One of the biggest tools for an author is the flashback. These can help reveal information about a character, place, or situation. For the few that don’t know what this is, you move the attention of the book from the current situation to an event of the past. For example, a character is being approached by something he or she is terrified of. They have an exposition of thought that explains the origin of this phobia. A flashback easier to do in past tense writing because it’s awkward and jarring in past tense.
Flashbacks are easy to abuse because, as the author, you know everything about the characters. An event might trigger a funny story from your protagonist’s childhood that you ‘NEED’ to include. The truth is that you don’t always need to include a flashback if it’s not entirely relevant to the plot. It helps with bringing more depth to a character, but you need a believable connection to current events. A character fighting a dragon shouldn’t suddenly flashback to a time when they burned their mouth of fresh pizza. Make flashbacks count and use them sparingly.
I can handle flashbacks if they are used with PTSD, dreaming, prologues, and don’t tear me out of the book. If a character is in the midst of a perilous battle, I don’t want to see a write up of their childhood in the middle. By the time I’m brought back to the action, I need to read the beginning of the fight to get back into it. I think a flashback should be a tool for explanation, but not at the cost of story flow. The phrase ‘location, location, location’ comes to mind here. Let me give you an example of horrific flashback use:
I was in college and a fellow freshman wanted to write a martial arts book. I agreed out of boredom and being too nice for my own damn good. He came to me with a list of actors and actresses to play the movie version. Bad sign, but I started writing the book with him and got to the end of Page 1. Suddenly, he yells ‘Flashback!’ and demands we put in a flashback to the character’s tragic motivational moment. Keep in mind that this was called for in mid-conversation with another character. Terrible and I stopped right there.
I like a flashback to seem natural in appearance as if one could believe a real person would think back to such things. So as an author, I don’t like to plan flashbacks and let them appear as I write.
What do you think of flashbacks?
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Ah man, I’m struggling with this myself at the moment! I need to tell some back story… really need to get it in. I would much prefer to be able to do this by referencing it in the present – in the moment in which my story is set. But every time I try it this way, I end up with a section of dialogue which isbasically just clunky exposition. So, I’m stuck with my flashback. Hoping it doesn’t feel too intrsive when I go back through my first draft to start re-writes…
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What about having another character ask questions to draw the full story out? Instead of just a dump of info, it can be a conversation.
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That’s a good idea – I’m trying that way too. It’s just that whenever I use dialogue/conversation to get the info across, it always feels very clunky to me. It may be that I’m jst too sensitive to it and that it isn’t as bad I think. My first draft is hideen away for now – waiting to go back for the re-writes – so I may have a different view when I go back to it in a couple of weeks.
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Good idea. Going back with a clear mind and distance always helps. I’m finding a lot of stuff to fix in my 4th book after 2 months away.
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Personally, as a reader, I prefer not encountering flashbacks. 🙂 I tolerate them where they are needed and helpful, though.
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Me too. I can understand in certain situations, but they can be really over the top some times.
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My main character in ‘A Construct of Angels’ suffered recurring walking nightmares that threw her out of her ‘ordinary’ life and back her to abusive childhood – explaining her fear of men. Each flashback was its own sub-scene where the reader was immersed in the character’s terrors. The flashback would end as she snapped back to reality and realised that she’d been suffering from the recurring nighmare and she would react accordingly. So the flashback became part of the story – her story, and her fears, rather than interfering with what was happening in the present. It helped that the nightmares occurred when she was trying to relax rather than manifesting in the middle of a fight scene, so the flashback became the action.
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That makes perfect sense. The flashbacks are a major plot point, so they’re important. This makes them part of the action, as you stated, instead of a break in the plot. You do prove that certain plots can rely on flashbacks.
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I have two flashback scenes in my book and I debated seriously whether to keep them at all. I was afraid they might be taking away from the rest of the story or maybe kick it into snore mode but after my first edit I’ve decided to keep them. Hoping it was the right choice.
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From what I’ve been told, one or two flashbacks isn’t a bad thing. If they bring something to the story and aren’t drawn out for too long then it should work. Another blogger (Victoria Grefer whose blog I linked to here) has stated that flashbacks can be used for downtime between action and drama.
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I was just reading that post also.
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I agree. I think sometimes we forget how insightful our readers are and we do them a disservice by chucking in too much backstory/flashbacks/info dump/etc. One thing I’ve always admired about anime is they’re typically quite sparse on backstory, at least in the beginning. It’s okay that we have to wonder for a little bit, as long as we get the answers sooner or later.
