The Art and Science of Flashbacks. What Are Your Thoughts?

I am a screenwriter who has recently made the forray back into novel writing. Five months ago, I made a stupid mistake with a flashback in my curent WIP novel -- a mistake that my real life reading support group pointed out right away.

My mistake was I had a flashback on the very very first page of the novel. That works fine in a movie, but not in a novel.

The thing about flashbacks is they have an unavoidable cinematic feel to them. And it's always bad form (or at least I think so) to go criss-crossing your mediums between film and books, and stage, etc. So if you want to employ a flashback in a novel make sure you don't have your head off in Hollywood Land when you really should be off in either Middle Earth or the Land of Oz.

IMHO, one of the best uses of flashbacks I've read is in The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. The story action is firmly set in the present, but the MC, Tiffany Aching, is also dealing with the death of her grandmother. As the action unfolds, she discovers that her grandmother was much more than she seemed on the surface. The flashbacks are scenes of her interactions with her grandmother. They work because Tiffany herself is learning from remembering her grandmother. Now that Tiffany knows more, she can look at her grandmother's actions with fresh eyes and understand what was really going on.

What is correct/incorrect flashback usage?
If a flashback interrupts the flow of the story, it is incorrectly used. If it does not contribute to the progression of the plot but provides only backstory, it is incorrectly used. I'm personally not fond of flashbacks that last for the length of a chapter. I'd rather be focused on the book's here and now.

When should/shouldn't you use a flashback?
Use it when you absolutely can't reveal information any other way.

Do you have any flashback pet peeves?
Too long. Too much backstory. Too little contributed to the reader's need-to-know. Basically, authorial over-indulgence. It is very necessary for the author to know about a character's history. That detail and understanding works its way into the story in one fashion or another, with or without flashbacks. The reader, however, does not necessarily need to have it played out before her on the page.

Do you have any certain 'conditions' upon which you feel a flashback is the 'best' technique?
It really depends on the story. In the novel I finished last year, I started "toward the end", which meant toward the end of hundreds of years' worth of backstory. No way was I going to start chapter one hundreds of years ago, skip forward a few hundred, and then have chapter three begin in the present day. The salient historical scenes were brief and concerned more than one character's experiences, and I wasn't writing an epic. I used brief flashbacks at points in the narrative at which it became important for the reader to be familiar with the past. Reader mileage with flashbacks will vary, but beta response was positive. Listen to objective opinions on flashbacks and consider whether whether a flashback really needs to be there.

The MC of my current WIP has a truckload of history (they all do, right?), but no flashbacks. The story carries fine without them. Listen to your character. Listen to the story.

Any other thoughts,comments, advice on flashbacks?
To sum up my thoughts, I'm going to borrow from the Supreme Court: I know a good/bad flashback when I see one. But that's totally subjective.

I have an MC who has a repressed memory of the events surrounding her mother's death. She dreams about it, but doesn't remember the dreams - the episodes cause her to have violent sleepwalking experiences where she either breaks everything she can get her hands on or does physical injury to herself. At one point during the novel, I did a sort of flashback/dream sequence that starts off sounding like present day, but the further it goes you realize the woman in it is actually 6 years old and the setting is the night her mother died.

At the end of the dream, she wakes up in bed with a shoe full of blood because she's had another sleepwalking episode and trashed her kitchen cabinets. She stepped on a piece of glass. The woman has no idea what she dreamed, but she recognizes the signs of another nocturnal disaster and wanders into the kitchen to see what she did.

Even though the character has no idea of that part of her past, the reader does. I think it helps them understand a few of her personality quirks, and I hope it's as effective as I think it is.

