Flashbacks

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Just a quick question here...do you write flashbacks in italics? Preferably not - huge chunks of italics are not easy to read.

Also, if the novel is in present tense, do I have to stick with present tense in the flashbacks as well? No -not if it reads better in past or whatever. Choices are all the author's.

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Why write a flashback at all?

I usually use italics for flashback sequences myself, but this is just a stylistic preference. I CANNOT speak for the publishing standard as I would not know. So please don't take my word as authority or anything!

I think whether to put them in present or past tense is up to the author. I think I write mine in past tense but that's only because that's what I'm used to. Present tense would make the flashback more immediate, like a real (traumatic, not literary) flashback, which is basically a memory that appears to be taking place to a character RIGHT NOW and not in the past. So present-tense for flashbacks with past tense for the regular story makes sense, if one wishes to do it that way. In your case it's the opposite, but there's an argument to put them in past tense when the rest of the story is in present tense since they already happened. Up to you. *shrug*

^Graff said:

Why write a flashback at all?

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Why write a flashback? Again, it's the author's choice. Some people like to utilize flashbacks, some don't. For those of us who do, sometimes there's a need to make reference to things that happened beyond the scope of the story and to just write the characters remembering or talking about it won't do; it seems too passive. We might want to make the scene seem more immediate. Or, you might just have a character who's having a flashback out of trauma. It happens.

I write like a dozen flashbacks in my book. Yeah, you can use italics, and as for the tense, that's up to you.

Just a few things to say:

1.) Make sure the flashback is interesting. It is very easy to write a boring flashback, so boring that the reader would rather read the current story than the flashback.

2.)Don't write so many flashbacks in a short moment, unless it's important to the story and unless you know what you're doing. Don't make them consecutive. They can get boring very quickly. And too many flashbacks can confuse the reader.

3.) Try not to make the flashback anymore interesting than the story itself. The reader would just would keep turning pages looking for more of these interesting flashbacks. (Take my word for it. I had this one before.)

Just a quick question here...do you write flashbacks in italics?

Also, if the novel is in present tense, do I have to stick with present tense in the flashbacks as well?

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I dislike reading italics. In the end I'm sure the publisher's standards will determine how it appears in a published version, so do whatever makes you feel comfortable.

How did you choose the tense for the rest of your narrative? Did you think about it or did it just happen? Go with whatever feels right. Although I will argue that if one flashback is in present tense, they all should be.

Now that I've seen a couple different answers on this question:

Is there a publishing standard on flashbacks?

If you aren't doing italics (which is what I thought it was too), what else would you do?

Is there a publishing standard on flashbacks?

If you aren't doing italics (which is what I thought it was too), what else would you do?

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Sorry shannon. When I wrote "publisher's standards" I just meant that each publishing house is going to have their own preferred formatting style. It may be different than how you submit the manuscript.

Personally, I would make it clear somehow in the narrative that a flashback is occurring, use a line break and go on with a normal format. I find italics work if the section is no more than a few lines long. However, you should do what makes you comfortable. My dislike of italics is from a reader's perspective, not a writer's.

It has never even occured to me to put flashbacks in italics. My flashbacks tend to be placed into their own scenes, though, with the scene before leading in and the scene after returning to the present time. I tend to write my own flashbacks in past tense because, well, they happened in the past. To me, the most important thing isn't so much the format of a flashback, it's the function. I always ask myself a few questions when writing flashbacks: Is the information already in the story, and if it isn't, is a flashback the only way to get the information across? I wrote about it on my blog. Seriously, I think people need to think long and hard about when they're using flashbacks because no matter how interesting the flashback is, it is taking time away from the current story.

Darrtwish -make sure the flashbacks genuinely drive the story forward and contain essential reading without which the reader would be unable to follow the unfolding story, and are not really only background you, as author, need to know in order to write the story.

Flashbacks are history -gone -in the past.

I just finished "The Godfather" (I know, should have read it by now but...) It was formatted so an event would happen, then the narrator took you back a few years or weeks or months and you saw the set up. It was a bizarre way to write a book but it worked for some strange reason.

Another time jumper is "The Time Traveler's Wife" which is due to obvious reasons.

Here's some helpful advice (I got this out of a book entitled, "Stein On Writing" by Sol Stein from the chapter entitled " Flashbacks: How to Bring Background into the Foreground")

even experienced writers sometimes handle flashbacks awkwardly.

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ideally, all fiction should seem to be happening now.

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The reason flashbacks create a problem for readers is that they break the reading experience.

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Therefore, the art of writing flashbacks is to avoid interrupting the reader's experience.

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Defined: Stein writes A flashback is any scene that happened before the present story began. So technically, "The Godfather" wasn't written with flashbacks. It was simply non-linear.

A true flashback, however short, is a scene, preferably with characters in conflict.

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Ask yourself:

If the flashback is necessary, can the reader see the action in it as an immediate scene?