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Anime is really good about flashbacks until that middle point of a long series. I still shudder when I think of Goku taking 3 episodes to charge the Spirit Bomb and we have to see more of his childhood.
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That’s most of the reason I avoided DBZ altogether. It also drove me from Naruto anime to Naruto manga. I hate the extensive dragging out.
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I liked DBZ because I started there. Naruto I gave a shot for a while, but I stopped eventually. Bleach is another that I walked away from. I like the short ones better like Trigun, Love Hina, and GTO.
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Naruto is really good in the manga. What takes 10 episodes is only a few pages. I’m told Bleach is much easier to read as well.
But yeah, I typically like the shorter anime too.
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My issue with Bleach and Naruto and DBZ was that it always came down to the the main hero. There was no point in rooting for the other heroes if they were fighting the main villain. No suspence.
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Oh really? On Naruto, some of my fav characters are the side chars, like Sakura, Rock Lee and Gaara. And they fight the baddies and win pretty awesomely. *shrug* As for Bleach, seems like Ishida was someone to root for. I also liked, I think his name was Kon, the dude stuck in the lion most of the time. Yeah, I should definitely catch up on these manga.
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Might not have watched long enough or backed wrong guy. Favorite in Naruto was Shikamaru who didn’t do much. In Bleach, I liked Chad who never beat a big baddie.
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Flashbacks should be a natural part of the flow of the story, used to enhance it within the confines of the scene. Too many times I think authors try to force them into a story as filler or because they think that they need to provide every detail of a characters back story. I like flashbacks, but only when they add to the story in a meaningful way.
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Filler is a definite reason. I think a lot of them come from ideas that the author has, but there’s no easy way to fit them in. I have so many childhood tales of my characters that I put in and had to cut. They simply broke the flow.
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All learned through experience I’m sure.
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Yup. Never stop stumbling forward.
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I couldn’t agree more. 🙂
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I am not a fan of flashbacks. I had one in my story, and then ripped it out. It just didn’t flow. If the motivation/information/something needs to be unveiled for the writer, I’m better off doing it in such a way as to incorporate it into the current storyline.
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They definitely need to be used carefully. I had the same situation with my flashbacks. They didn’t flow or fit into the story.
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I don’t believe that I have ever written a flashback, myself. Then again, I tend to believe that less is more, when dealing with backstory. When we meet people in real life, we tend not to sit down and discuss our painful history–we just deal with each other as we are now and go forward. It’s the same thing with fictional characters–show me what’s going on right now and how the character reacts, and I’ll follow along from there.
I think that too often writers use flashbacks because they don’t trust themselves to show a character clearly, or else don’t trust the reader to understand a character without help. Besides, a little mystery is good to keep readers interested.
Show me someone who is a loner, afraid to trust people, who moves cautiously and keeps his back to the wall, and I’ll want to know what happened to him to make him so paranoid. Telling me in detail right away spoils the fun–give me a little hint every couple of chapters and let me connect the dots.
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A lot of it can relate to the author wanting to get their personal picture to the reader. That fear of a misinterpretation can lead to throwing in a lot of backstory. Though, it does bring up the question:
How do you show a character’s past without a flashback?
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It depends–why is the character’s past important? If events in the past are part of the story, I think that they should be told as part of the story, preferably (but not necessarily) in chronological order.
It can work to have sections bounce back and forth in time, as a structural choice, say, Chapter One, present day, Chapter Two, twenty years ago, Chapter Three present day, Chapter Four, fifteen years ago, and so on, but I don’t see those as a flashbacks–the character isn’t remembering things, he or she is living them as they happen, just chronologically out of order.
If the character’s past is important to explain the character’s personality or motivation, I’d prefer straight exposition–“When Joe was ten years old his mother was eaten by a spider that had been hidden in a bunch of bananas and ever since then he dedicated his life to destroying banana importers” or whatever, rather than taking the time to portray it as a memory or, worse, as a dream. (I have had a lot of traumatic things happen to me, and I can’t recall a single dream that recounted anything from my past as it happened.)
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You’re right. Flashbacks should only be used for importance. They get used a lot for quirky, connect to the character parts that can probably be done with a present day event. Exposition and dialogue would work just as well and not break the flow.
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I wrote a short story once where a character who was – unbeknownst to the reader – psychic, and would have flash-*forwards*, and it wasn’t until the story got to where that took place that it was revealed those had been ‘yet to come’ events instead of flashbacks.
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That’s a really interesting twist. Psychics do open a window for flashbacks to be used and not break the flow of the story.
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