I have a section where a secondary character is telling her story of being abused at an illegal conversion therapy clinic, while she puts on a show of tying a friend into suspended rope-bondage. The narrative is from the first person main character watching the one girl tie up another, while the one doing the tying is checking on her friend in present tense while telling the story and quoting people in past tense. There were just too many layers until I switched to present tense.

I think it ended up working pretty well.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I partition all my scenes with *** to begin with. Most of my flashbacks are indicated with an italicized descriptor of what's coming, location and date of applicable.

And since my story Mike & Karen is 50% flashback, I found it completely necessary to do this.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I've used flashbacks for one character to tell another about her past. The present was in the first person, the flashback in third.

It was my second story here, and it's been well received. I tried the same for a follow-up, but I'm not happy with the way it's going.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The reason not to start with the flashback is very simple -- it doesn't fit in time with the body of the story.

My latest Ruby story has a temporal shift in the second sentence that runs for several paragraphs, then catches up with the first sentence. The other way of looking at it - the opening sentence is a teaser.

It seemed to work, the story's doing quite nicely.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Flashbacks should be (if they exist at all) quick explanations for a behavior or thought-process, nothing more.

I don't care for them and I think they interrupt the flow of the story. I like start to finish story telling without interruptions and I don't feel effective when I'm writing a flashback.

If they have to be there, ask yourself why? What didn't you explain earlier or why not move that scene to the front.

All sorts of reasons.

When you're beginning a story, you only have a few paragraphs to convince your readers that this is a story they want to read. Often starting at the beginning isn't the best way to do that.

For instance, my current series is about two women who've known one another for years as friends before unexpectedly getting into a sugar mommy/sugar baby arrangement. The backstory is important to how they relate to one another, but I don't want my readers wading through seven years' worth of backstory wondering "where is this going?"

So I start with a scene that encapsulates what the story's about - "I'm thinking of becoming a kept woman" - before going back to develop their previous history together.

Sometimes it's important to cue how the story is going to end. If my readers think they're reading a happy-ever-after romance and then find out that it's horror where everybody dies, they're probably not going to enjoy that. Flashback is a way of managing that kind of thing.

Flashback can be a way of piquing the reader's interest. It's more fun to see a magic trick before finding out how it was achieved than the other way around. Virtually all mystery shows take this kind of structure, beginning with the mystery before eventually jumping back to explain what happened. (Columbo is a rare exception, because the mystery there isn't "whodunnit and how?" but "how does Columbo catch them?")

 

[RetroFan]

I love flashbacks and I think they are very good in stories to explain why characters act the way they do or to add in additional erotic scenes that don't fit into the main action of the story.

For example, I have a story pending at the moment about a young man who is in love with his pretty cousin, and interesting things happen between them on a holiday in Blackpool in 1955. I have (obviously) non-erotic flashbacks to show how the narrator first got a crush on his cousin when they were kids and evacuated from Liverpool during the Second World War. There are also erotic flashbacks to more recent times where the cousins are aged 18/19 and he indulges in voyeurism with her, such as watching her undress one time and perving on her knickers on the clothes line, in her underwear drawer and in her clothes hamper on others.

Many IT readers might enjoy scenes of a young man indulging in voyeurism with his cousin's knickers, but these did not fit the flow of the main story in Blackpool, but did work as flashbacks. Describing how he got a crush on her in the first place helps readers get to know these characters, and maybe some readers might be interested in reading about WW2 and life in Britain during the 1950s (not that I was there, I'm much younger and from Australia).

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I'm increasingly of the mind that our type of material seems extra prone for the use of flashbacks. I am also curious to hear more about how you enter and exit your flashbacks. This remains a struggle point for me.

Length and depth of the flashback dictates some of what you do. For example, the earlier suggestion of one character asking another, "What's on your mind?" But not all flashbacks include information that character wants to share with another.

 

[tomlitilia]

Here are some ideas I have about this:

1. The flashback should follow a triggering incident that makes the narrator remember something, or at least in some way directly relates to something that happened immediately before the flashback.

2. Have the narrator explicitly recall the incident, and then lead into the incident.

3. I usually write in simple past tense, and I suppose if one wants to be grammatically correct one could relate the flashback in past perfect tense, but I don't do this. It sounds terrible, and it clunks up the prose with too many "hads." So my advice is to write the flashback in simple past tense.

4. I don't use chapter breaks to indicate the flashback. I just jump right into it with narration.

5. Don't make the flashback any longer than it has to be. Keep it short and get back to the main time frame.

6. When you switch out of the flashback, use words to make clear that you are doing so, and come back to the present.

Good advice. I don't think there is any problem with long flashbacks as long as it adds to the story, just like with any chunk of text. Yet, if it is a very long flashback, like an entire chapter, then I think you're better off with a break and maybe even a tag at the beginning stating where in the timeline we are.