I'm writing a fantasy WIP in which the protagonist's present-day actions are shaped and driven by a bunch of stuff she did a long time ago. So it's important for me to cover all these events, but without slowing down the present-day narrative. I have a few rules of thumb for flashbacks:

* If it's not critical to understanding what the protagonist is about to do and why, don't put it in.
* If you can explain without a flashback (dialogue is ideal), do so.
* If it's longer than a paragraph, it's stalling the pace.
* Focus on a single vivid, memorable image.
* Clearly transition in and out.
* No unusual tenses or formatting.

These aren't hard-and-fast rules to be applied to every story, but I'm often finding myself needing to flashback in the middle of a fight scene, and in that case I'm going for a tight one-sentence highly visual flashback.

I agree with pretty much everything Namatu said.

Flashbacks get a bad rap, because they are difficult for new writers to get a handle on (and even multi-published authors can have trouble). But flashbacks, like many other things, are just another tool in our Writer's Toolbox. There are a lot of different ways to use them, but as most others have said, the information revealed in them must be critical to understanding where the MC/current situation.

I never wrote flashbacks until I wrote THREE DAYS TO DEAD. But for that particular story, the two chapter-long flashbacks I incorporated were absolutely necessary. They needed to be there, not only to fill in the missing parts of my heroine's memory, but to show the reader exactly how she ended up in the situation she was in when the book opens.

An entire novel can be told in flashbacks, if done right. I just finished reading THE REPOSSESSION MAMBO, by Eric Garcia. More than half of the book consists of recollections of the hero's past, events that have made him the monster he is, and all of the people who've strongly affected his life. Throughout, threads of the current plot were woven in, and it was effectively done. Tool well used.

I'd pretty much recommend the default of "no flashbacks," and make sure there's no other way to present the backstory otherwise before using one. And I should say that by "flashback," I'm talking about a full-on, scene-length chunk of text, not just a sentence along the lines of "he'd always been a good kisser, even back before he'd gone to med school and studied anatomy, specializing in erogenous zones," which is fine as long as it's not an infodump or authorial intrusion, but is actually something that the pov character would actually think at the time.

The reason I hear most often to justify a flashback is, "the reader needs to know what happened X years/months/days ago, so she'll understand the rest of the story."

Two problems with that. First, what the author is saying, really, is that the AUTHOR needs the reader to know what happened then, which is slightly different from the reader needing to know what happened. It's author-driven, rather than reader-driven. A lot of the time, this is just an easy out for the author, and it's bad for the reader, because the past event is being dumped on the reader (a sort of infodump in disguise), and, even worse, it's killing any tension that might arise from the reader wondering, "gee, I wonder what happened in the past that made him/her act this way, and I'll have to keep reading to find out," b/c the answer is right there, often early in the story. OTOH, if the reader really and truly needs to know what happened, in blow by blow, full-scene detail, and would be thinking at that point in the story, "I really need to know every detail of what happened back then, and I need to know right this minute," then go ahead and do the flashback. But if the reason is that the author wants the reader to know something, then Just Don't Do It.

Second problem -- in the vast majority of samples I see, the details of what actually happened in the past don't really matter. The past event really is backstory and explains motivation and characterization, and it's not part of the actual story. It doesn't so much matter what exact words were said or actions were taken (all the stuff that would go in a flashback), as how the point of view character remembers them now, or how the pov character feels about them now. What matters isn't stuff like "A said this and B said that and A did this and B did that and they were in a particular location and the weather was cold and it was afternoon." What matters is that, b/c of that event, the character has a particular bit of emotional baggage now. The basic outline of what happened is all the reader cares about, not all the details that a full-fledged flashback entails. And if that's true, then there are usually much more engaging ways to present the information.

Just as an example, and using romance, since that's the genre I know best, and using a teeny-weeny scene of the sort that's often believed to be necessary -- the flashback to when the h/h first met briefly years ago.

