Flashback: A flashback involves as the name describes a scene that moves from the present to the past to reveal something about a character or event within the narrative. Flashbacks are an opportunity for the author to provide insight into situations that would otherwise be left unexplained… Used in short stories, poems, novels, plays and movies, it is one of the most common and most recognisable writing techniques, and when executed well, one of the most effective.
Examples: The Road film : The director has used flashbacks throughout the whole film to reveal to the viewer how in a post-apocalyptic world, a father and son came to be on the road, homeless and unprotected. Breaking Bad television series : This series is renowned for doing things differently, and the use of flashback here is no exception.
In Breaking Bad , the flashbacks often come first and are then later explained and explored in the next few episodes, setting up a sense of intrigue within its viewers. Harry Potter series of books : Yes, even the Harry Potter novels use flashback. Remember the Pensieve that Dumbledore uses? The reader and Harry are transported back in time to relive the memories of Dumbledore and others.
Tips for Using Flashbacks: Use a trigger to justify taking the reader back into the past. My wip is my first attempt at writing a novel, and I plan on using flashbacks for more than half of the story. It definitely moves the plot forward.
In fact it kind of is the plot. The two stories just tie together so well going back and forth. The precautions in this article still apply, but not to quite the same degree. More to the point, my description has given me the title for my next work: The Shark in the Garden Pond. Watch this space. This has been so helpful! I, too, have been mentally crippled, thinking flashback is totally taboo.
And wondering who would not penalize me for even asking. Enter someone who not only knows flashbacks can be great, but also knows how to know when and when not to use them. My MC is deranged and at a point of extreme shock, he remembers something huge he had blocked from his memory. Something crucial to the plot. Something that is revealed near the end and solves the whole mystery. Something heart-wrenching that needs to be there, in the first place, and needs to stay in the background until HE realizes it.
I love knowing I was right and the work can proceed! Thanks so much for making me a better writer! I am writing a sword and sorcery book. My character was waylaid on the way to meet someone so that th e sorcerers could implant a false memory delaying her getting the actual intel.
I have the false memory as a dramatized flashback. It begins as a straight narrative, then she throws in a few comments about odd things and toward the end she eases into reality, mulling over the oddness and basically acting weird as she comes to reality. When the POV has a false recollection is there a better way to portray it? I like reading the long-road sort of novels of say John Irving or Dickens—the ones that cover twenty to thirty years without too much time travel aka flashes.
I feel the character maturing before your eyes slowly is a delight, and a deeper dive into who they are. Readers can all relate to being a teen. So why hold back on a long-road story showing and telling method if the authors have such compulsion to draft backstory? Maybe this long chronology topic is a different subject—not meant for the flashback topic. But I still wonder, when sitting with my pen and paper: are there others that like these long, plodding stories? So you can imagine my consternation when flashbacks started taking over my WIP!
But all that juicy backstory was so fun to write and seemed so necessary to get my protagonist — as well as several other characters including the antagonist — where they needed to be when the story began. Eventually I just threw up my hands and accepted that the backstory wanted to be THE story and went with that. Though I do have the idea that my original story idea could be re-purposed as a sequel…. My book uses flashbacks to avoid overwhelming readers with too much information. I start in the middle of the story, then use flashbacks to fill in the gaps.
You mentioned that if the backstory is more important than the main story, you should be telling the backstory. In the s, she submitted her novel Go Set a Watchman to publishers. They rejected it, but one told her that flashbacks to the s would be a great story on its own. She pulled those segments out and rewrote them into To Kill a Mockingbird, which is now considered a classic.
She published Go Set a Watchman 2 years ago, mainly because she needed money for medical bills. I have three reasons for my flashback. This needs to be established so he can evolve through his character arc. I feel like they move the story forward. I wonder if I am fooling myself. I use flashbacks because my mc is a peasant who is joining a rebellion against the nobility.
When he gets sick of the fighting he reminds himself of what the peasants have had to endure because of the nobility and it gives him the strength to go on. For instance one chapter shows her not leaving her relationship with a guy everyone tells her is bad for her, and you feel frustrated but the next chapter you see her as a 10 year old with her father and all the ways he made her feel worthless so you are able to see how and why she is the way she is and does the things she does.
Same with The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: there flashbacks are triggered by artifacts and recounted through letters. In my memory though I have very compelling reasons to do so…in italics! I use another one where a character has to give a formal report. I mix her flashbacks in to not only facilitate her healing process, but also to drive her love story sub-plot forward. These are just two examples that I can recall…oh yes, I also confess to using another one to cover the passage of time, explaining how and why my soldier ended up somewhere.
I figured it was better than a long boring chapter in a war council. These are my confessions. I love your posts! I am using quite a few flashbacks in my book. It is based, loosely, on my own life and I went through quite a few flashbacks for a few reasons. Firstly, I was hit by a car while hitchhiking and lost my memory. Quite a few of my flashbacks were from the time before , and gave me some insight into my life before 19 years of age.
These flashbacks revealed what I had experienced in small bytes, just enough for me to handle at the moment. I am hoping my book will help others to understand what a person goes through, who suffers from Complex PTSD and the aftereffects of severe trauma.
