Your Thoughts on Writing Flashback Scenes

[Candy_Kane54]

How do you write flashbacks in your stories? I like to use italics to denote a flashback scene since I write in first person.

Also, how would you handle a flashback inside a flashback? Or would you rearrange the text to make them separate flashbacks?

TIA

 

[BuckyDuckman]

How do you write flashbacks in your stories? I like to use italics to denote a flashback scene since I write in first person.

Also, how would you handle a flashback inside a flashback? Or would you rearrange the text to make them separate flashbacks?

TIA

It depends on the length of the flashback.

Sometimes, I separate them with a visible marker - like a line. I can't remember telling a flashback inside a flashback. It's what I did with my most flashback ladened story: Filled with Joy.

Mostly, I think you need to clearly signal to the reader when the flashback starts and when it ends.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I use plain text and context to make it clear. I don't think you need to signify flashbacks with flashing lights; but I think I'd avoid flashbacks within flashbacks. Wouldn't you just start a linear narrative earlier?

 

[NotWise]

Mostly, I think you need to clearly signal to the reader when the flashback starts and when it ends.

This.

I used a sequence of short flash-backs in one of my first stories and readers' comments made it clear that they were confused by it. I edited it as soon as I could to make it clear and simple, but the rating has recovered only very gradually.

Since then, I've preferred to put recollections into dialogue instead of narrative, and that avoids flashbacks entirely.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't like reading long passages in italics, so I don't use them.

I agree with the concept that the key is to be clear, however you do it.

One way is to start the flashback with a new chapter, and to signal somehow at the beginning of the chapter that the events are occurring in a time before those of the previous chapter.

The other way, which I've used, is to have a character in the present experience a triggering event that makes him think about something that happened in the past. Make it clear in the narrative that the character is thinking about the past, not the present.

 

[PennameWombat]

How do you write flashbacks in your stories? I like to use italics to denote a flashback scene since I write in first person.

Also, how would you handle a flashback inside a flashback? Or would you rearrange the text to make them separate flashbacks?

TIA

I don’t use flashbacks that often but I never change typeface. My best example that was first person (I mostly use 3rd person) I used a section marker (“****”) and just made clear in the flow of text that my narrator had jumped back in time (“Carole and I had met in fall quarter...”) Then a later section marker and text that made clear we were back to the present (Carole at the Art Lecture.)

As to a flashback in a flashback... I don’t think I’ve ever tried that nor can I think of much reason to do so. I can’t think of any logical way to keep things straight.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I guess I use them but they are just part of the flow of the narration. I don't change the from the regular type face. I do let the reader know in the first line or two that the narration is about something that happened in the past. Mostly, I use them to tell the reader how the couple met and wound up married.

I to make it a completely separate scene or even a separate chapter depending how long the flashback will be.

 

[TadOverdon]

I usually put out-of-chronology scenes in chapters of their own, often with a lead-in at the end of the previous chapter. If I think it's necessary, I'll give it an introductory tag at the head of the chapter - Three years ago.... That's generally only worthwhile if some back-and-forth-in-time is a major feature of the story's structure and occurs more than once.

Set apart that way, I'll write in past tense and use all the techniques I would for events happening in "the present." The flashback becomes the present, for that span of the story.

If a flashback is briefer and occurs within a chapter I write the first part of it in past perfect tense, shifting to past tense at some point. In this case I describe the events in summary, with only occasional snippets of dialogue, etc., and the character remembering the past events may inject their current POV into the retelling.

 

[AlphaLyon]

How do you write flashbacks in your stories? I like to use italics to denote a flashback scene since I write in first person.

I usually have an extra line space between the present and the flashback with a clear indication that I'm about to go into a flashback. For example:

Barney the Dinosaur looked over the hill as saw the bleak destruction, the wasteland, the horrors. He remembered how it was, how it should be, and when it all started on that fateful day.

Barney walked into the green meadows where four colorful characters were building their hovel in the side of a hill.
"I'm Barney. Let's be friends," he said to them.
"We're gonna fuck your shit up," the four said in creepy unison as the squares on their chests glowed with unnatural light.

