Flashbacks - Yes or No?

[Ommichron]

I could link you if you want to see how I did it, but it's a flashback to a rape so it would not be a very comfortable read.

Umm...thanks, but no thanks. (NC and I don't sit comfortably.)

 

[NuclearFairy]

Umm...thanks, but no thanks. (NC and I don't sit comfortably.)

No problem, it's not something everyone can handle. Which includes the guy in the story.

 

[nice90sguy]

In one of my longer stories I used a lot of time-jumps, prefacing them with what in movies are called "supers" e.g. "London, three years previously", in bold face.

Here's a quote from one of my stories, around 90% through its 30,000 words:

I write stories where the narrative proceeds by revelation and discovery. So the scenes dart around, with big gaps in time and place, forcing you, the reader, to try to piece together the characters, back story and figure out wtf is going on. And my job is to keep you guessing and sufficiently entertained while you read so that you'll read to the end.
...
This final part continues my style of exposition, with the usual flashbacks, flash-forwards, scene jumps and all the other whizz-bang gimmickry I love to employ.

However, as this is the near the end of the story, I think I'll summarise, as simply as I can, the "forward" story thus far (or as much as has been revealed of it thus far), without all those time-jumps and implied facts. Feel free to skip it.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Flashbacks are a widely misunderstood and misused tool.

 

[TiberiusPrime]

Yup! Could include a trigger warning: "Contains flashbacks - You have been warned!"

Seriously though, thanks for taking the time to respond!

When I was in the middle of writing "Growth Spurt", I firmly intended to do a flashback story midway through. The issue was is that I kept getting responses to my stories that said, "Hey, what about.....", when I was purposely not telling a specific part of my story. Once it hit up, it all made sense (I hope).

 

[nice90sguy]

Flashbacks are a widely misunderstood and misused tool.

...and are often regarded as a "cheat" by screenwriting gurus

 

[AwkwardMD]

...and are often regarded as a "cheat" by screenwriting gurus

The flashback is not a shovel, it's a scalpel.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

You might want to take a glance at a short How-To that I wrote.

There are a few literary techniques mentioned in it that could help you decide on how to incorporate the past events, including: Allusion, Exposition, Flashbacks, and Frame Story.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If they're clearly done and they add to the story, then fine. I've just read Stonemouth by Iain Banks, which does it very well - there's references to An Incident five years ago, then the narrative switches to "When we started high school" or "A year before that fateful day that had me escaping town, I..."

It has a couple changes of date in every chapter, and a slowly evolving mystery, which makes it much more complex than a typical story with a couple flashbacks, so I wouldn't recommend that many unless you've got Banks-level experience. But an odd scene should be fine.

 

[kinkincguy]

If they're clearly done and they add to the story, then fine. I've just read Stonemouth by Iain Banks, which does it very well - there's references to An Incident five years ago, then the narrative switches to "When we started high school" or "A year before that fateful day that had me escaping town, I..."

It has a couple changes of date in every chapter, and a slowly evolving mystery, which makes it much more complex than a typical story with a couple flashbacks, so I wouldn't recommend that many unless you've got Banks-level experience. But an odd scene should be fine.

Great book

 

[Trionyx]

I’ve had readers complain they got confused with the switch between the present and past so I try to make it obvious without rubbing the readers’ noses in it. I am not a fan of writing ’then’ and ‘now’ as headers.

Here is how I did it both the beginning and bringing everything back UTD in my story Last Few Days of Summer.



“As he sat there, he thought back thirty years to the late summer of 1992. It always amused him the events of that summer were similar to and occurred exactly fifty years after those portrayed in the movie The Summer of Forty-two. And now another thirty years had passed following those two defining weeks as he turned twenty. The whiskey swirled in his glass while his mind drifted back to those fateful last few days of summer....

-----

After donning his running shoes, Will told his parents he was going for a run and took off towards the beach.”

The vast majority of the story ensued here, then the switch back to current time.

“A brief siren blast from the patrol car interrupted him and she jumped nervously. She shook her head 'No', told him to take care and blew him a little kiss. He watched sadly as she rolled up the window before driving down the street and out of his life.

-----

As he sipped the last of his whiskey, Will wondered what had happened to Charity, or whatever her name was, those thirty years prior.”




Use of the dashes emphasizes IMHO the shift of time between present and past at the beginning and between the past and the present at the end. I also included the whiskey at both ends as a clue that we were back in the present time and mentioned the thirty years as well.

 

[TheLobster]

I mentioned tense shift before, with the proviso that you'd need the present time be described in present tense; but in my recent story, I actually managed to sneak in a flashback into a narrative that's already told in the past.

The flashback starts like this (it's very close to the start of the story, if you want to read it in full):

As she took off her overcoat and hanged it on the rack, her mind went back a few months and replayed the memories of that bizarre interview.

"I'm rather impressed," she remembered the older businesswoman say. "You definitely know your way around the web frontend and all those modern frameworks, including the one our engineers are using. It also seems like you've got a decent amount of knowledge and experience with privacy and security issues. Overall, pretty darn good..." She looked to the side. "So, what do you think, Jesse? Would Alyssa here be a worthwhile addition to the team?"

Jesse had introduced himself as the CEO, and tech was probably the only industry where he could actually look like one. The guy didn't even break into his thirties; a button-down checkered shirt was still the height of his fashion sense, and the bloodshot eyes plus a frizzy mane of brown hair on his head gave off an appearance of someone who'd just spent all night either partying or coding.