Also, I hope it may encourage others suffering these same type of experiences to look to the future with hope for relief. But sentient ones, who still possess their souls and memories, under the leadership of a benevolent half human fairy godmother, who uses magic to resurrect murder victims so they can take revenge on the ones who killed them.
Someone who uses flashback effectively is E. One is the prologue, which happens 20 years before the story. It will contain the inciting incident for the father. The second is 20 years later. But I never could find a good spot to place them that actually worked.
I also broke up into 2 parts a flashback scene about the earlier relationship between the protagonist and the main antagonist. This flashback also serves to explain how the protagonist acquired her main magical weapons. In my story, a tribe is affected by someone in their history. Greatly affected. I want to do a flashback of that character, what happened to him, etc. But doing a flashback takes you out of the story about the MC. This absolutely implies the legit incorporation of FBs, due to in medias res being a start somewhere in the middle.
I could not disagree more with common advice I see to not have FBs near the beginning of a story. If the story is just getting rolling, it is hardly an interruption, as long as the FBs themselves tell a story. At this point, the FBs can become the story. Of course, in a story where there is relentless plot and everything points to a huge climax near the end of Act III, it makes sense to be very judicious in the use of FBs.
But not every story is like that. A Courtship Love Story not a romance is about the journey, and not about the destination. And it is more about character than plot. So there is no big focus on climax in a LS, meaning FBs can be used for significant effect with few of the drawbacks they might have in a thriller, horror, or crime story, for instance.
So the trick then is to make the FBs part of the story. Make them story-like. Write them as scenes with all the story elements necessary for scenes, and minimize description and exposition no info dumping, please. Conform to all of the suggestions in the article above, but readers will follow happily if that is where the story goes. And that is all you really need. Weiland shares the only reason your story should have flashbacks, and Alex Limberg reveals how to write endings that […].
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Helping Writers Become Authors Write your best story. Change your life. Astound the world. Home Start Here! Weiland Site. November 4, by K. First things first: what is a flashback? A flashback is basically a memory. It can take several forms: A character within the main story actively remembering something. For example, amnesiac Jason Bourne both regains snippets of memory and remembers his girlfriend Marie in quick flashbacks.
Sign Up Today Sign up to receive K. About K. Weiland KMWeiland K. Comments Susan says. November 4, at am. Weiland KMWeiland says. November 4, at pm. Chris says. Joe Long says. November 12, at am. November 12, at pm. Jason P. Garrett says. Wynn Guthrie says. November 5, at am. November 5, at pm.
Totally agree about Warrior. It was one of my top favorite movies. Going to have to read it. I felt the movie had so much wasted potential. Jeffrey Barlow says. I imagine the criteria for including dreams are nearly identical? November 10, at pm. November 11, at pm. Except, for my money, Batman Begins does it way better than Arrow. Ken Hughes says. This might be the best practical guide ever for when to flash and not to.
Rosey says. Ian says. A couple hundred words is, generally, speaking a nice length for a dramatized flashback. Mauricio says. R Billing says. Jamie says. Megan Brummer says. Hannah Killian says. Rochelle says. Joseph McGarry says.
Antonius M. Carol M. Grace Marie says. Nancy says. Colleen Akin says. When in doubt, call in the betas. If they enjoy it and it keeps their interest, then it works! Brandon says. Not sure what to do. What do you think? Addyson M. Huneke says. Ruth says. Benjamin Thomas says. MK Brotherton says. Andrewiswriting says. November 6, at pm. Perhaps I wrote them in invisible ink? Do make things disappear?
Ah… less-than and greater-than symbols DO make things disappear. Brenna says. Shadeburst says. Anne Cartwright says. December 2, at am. Dan Lovell says. Jason Bougger says. Great post, either way, and thanks for giving us lots to think about. November 6, at am.
Rainheart says. Would that be okay? Natalie K. November 7, at pm. I froze in a silent panic. Thanks, I appreciate that. 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. Thanks for sharing. I should have listed this as bullet point. Definitely helped me cut some out ruthlessly.
It was her second novel, actually. She uses flashbacks to trickle in details. I forget at the moment how quickly the FBs show up, but they work well. Thanks for the useful info.
I rarely use flashbacks in my novels. My MC — a man — is the newly appointed Head Teacher of an all-girls school and the story begins at a critical point on the first day of term when he introduces himself to the stunned girls at assembly. The first half of the chapter shows him explaining to the girls how things are going to change under his Headship, and their reaction.
The second half of the chapter flashes back to the previous week when he introduced himself to the all-female staff, and it shows their very different reactions to his appointment. It also gives me the opportunity to introduce the staff. The flashback is shown through the eyes of the school secretary and as she returns to the present she is observing the changes already taking place with the teachers — in the way they are dressed, and make-up has been more diligently applied.
Flashbacks need to be used carefully and with a light hand. Too many times they can confuse the reader and send the action to a screeching halt. That said, they can add depth to character and provide motivation to actions otherwise incomprehensible.
I would only do it once or twice at most and not at the very beginning. Character needs to be established first and setting. I am toying wit the idea of a flashback or two in my WIP. It makes sense that they can be used after the midpoint, so as not to give too much away early on. I have used a flashback as the second chapter of my latest book for several reasons. I believe the first chapter — first sentence even, should start where the action begins.
The first chapter starts on the first day of term when he introduces himself to the girls at morning assembly.
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