Barney knew he should have stopped them that day, but he was too friendly to have done anything. Now, he had no more fucks to give. He loaded his weapons and thought of what he must do.

I also agree with SimonDoom; I'm not a fan of a huge chuck of italics.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I use flashbacks. I may open in the present (or present in terms of narration) then have the next line be something like, "Step back," or "Roll it back," then launch the flashback. It works; no complaints about it being confusing.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

In university, I had a German English lecturer who specialized in Russian literature. She made us read a book by a Nigerian author, which was essentially just a set of flashbacks. With that rather convoluted background as my only qualification for answering the question, I'd say it comes down to narrative voice.

Special formatting shouldn't be necessary, and the use of italics might trip you up if you do the flashback within a flashback. So, if you don't want to start the flashback with 'five years ago' (or something along those lines), a scene/chapter break would probably be the best way of handling it.

With the flashback inside of a flashback, you might have remembering within reliving, which I would say is the best strategy. So, the nested flashback is someone recounting a memory, after a scene/chapter break establishes that their remembering happens in the past.

Now, all this time travel talk is making me dizzy. I'm off to go rewatch Dr Who for the 100th time!

 

[TadOverdon]

I just published a book at Smashwords in which the first and final chapters occur months after the body of the novel. In that case I denoted those chapters "Prologue" and "Epilogue" in addition to indicating a backward transition at the end of the prologue. Maybe that's a tad pretentious.

The body of the book takes place in "present time," a year earlier, and there are flashbacks-in-summary to earlier points in the characters' lives that occur in several places.

 

[MelissaBaby]

We all have our own styles, but I don't understand why you would differentiate a flashback in a first person story. Why wouldn't you simply transition the narrative through the narrator saying "I remember when..." or having them begin to describe the events in the flashback to another character?

I didn't want to think about how terribly wrong everything had gone, so I thought back to that first time we met.

He was so beautiful. I first saw him in firelight. There were at least a dozen people partying around the bonfire when my friend and I walked up to it, but all I saw was him...

for me, a demarkation is just an interruption. I'd let the narrator tell their story.

 

[DrHappy]

In my most recent story, chapter 2 is a flashback. In my case, the context of the story made it pretty obvious, so I didn't bother to write "Yesterday" or "Flashback" or anything like that.

EDIT: FYI, all of my chapters are in the same Lit submission. Chapter 1 is only a few paragraphs.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Well, pretty much literally half of my Mike & Karen stories (and the Alexaverse in general) are flashbacks that show how the crew got together, that would be a lot of italics.

So when I go back to earlier decades, I simply indicate the place and date with italics to start the flashback and proceed as normal from there. When possible, I will add anachronistic elements in the scenery (boomboxes, 3-kiloton vacuum tube TVs, shows and music from the era, hair and clothing styles), just to give it a different feel and keep the reader in the moment. Based on feedback, it works.

 

[HeyAll]

The risk of writing long sections using Italics is that the Italics cuts off when it goes to the next page.

 

[KeithD]

I always section it off. If it isn't long, I often put it in italics too.

 

[Payne_Hall]

The risk of writing long sections using Italics is that the Italics cuts off when it goes to the next page.

The new format drops it after a paragraph too, from what I’ve noticed.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I just start using the pluperfect - so 'had been' instead of 'was', and it indicates enough that we're looking further back in time. I don't really do long flashbacks such that section breaks would be needed.

 

[Blind_Justice]

In one of my as-of-yet unpublished stories, I used clear date markers to let the reader know that it was a flashback. Each chapter has its own "time stamp"

"Two weeks ago"

"Eight days ago"

"Four days ago"

"Sixteen hours ago"

and so forth, until the story catches up with "real time".

 

[lovecraft68]

When I do flashbacks they tend to be decent length to cover a major event that affects the now of the story so I often give them their own chapter, usually with "Chicago, 1985" or something to denote time and place

 

[LAHomedog]

I use flashback all of the time and usually put them into context via the story or dialogue. On occasion I use a graphic line break like: --#--#--#--.

in my most recent story I had two "flash forwards." The story opened with events that were going to happen at the end of the story. Because the timeline of the story was catching up with the timeline of the flash forward as the story progressed I used italics for the first time. The jury is still out...