Flashback:

It was a dark and stormy night. Hannah Heroine was standing beneath a tree, trying not to get electrocuted, belatedly remembering that the correct action for a storm was to stay low to the ground, far away from trees.
She dropped to her knees, scraping them, but figuring it was better than frying her whole body. She flopped forward and snaked across the rocky, weedy field toward the highway, where she hoped to hitch a ride home.
In what should have been silence after a too-close lightning strike, she heard someone else swishing toward her. She froze.
A moment later, a hand brushed her foot. Panicky, she began moving again, but she was no snake and she couldn't stand up and run as long as the lightening was a threat.
"Slow down," came a male voice behind her. "I've got a tarp and I'm willing to share."
[Etc. Flashback scene ends with them kissing, which is interrupted when they're rescued by a passing police cruiser.]

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Okay, so now we know she was once caught in a lightning storm. She met the hero in a lightning storm. They kissed during the storm. But: so what? The event wasn't really that interesting in its own right. And it could have a gazillion different consequences today, all of which are more interesting than that mini-scene. Especially when the real story is happening twenty years later, and Hannah's a different person than she was back then.

But, see, that's where it can get interesting if the author knows that event happened, even if the reader doesn't, especially if the reader doesn't, because then the past event can affect current actions, which are the ones the readers care about. After all, one possibility is that Hannah went home, got warm, got drunk and never even remembered the storm or the kiss. That event doesn't affect who she is today at all. Another possibility is that she was totally traumatized and associates kissing with the possibility of dying, so she's become a nun. Another possibility is that she's become self-sufficient in many ways, but succumbs to wild bouts of lust during storms.

Let's say she's the last example. In that case, a more interesting way of revealing the past, to the extent it even matters, is through little details that add up to characterize her. Hannah always carries a tarp in her purse. A little one, but still, it's always, always there and always with her, whether she's flying across country or just walking down the hall from her apartment to pick up her mail. And that little detail comes out in a scene, and the reader thinks, "huh, that's interesting. I wonder why she is so obsessed with tarps, and I'll have to keep reading to find out," and then in another scene, there's lightning, and she gets a bit aroused, looking for a guy to kiss, and the reader connects it with the tarp and suspects there was an event involving tarps and kissing and storms in the past. Or Hannah's with the hero and a storm is imminent, and she can't wait (or she hopes it passes by, if she's resisting him) b/c she knows she always get a little hormonal whenever there's lightning. And eventually she'll say something like that, or remind him that they met during a lightning storm, or someone else will say that she's been like that ever since she was caught in a storm. Or whatever. And the reader will think, "Aha! I get it now" or "Aha! I thought it was something like that." But it'll just be the key bit of information, the thing that stuck with Hannah as time passed and that made her who she is. Not every little bit of what happened. Not the rocks and the snaking and the exact dialogue. Just the residual effects.

Heck, what happened and how she remembered it may even be two totally different things, which is yet another reason why flashbacks are troublesome unless you want to have an unreliable narrator situation: she remembers it as scary and gross and painful until the kiss itself. He remembers it as a challenge, up to and including the kiss. She remembers really bad lightning, he remembers a distant strike or two. Doesn't really matter which one is "right." What matters is how it affects them in the story now.

So, bottom line for me: Stick to the story's "now," unless you've got a really, really pressing need to go back, and it's a need that the reader will feel, not just the author. Then, if you go back, make sure a) the flashback scene is interesting in its own right, complete with conflict and rising tension, and b) the timing is right, so you haven't killed all the story tension.

JD, rambling a bit; it's been a long day

I like flashbacks when they have been considered an integral part to the story, not just a device to use because the auther has an info dump to take care of.

LOST of course is the perfect example. There is no other way to show the destiny and coincidences than through flashback. What's more, as we learned this season, time is a huge theme of the story, almost a character in the story, going back and forth, present, past, future. The flashbacks, flashforwards and everything in between are part of the point of the show. Not just a device.

Namatu said:

Do you have any flashback pet peeves?
Too long. Too much backstory. Too little contributed to the reader's need-to-know. Basically, authorial over-indulgence. It is very necessary for the author to know about a character's history. That detail and understanding works its way into the story in one fashion or another, with or without flashbacks. The reader, however, does not necessarily need to have it played out before her on the page.