Boldfaced are the verbs and sentences of interest, with the main bridge being the first speech tag. After that, the PoV shifts fully into the past, so much so that the next use of regular of narrative verb and pronoun refers to the character from the flashback. And to top it off, we even have temporal succession of events within the flashback, using the regular past perfect to make it clear.

The transition back to the present is much simpler:

"Excellent. And I must say I appreciate what you said earlier, too, about not wanting to be a drag on Jesse's team productivity, because in this role, you would become essentially the exact opposite."

She blinked in confusion. "Huh?"

Heather's wrinkly smile grew even wider. "Well, let me explain then..."

And boy, explain she did.

Thinking back to it now, as Alyssa looked at her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror in her office, she could totally understand why Jesse said she was a very promising candidate. Her qualifications were obvious and plain to everyone around, precisely because she was anything but plain.

It does rely on the flashback itself trailing off, rather than finishing in one specific moment, but I think you could do it with a more abrupt transition as well.

 

[Plathfan]

No.

In cinema, it works: the main character gets a glazed look, the image blurs, and we’re suddenly in another time and place. In literature, it’s a bit more complicated. The simplest approach is to use chapter breaks with a time reference, but with a little will, creativity, and effort, past events can be revealed naturally through dialogue.

 

[Lifestyle66]

As I said earlier, don't flip-flop too much. The one story which stuck out in my mind had the POV and time jumps too often, sometime with just three or four paragraphs, then switch.

When we read a story, we have to build the scene and situation in our mind. And when you change scenes or, POVs, or time references, you're making the reader work to rebuild the mental image. So, when switching that scene, try to assist the reader with that mental scene rebuilding as fast as practical, and keep them in the scene long enough to enjoy it, before changing and working again.

This is why I preferred to use the therapist/counselors for the descriptions of the past. The reader remains in the present and hears how the MC felt in their own words as they relate the past.

 

[Ommichron]

You might want to take a glance at a short How-To that I wrote.

There are a few literary techniques mentioned in it that could help you decide on how to incorporate the past events, including: Allusion, Exposition, Flashbacks, and Frame Story.

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond, and for pointing me in the direction of your "How-To". I've left a comment after that piece explaining my thoughts, and the fact that your piece gave me a serious reminder of things that I did know, but was choosing to ignore, along with a reality check. A major rethink is necessary, I believe, into how I intend to write the piece I want to, if indeed I really do want to detract from the piece that sparked the idea.

Many thanks!

 

[Ommichron]

Thank you to everybody who has responded, and provided valuable help and guidance. As I said to @BobbyBrandt in the post above, I am reconsidering how I should go about the project, if indeed I should do so, despite my desire to provide closure for my MC!

Thanks again, and have a good one!

 

[Britva415]

I am dead set against using italics or some other typography to mark the flashback

Me too. If you can't do it with words alone, maybe you shouldn't do it at all.

 

[YDB95]

I put my flashbacks in italics.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

If you just have one person "flashing back" or perhaps more accurately reminiscing about something, then set it up based on whatever triggered the memory.

Julie opened the door and stepped out onto the hotel balcony. The view over the bay was spectacular, a small catamaran with a red sail caught her attention as it sped across the bay. One hull lifted clear of the water, she could barely make out the sailor, stretching back to balance it.
When was the last time she'd been sailing she thought. Must have been 93, or was it 94, that summer on Lake Winnemucca. What a summer that had been...

 

[Trionyx]

I put my flashbacks in italics.

Then I would have to put <i> and </i> in front and behind each paragraph of the flashback. I haven’t the patience for that.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

There's always the old standby, just have a character announce, "Picture it, Sicily 1922..."

 

[MelissaBaby]

Then I would have to put <i> and </i> in front and behind each paragraph of the flashback. I haven’t the patience for that.

Having accidentally put about three pages in italics by forgetting the </i>, I can tell you that if you c/p your story with the html tags, you don't have to tag paragraph by paragraph.

 

[Britva415]

Hot take: No flashback is anywhere near as bad as an expositionary infodump written in past-perfective case.

He had she had they had we all had had had had had had had had had had.

An opening sentence which contains the word "had" - and not as a possessive - usually signals several more "hads" coming up, and makes me want to nope out of the story almost as much as second-person "narration" and utter failure to remember to identify the protag's gender until it happens purely by accident after several paragraphs.

 

[RetroFan]

I often write flashbacks because I tend to write comedic stories and can use this to fit in more funny things when they don't fit the main narrative or to add more substance to characters.

For example I'm writing one now where a middle-aged man is the narrator and he has a fat fetish for his father's overweight second wife, who is the same age as the son. The father is by now afflicted by dementia and very infirm mentally and physically causing him to need to wear adult incontinence diapers. Dementia and incontinence of course are not laughing matters, but to lighten things up I note how the father goes around telling everyone and anyone about the incontinence diapers he uses and recommending that they use them too, like he is a salesman for the products, to the embarrassment of his adult kids from his first marriage.

I also lighten the mood by describing some of the father's other antics in the past, such as him giving advice and trying to help people. This includes seeing two young men holding hands and advising them that they might not want to do this unless they wanted people to think they were queer; thinking a small boy is having trouble crossing the road and stops to help him only the 'boy' is in fact an adult dwarf; and seeing an overweight woman and her equally overweight daughters buying sanitary napkins in a supermarket, going across and advising that he is married to a woman much younger who is really fat like them, saying which type of period pads she uses and recommending that they buy the same type of feminine hygiene products.