I always write first person and sometimes use italics for what I call a "thought balloon", the thoughts of the other person rather than switching to third person in that circumstance.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I always write first person and sometimes use italics for what I call a "thought balloon", the thoughts of the other person rather than switching to third person in that circumstance.

How can a first person narrator know the thoughts of another person? That would be enough to throw me out of a story. You've got to have a consistent narrative voice, I think.

That's why I use close third person a lot; it gets just as intimate as first person, but allows more than one point of view.

 

[Bramblethorn]

How do you write flashbacks in your stories? I like to use italics to denote a flashback scene since I write in first person.

Also, how would you handle a flashback inside a flashback? Or would you rearrange the text to make them separate flashbacks?

TIA

My 'Magnum Innominandum' has a double flashback structure: an intro from a modern-day perspective frames the story with the publicly known facts in the 1928 disappearance of Josephine Hart (third person distant), then the story flashes back to 1928 to a scene where Josephine is sharing her story (third person close), then it flashes back to the story she's actually telling (first person). After that's done, it closes off the two framing scenes.

I handled the transitions with * * * * * for a scene break, and then a place/date reference at the start of new sections, e.g.:

And there, for more than seventy years, the matter rested.

* * * * *

Northern Sweden, 1928

Josephine had passed from a world that was white and empty and achingly cold, into a dream of cool implacable vastness.

...

Karin rumbled with laughter, and it rippled through Josephine's body. "I have seen a great deal in my time. I have heard many secrets, and I keep them all to the grave. I do not judge, Josephine."

"Well." She shifted back, pressing herself against Karin. As she began to speak, her teeth chattered. "If you promise..."

* * * * *

Massachusetts, 1923

I don't even remember when I first met Ruth Summers. I must have seen her around when I started at Vesey, for we had several of the same classes. But she was a mousy, inconsequential sort of woman — or so I thought — and I was a princess from Boston money. I had no time to notice a country clergyman's daughter who mended her own clothes.

 

[LAHomedog]

How can a first person narrator know the thoughts of another person? That would be enough to throw me out of a story. You've got to have a consistent narrative voice, I think.

That's why I use close third person a lot; it gets just as intimate as first person, but allows more than one point of view.

I suggest it depends upon the voice created for the story and the creative parameters you've set up for it. Seems to me as long as you maintain the verisimilitude for the reader all is still good.

Maybe a bad example from the story I referenced:

****************

“Andy, you have to excuse me if I’m a bit awkward. It’s strange being out on a date with someone I just met, and being out on a date period. It’s hard to date in the smaller TV markets without the whole town knowing about it. So I didn’t date much those years. Since coming to DC, I haven’t met anyone that caught my interest.”

“No worries. We’re not out on a date. We are just two nice people who happen to enjoy Italian food,” and I smiled.

I gave my name to the hostess who walked us to our table through the high, stacked chrome shelves of wine, and sleek red and silver décor to a table for two in the back. The ceilings were high and it felt like we were in a modern art museum more than a restaurant.

I liked that Andy was obviously intelligent, the biggest turn on ever, and sensitive while still being definitively masculine and easily took control. But I didn’t know how much to trust my judgment this soon. I was relieved he was picking wine after checking on red or white. As is often the case, I didn’t really know what I liked.

After I ordered the wine, Jenna settled in with her napkin on her lap, turned to me and said, “So how long are you here?” I caught her glancing at my earring again. I guess you don’t see that in a lot of the politicos around here.

“Through the end of next week if all goes well. We need to find the right exterior townhome for the female lead, get permission from the owner, and meet with city officials to work out some overall city footage.”

The waiter brought the wine, a nice Napa Valley cabernet, and poured. Light from the candles and overhead lamps rippled through the garnet colored wine.

“Have you tried D Street on the Senate side of the Capitol? There are some Victorian townhomes with beautiful stained glass transoms above the windows,” she said.