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Please. Can someone explain this bolded statement?

I don't have much to add to the above posts, but i think a lot of aspiring writers fall into the trap of thinking that writing a book is similar to watching a movie or TV show. And of course, a *lot* of movies and TV shows use flashbacks as ways of introducing characters, disseminating backstory, even of introducing the plot. But it's a lot harder to do flashbacks effectively in a book, because the visual and aural elements are missing. Can't throw in appropriate music or sepia colors or scratches on the camera lens.

Flashbacks can be done well. I've read a lot of books that use a lot of different methods effectively, ranging from a whole section of the book in flashback to little snippets of scenes here and there. As with most writing things (and this is a frustrating answer), whatever works best for the story is the thing to do. Yes, that gives license for someone to say, 'well, this works best for the story', even if it's clunky and unnecessary and confusing, but hey, that's the writer's right and nobody is forced to apply our critiques.

A few general things i've noticed (and this will probably repeat a lot of what's already been said) that contribute to a flashback's effectiveness or ineffectiveness:

They must be relevant
When i say relevant, i mean relevant to the plot, not just relevant to the character or the character's backstory. If relevant to the plot includes relevant to the character's backstory then that's great, but if there's no plot relevance, then one must question whether the scene is really needed for the reader. Backstory can be easily sprinkled throughout narrative without needing a chunky portion set aside for it. At times flashbacks can be used to provide mood--such as a person grieving over the loss of a loved one--but shouldn't be overdone, and those memories can often easily be worked into the narrative main.

Introducing plot with flashbacks hardly ever works well
This is different to a prologue. Prologues have their place. Of course, they still need to be executed well and be relevant also, but i'm referring more to a flashback scene that is used to introduce important plot that hasn't yet been touched on in the story main. They hardly ever (notice i didn't say never) work well. I think this device, more than anything, is a runoff from movies and TV where clues to things that will only become important later in the story are often visually identified in flashbacks, which is often for the watcher's benefit, not the character's.

It *is* possible to use this technique effectively, but the writer needs to really understand their craft and be a very skilled storyteller to pull it off.

Being deliberately mysterious usually backfires
Because flashbacks need to be relevant, a deliberately mysterious flashback doesn't often work well. Confusing a reader is never a great idea (this is different from a reader asking questions), and cryptic flashbacks usually make me go 'bleh'. This is different from a cryptic dream, which is even harder to do effectively and should *never* introduce a story, but can work.

And my personal most-hated flashback scenario: Somehow the protagonist knows the antagonist from earlier in life, and has flashbacks about this all the time, but cannot for the life of them actually remember who the antagonist is, or even that they are a bad guy (and the protag isn't suffering from amnesia or anything similar). *shudders*

BlueLucario said:

Please. Can someone explain this bolded statement?

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I'd have thought it was self-explanatory, but hey, I'll play.

You know how we're always saying not tell the reader things until they need to know them? Poorly-executed flashbacks don't give the reader enough of what they need to know. What they often do instead is throw in a bunch of stuff the reader doesn't need to know or care about.

BlueLucario said:

Please. Can someone explain this bolded statement?

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From JanDarby's post, which pretty much explains it:

JanDarby said:

The reason I hear most often to justify a flashback is, "the reader needs to know what happened X years/months/days ago, so she'll understand the rest of the story."

Two problems with that. First, what the author is saying, really, is that the AUTHOR needs the reader to know what happened then, which is slightly different from the reader needing to know what happened. It's author-driven, rather than reader-driven. A lot of the time, this is just an easy out for the author, and it's bad for the reader, because the past event is being dumped on the reader (a sort of infodump in disguise), and, even worse, it's killing any tension that might arise from the reader wondering, "gee, I wonder what happened in the past that made him/her act this way, and I'll have to keep reading to find out," b/c the answer is right there, often early in the story. OTOH, if the reader really and truly needs to know what happened, in blow by blow, full-scene detail, and would be thinking at that point in the story, "I really need to know every detail of what happened back then, and I need to know right this minute," then go ahead and do the flashback. But if the reason is that the author wants the reader to know something, then Just Don't Do It.