Is the opening of the flashback as interesting or compelling as the beginning of a novel or story?

Does the flashback enhance the reader's experience of the story as a whole?

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In starting a flashback, your aim is to get into an immediate scene as soon as possible. Since dialogue is always in immediate scene, one way of handling flashbacks is to use dialogue early. What most writers don't realize is that you can use dialogue even if the flashback is short.

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If you have a flashback in your manuscript or are contemplating writing one, ask yourself, does the flashback reinforce the story in an important way? Is it absolutely essential? If it's not, you many not really need it.

Can the reader see what's happening in your flashback? Can you give it the immediacy of a scene that takes place before the eye? If your flashback is not a scene, can you make it in to an active scene as if it were in the present?

Take a close look at the opening of your flashback. Is it immediately interesting or compelling?

Is the reader's experience of your story enhanced by the flashback or - however well written - does it still intrude?

Has the flashback helped characterize in depth, has it helped the reader feel what the character feels?

Is there any way of getting background information across without resorting to a flashback?

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Hope I've helped.

Amy

If you consider flashbacks to include the kind of thing where the POV char has a brief memory of some past event, AND you're using italics for internal thought, then italics would be appropriate. But that's very brief memories consisting of one or two sentences.

Most flashbacks are complete scenes. Many readers find italics uncomfortable to read for more than a couple of lines.

The usual convention for tense is that when the main story is present tense, flashbacks are past tense. When the main story is past tense, on the other hand, the first paragraph or so of the flashback is past perfect. But once the time shift is firmly established, it goes back to simple past. (Other choices are possible; this is merely the most common.)

FennelGiraffe said:

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The usual convention for tense is that when the main story is present tense, flashbacks are past tense. When the main story is past tense, on the other hand, the first paragraph or so of the flashback is past perfect. But once the time shift is firmly established, it goes back to simple past. (Other choices are possible; this is merely the most common.)

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I'm going to put in my two cents about the present/past tense observation.


All scenes in your book should sound immediate. Use the word "had" and you lose immediacy unless it is: "Jim had a wedgie, now it is gone."

examples: (Flashback scene, Torg the lizard remembers his first dragon encounter)

Most of those silly humans can't see dragons. Neither can most mammals, except cats. That's another story. This is mine, Torg...lizard extraordinaire, biter of birds. I remember the first time I saw a dragon.

My egg had been drying in the sun for hours. The sun had risen past the mountains and had climbed high into the sky. Then it had been blotted out...

OK, I can't continue that because it was just silly...

Here's the better way:...I remember the first time I saw a dragon.

My egg had been drying in the sun for hours. The orb climbed high into the sky. Suddenly it was blotted out by a shadow that stretched across the entire surface of my rock. I looked up and silhouetted against the purple sky was ...

See? Unless you are referring to an event that happens even farther back in time (My egg...) then the scene should still happen in the immediate sense of past.

I'm digging out a first person account with numerous flashbacks to check... yep, it holds as a solid argument.

Here's a snippet from " Dragon" by Steven Brust: (with comments on time)

(immediate story, note present tense "you have")Do you know what a battlefield smells like? If so, you have my sympathy; if not, you still won't because I have no intention of dwelling on it except to say that people don't smell so good on the inside.

(flashback time, no transition...the set up was above. This part is phrased in past tense.)
We stepped over the piles of dirt (I can't call it a "bulwark" with a straight face - internal comment set in the present) that we'd spent so much time and sweat creating, and moved forward at a steady pace; not too fast, not too slow. No, come to think of it, much too fast. A slow crawl would have been much too fast.

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There. Illustrated. (sort of...)

Amy

I don't think there is an industry standard. And I suspect even individual publishing houses do this on a novel-to-novel basis, depending on how the author handles it.

I don't done use italics for flashbacks. It annoys me, usually, and--like others have said--if it goes on for too long, it gets hard to read very quickly. If you want to use italics for a short flashback, go ahead. But don't use them on anything long.

Also, I think it really depends on the style of your novel. Think of films. There are all kinds of different ways of portraying flashbacks. It used to be that many tended to be in softer focus, which often became associated with flashbacks. Some movies may use sepia. Some may use black and white or just strong desaturation or saturation (more or less color). And lots of movies don't make flashbacks look any different at all. It can be a stylistic choice, too. I don't use italics, because it doesn't fit the style of my writing. If you feel it does, go for it. Keep in mind if it's too much text in italics, many readers will find that a big turn-off. It's it's good, I might read through the eyestrain.

I didn't use them. It was a rather long flashback to describe the reason my MC did what she did so I just wrote it as a chapter

I don't mind reading italics, and I use 'em in short introductory prologues. Not sure if I use them in flashbacks, but the idea has its appeal.

'Course, the problem is, in a manuscript, that would be a heck of a lot of underlined text to read. I'm not sure if my eyeballs would like that...

-Derek