My longest flashback lasted around half a lit-page. I kept going back and forth between using breaks or not. I ended up going without. One thing I can add/elaborate to your list of advice is to start the flashback and the jump back to the current timeline with people or objects that clearly aren't part of the story before/after the flashback. Here is the last paragraphs before the flashback and the first paragraph of the flashback from how I did it:

Vanessa cocked her brow at him. That was very forward, coming from Tim. She didn't quite know what to say. Her days of seducing other men were a long time ago. But thinking back, she rarely had to be overt with her signals. The only time she remembered having some struggles was the first time she decided to live out an old fantasy of being picked up by a stranger in a bar. It was likely a lame fantasy for most women, but to someone who got married before she was old enough to drink in a bar it seemed fascinating.

She pursued her fantasy when she was away with her girlfriends. One night she pretended she was tired and wanted a quiet night, but as soon as they left for a club, she put on a short skirt and a tight top—bright red to attract attention—and went to the bar around the corner.

And here is the last paragraph of the flashback and the jump back to current timeline:

She stood, stepped over to the bar, and took a seat on one of the stools. She shamelessly spread her legs open, leaning back against the bar, and curled her finger to call him in. The bartender looked hungrily at her inviting cunt. He didn't miss a beat, and soon she had him thrusting inside her. The crude reality of what she was doing fueled her desire. There she was, a married woman getting fucked by the bartender right there in his bar.

"Mrs. Hamilton?" Tim said, snapping her out of her trip down memory lane.

The girlfriends clearly weren't there before the flashback, and Tim wasn't there during the flashback.

 

[Hypoxia]

Flashing about:

* I may start with the ending; the rest of the tale flashes back to how it got there.
* I may write a linear narrative but with players summarizing their pasts to others.
* Often, an event triggers a player's memory, and they think back in fear or lust.
* I may write something where flashbacks don't agree, maybe with a resolution.

"How do you like flashbacks?" is like "How do you like pudding?" It depends, right?

 

[sirhugs]

Flashing about:

* I may start with the ending; the rest of the tale flashes back to how it got there.
* I may write a linear narrative but with players summarizing their pasts to others.
* Often, an event triggers a player's memory, and they think back in fear or lust.
* I may write something where flashbacks don't agree, maybe with a resolution.

"How do you like flashbacks?" is like "How do you like pudding?" It depends, right?

chocolate, with just a dash of milk please.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm increasingly of the mind that our type of material seems extra prone for the use of flashbacks. I am also curious to hear more about how you enter and exit your flashbacks. This remains a struggle point for me.

Length and depth of the flashback dictates some of what you do. For example, the earlier suggestion of one character asking another, "What's on your mind?" But not all flashbacks include information that character wants to share with another.

I'm increasingly of the mind that our type of material seems extra prone for the use of flashbacks. I am also curious to hear more about how you enter and exit your flashbacks. This remains a struggle point for me.

Length and depth of the flashback dictates some of what you do. For example, the earlier suggestion of one character asking another, "What's on your mind?" But not all flashbacks include information that character wants to share with another.

I used a lot of flashbacks in Mary and Alvin. I struggled at first, and some of those in the early chapters were a bit clumsy, particularly in coming out of them. Eventually, I got to where I usually marked a narrative break at the end (marked with a ***) and just going back to the main narrative.

The easiest way to do it is just have someone ask to be told a story.

In Chapter 6, "Bonnie's Bed", Mary asks Alvin to tell her about his late wife. As he talks, I switched from dialogue into narrative. To break it up, I had several points where I broke it up like this:

Alvin lowered the foot of his recliner and stood up.

"Still with me, Miss Mary?" he asked.

"Yes, I'm still listening."

Then went back into the flashback the same way I started it.

In other places, I tried to be creative going in to them, having some event or object in the current time stream trigger them. In Chapter 32, "The Pocket Jar", centers of Alvin and Mary's reflections on the melancholy occasion of their Daughter Hannah leaving home for college.

I found a device I really liked from listening to a program on NPR. A woman talked about how, when she was doing laundry as her children were growing up, she saved everything she found in their pockets in a jar.

On the day Hannah leaves home, Mary dumps the memory jar out on the kitchen table and sorts through the contents, toys, coins, seashells. Various objects trigger memories, in a series of short flashbacks. As they were so short, I just went back and forth from describing Mary's memories and her current thoughts. I thought it worked very well.

 

[NotWise]

The easiest way to do it is just have someone ask to be told a story.

In Chapter 6, "Bonnie's Bed", Mary asks Alvin to tell her about his late wife. As he talks, I switched from dialogue into narrative. To break it up, I had several points where I broke it up like this:

I hadn't really thought of them as flashbacks, but in "A Valentine's Day Mess" (starting in part 2) Claudia and Manny spend a lot of time telling each other stories. The stories aren't from their own lives, but from ancestral memories that they share unequally. I guess the mechanics are similar.

"Mess" tells the stories in dialog rather than in narrative, which is difficult to do. The chapter I'm working on now needs a lot of work, partly because the story comes off too much like narrative.

The stories generally start with a question, then Manny and Claudia take turns, telling their stories from different perspectives. As in MB's example, comments and questions break the story and signal either a change in the point of view or the end of the segment.

One of the most memorable examples (to me, anyway) was when Claudia got so upset while telling Ximena's story that she attacked Manny out of anger and resentment toward Juan Francisco.