Second problem -- in the vast majority of samples I see, the details of what actually happened in the past don't really matter. The past event really is backstory and explains motivation and characterization, and it's not part of the actual story. It doesn't so much matter what exact words were said or actions were taken (all the stuff that would go in a flashback), as how the point of view character remembers them now, or how the pov character feels about them now. What matters isn't stuff like "A said this and B said that and A did this and B did that and they were in a particular location and the weather was cold and it was afternoon." What matters is that, b/c of that event, the character has a particular bit of emotional baggage now. The basic outline of what happened is all the reader cares about, not all the details that a full-fledged flashback entails. And if that's true, then there are usually much more engaging ways to present the information.

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This is something that writing in 1st person seems to alleviate, too. If the main character finds out information as the reader does, then there's no real chance of a flashback just dropping out of the blue.

If you have an event important enough to be the driving factor of the entire story (but too far back to just start the story there), how can it be a good thing to flatten all of the intensity from that moment by referring to it third hand?

I'm glad this came up, because this is nagging at me in some revisions. I had made a note to actually add a flashback, but now I'm not so sure.

I do have a question about flashbacks. But I'd rather make my own thread. I don't want to derail this one.

As someone who has used flashbacks a number of times and has also cut them ruthlessly out of a manuscript because they didn't work ...

What is correct/incorrect flashback usage? The short answer is: It's correct if it works and incorrect if it doesn't work. Long answer ... If the information you need to relate to the reader can only be presented with either a lengthy bit of internal monologue/narrative or else a flashback with action and dialogue -- you should probably choose the flashback. A successful flashback can contain some aspects of a character's backstory, but it should also strongly relate, in some way, to the ongoing plot of the story.

When should/shouldn't you use a flashback? When it should be used is noted above: when it's the best way to present information the reader needs to know. A flashback shouldn't be used because you have a nifty scene you want in the story, or because you believe lots of backstory is relevant even though the story could stand perfectly well without it.

Do you have any flashback pet peeves? A flashback should be clearly set apart from present-day action in some way. In other words, if I'm reading and don't realize what I'm reading occurred in the past, I'm going to be pissed. I don't care if you use a chapter or section heading that says Ten Years Previously or if you make it clear using something like The memory of that day was vivid in her mind and go on. (Lame, but effective.) The point is that you never want to confuse the reader.

Do you have any certain 'conditions' upon which you feel a flashback is the 'best' technique? Not really. Depends on the story. I've begun books knowing I was going to use flashbacks, very deliberately and consciously, and I've begun books without a clue I'd be using that particular tool -- until I needed it.

Any other thoughts,comments, advice on flashbacks? The thing many writers don't seem to get is that a flashback, by its very nature, stops the forward momentum of the story. I've read books that contained a flashback right in the middle of a crackling action scene, something that never, IMO, works. If flashbacks are necessary, they should be woven into the valleys rather than the peaks, the quiet moments in which not much is happening. They should also, IMO, be as short as possible -- because they do halt forward momentum, and you really don't want that to go on long enough to pull the reader out of your story.

There's nothing wrong with writing a bad flashback. It's the only way you're going to learn to write good ones. On the first draft, I'd advise a new writer to write all the flashbacks he or she wants. It's a great way to discover your characters and your world as you write, especially for those of us who don't outline ahead of time. On subsequent drafts, they can then be weeded out if necessary.

Also, flashbacks can break tension, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If you've got a lot of tense back-to-back scenes, a flashback might be a welcome reprieve. Flashbacks can add their own rhythm to a story if interspersed throughout. In my opinion, the only bad flashback is one that's not interesting, but the more it pulls you out of the story, the more interesting it better be. (Tension, well-placed details, intriguing characters, plots, story arcs, emotions, etc.)

Nicole

Dgiharris wants my opinion on this matter, so ignoring questioning his sanity and his drinking level de jure, I'll try to give them.

I tend to write in first person, where I'd identify a flashback as a character thinking or discussing the past. In third person, many writers would probably define a flashback as the narrator going backwards in time. Personally, I'd include dialog where the characters talk about the past as well. The purpose is the same, you're just playing around with the presentation.

First off, you need to understand that nearly entire books can be done as a flashback, for example, THE BRIDGE OVER SAN LUIS REY. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER is an example from video media of the same thing. For shorter flashbacks, when Bilbo meets the dwarfs in THE HOBBIT and the Council of Elrond are scenes in which flashbacks are the majority of the scene, and the whole point of the present day scene is to introduce the flashback.

Remember that humans live in three time periods -- the present, the past, and the future. For example I had to drive out of my way to pick up some grain for my horse. That was dealing with the present. But on the way, I went by a baseball field, and remembered how my kids used to play there when they were a lot younger. Then a little bit later, I saw a guy digging a ditch to lay pipe, which reminded me of a project I'm hoping to get to this summer that involves solving a drainage problem. So in one trip, I was in the past, present, and future.

We do this constantly, so time traveling in our books is not something alien to our way of thinking. However, when it happens, a sign does not light up indicating "FLASHBACK" or "FLASHFORWARD" alert. We do it seamlessly and without our conscious mind getting in the way. This is the first requirement for the writer. The shift needs to occur naturally and without being forced by the writer.

One problem writers have is that they have to force the flashback to meet their need in the story. For it to occur naturally, we have to consider when does this happen in real life. Now when you're playing tennis, your mind is going to be stuck pretty much in the present. It doesn't have time to go wandering. But while you're out walking for exercise, you're mind is going to go wandering all over the place. In other words, normally a flashback or flashforward cannot occur in an action scene.

But there can be some exceptions to this. The classic is with men and sex. Frequently for control purposes, a man will think backwards, forwards, or sideways to distract him to avoid completing the act too soon. Another instance where your mind mind wander under your control is doing a police interrogation where you're trying to ignore the police. You're deliberately setting up an avoidance approach. But understand while you might do this doing a police interrogation, you wouldn't do it during a job interview.

Many writers ignore what their character is doing and just dump the flashback into the scene. If, however, the circumstances are unnatural, the reader will realize it on some level and it will stick out. So the first requirement is that it flows naturally into the story.

Then, assuming it fits naturally into your story, the question is why is it there? As with anything in a book, there should be a reason for it to be there. Realize that this applies to whether it's a flashback, a flashforward, or a flash sideways. For example, in GEORGE'S STORY, the protagonist mentions that coumadin is also called warfarin, which is a rat poison. The protagonist just has a random, sideways thought that does absolutely nothing for the story. However, it provides a break and an interesting piece of trivia. Writers do this sort of sideways jump all the time. These interesting tidbits can really help give a story life.

Ultimately, the issue here is pacing. As writers, we use a variety of techniques to control pace. Just like driving in traffic, we need to speed up and slow down the reader, providing a change of pace to the reader. This changing of pace is accomplished in many ways, including the use of flashbacks.

Books that drag along because of flashbacks frequently exhibit other problems. They will have conversations that drag on a bit too long, or scenes that meander, or a swordfight that is overly descriptive of the sword. Flashbacks are just a rather obvious sympton of too many words for the story.

Conversely, the writer whose book rushes along like a flood will probably skip essential flashbacks. But you'll see other signs such as choppy sentences, incomplete actions, and other things to speed up the book. Again, the missing flashbacks are an obvious sympton, but frequently the problem is deeper.

Ultimately, the judge of all this is the reader. If the reader gets done and says to him or herself that: "Damn, the writer wasted my time," you can probably figure the book has excess flashbacks, but also excesses in other places. On the other side, when the reader says, "Damn, I wish this lasted another fifty pages," you can probably figure the book skimped on some things. Ideally, the reader should be saying at the end of the book that the book was just right.

Problem for the writer is that readers have different opinions over what is just right. I'll call something overwritten, which my wife will describe as just right. She call something short and choppy that I think is perfect.

Bottom line, flashbacks are just part of the total package. They have to fit seamlessly into your story, just like everything else, so that the reader reaches the end of your book, sighing in contentment.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

What is correct/incorrect flashback usage?
Correct: Using a flashback when the readers need to see something interesting and illuminating that they otherwise wouldn't believe, and where you can't fit that information in chronological order.

Incorrect: Presenting uninteresting or irrelevant story, presenting it in the wrong place, telling it rather than showing it, not presenting it in whole scenes.

When should/shouldn't you use a flashback?
A flashback is useful to illuminate an important story element. It's especially useful when your character is about to do something that would otherwise seem out of character unless there was a flashback. I think that it's much more effective at illuminating a small insight on character than illuminating a large amount of plot.

Do you have any flashback pet peeves?
I don't mind flashbacks when they're at least as interesting as the story-in-progress. I do mind them when they're not. To be interesting, the flashback should be immediate and not recounted. It should start off punchily -- as though it were a new story, and it shouldn't disrupt the story-in-progress. There should be conflict and real characters and important stakes. I should feel enlightened when I've finished the flashback, and I shouldn't feel like information has been forced on me. The flashback should be delivered as whole scenes (i.e. character, situation, goal, conflict and resolution) and be as short as possible to do its job.

A common cause of needless flashback is when authors start their story or their chapter too late. Inexperienced authors in particular think that it's great to jump straight into tense action -- but then discover that they have to go back and explain why the action has occurred, and can find no better way to do it than flashback. So the story goes from tense but confusing to turgid and tedious.

Often, a better way is to open the story just before the inciting event happens that changes your main character's life. If 'business as usual' for your character is having a fight then fine; but if the fight is a consequence of the inciting event then by introducing the event first you'll avoid the need to go into flashback. (You'll also force yourself to learn how to write ordinary stuff better so that it's interesting. ) Or, if the fight has consequences you can use the next scene to explore the consequences while at the same time explaining the backstory (action movies like Dirty Harry do this all the time).

Do you have any certain 'conditions' upon which you feel a flashback is the 'best' technique?
It's the best technique when there's no better technique. But there's often a better technique, and that's to salt any backstory into the relevant scenes as they occur. In other words, if the missing diamond has a long history, include a bit of that history as the hero is deciding whether to take the case. Include a bit more as he's trying to find motive for its theft., and a bit more as he begins to interview suspects. Information that ties to action is more interesting than information that doesn't.

I find that if I can't salt the backstory in then it's either because:

1. The backstory isn't relevant and could safely be dropped (that's true 80% of the time -- I simply haven't filtered my research); or
2. The information is essential, but for reasons of drama or surprise I couldn't include it earlier (in which case, I need a flashback).

Any other thoughts,comments, advice on flashbacks?
Before writing a flashback, first pretend that it will double the rate of rejection and take twice as long to sell the story. Then check to see if you still think that the story absolutely must have it. If you still think so then you're probably working for the reader, and not just to indulge your taste for exposition.

An excellent use of a flashback (which has probably been overdone by now) is the scenario where someone is going to his death, maybe talking to a priest or someone in his final hours, and the flashbacks provide the story of why he is there. (Also done as famous old men telling about the exciting times of their lives). As I said, this approach has been done quite a bit and I've even seen some in SYW. The flashbacks are really used to tell the whole story.

Not so much to my liking are flashbacks into the near past - i.e., a gal getting ready for a party and thinking back to what happened when she bought the dress - the full scenario of the cool guy who happened to be walking by when she stepped out of the fitting room, etc. This is more of a backstory flashback which frequently can be better served by starting the story a bit earlier.

Another approach I've seen used is what I'll call the police interrogation. Something has happened and each person gives their version of what happened. If not well thought out, my opinion is this approach only confuses the reader and makes them scream "Tell me what happened!". And, they don't move a story forward - sort of stymie it.

I'm not a big fan of flashbacks even though, as Jim mentioned above, I am a big fan of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey. That was an exceptionally well done flashback.

Don't know if I added much, Mel, but, thanks for pointing me to this thread. Puma

dgiharris said:

What is correct/incorrect flashback usage? Incorrect, for me, would be frequent use, and/or use where there are better options. Having a character sit and remember who did what and how it all shook out is one thing; it involves a character analyzing her feelings over the past events and can be good character building. "And then she blacked out..."/cut to italics for an entire scene--that's just plain annoying unless it has a darn good reason for being there. I think there are more elegant and more sensible ways for a character to relive the past than to have an entire scene in flashback mode.

When should/shouldn't you use a flashback? Don't use it when you don't have to.

Do you have any flashback pet peeves? See above.

Do you have any certain 'conditions' upon which you feel a flashback is the 'best' technique? If your character is undergoing some kind of serious trauma that would make the especially prone to having psychological lapses that might include reliving a moment from their past, as opposed to musing on it or discussing it with another character.

Any other thoughts,comments, advice on flashbacks? Nope.

Mel...

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Interesting question.

Pet peeves:
1. Long and italicized.
2. Daydreamy reverie added to help character navelgaze
3. Plodding backstory when I'd rather get on with things
4. All of the above at once

Puma said:

An excellent use of a flashback (which has probably been overdone by now) is the scenario where someone is going to his death, maybe talking to a priest or someone in his final hours, and the flashbacks provide the story of why he is there. (Also done as famous old men telling about the exciting times of their lives). As I said, this approach has been done quite a bit and I've even seen some in SYW. The flashbacks are really used to tell the whole story.

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Yes. It's a suspense technique -- show where you're going and then let the reader wonder how you got there. But dramatically they're no different from saying 'Let me tell you a story about a good and kindly father who became a bank-robber and was eventually hanged for murder'. It's a special kind of introduction. I sometimes think of it as a 'flash forward' from a story that has yet to start.

Hm I started one of my novels a scene early to avoid having several flashbacks later. The scene isn't telly or anything, but it's not where the story starts. So I'm not sure what the lesser evil is - using a bunch of flasbacks or starting early.


What is correct/incorrect flashback usage?

Correct - when it adds a new dimension or element to the story. it has to relate to what's going on and shouldn't be something that could be part of the normal chronology.

Incorrect - the flashback is irrelevant or repeats something we already gleaned from character interaction, or doesn't necessarily need to be a flashback.

When should/shouldn't you use a flashback?

When it doesn't feel needed. And not excessively.

Do you have any flashback pet peeves?

When Mary-Sue wakes up, studies her beauty in the bathroom mirror for 200 or so wonderful purple-flowered words, then proceeds to go to do something, but is interrupted by a sudden flashback of her horrible angsty past where either a parent/friend died and caused her endless torment and shattered her heart forever until she meets some guy, who will probably be a prince, and erase her angsty past with a single kiss like magic.

(The fact I have seen this countless times is very depressing)

Do you have any certain 'conditions' upon which you feel a flashback is the 'best' technique?

Nope. But the ones in published books - they're always good, the ones I've seen If you look at a flashback used by an amateur or inexperienced writer (who is using it incorrectly) and one you would find in a normal book, there's the whole of the Grand Canyon between them.

Any other thoughts,comments, advice on flashbacks?

If you don't need, don't do it. And no angsty flashbacks of death and losing people, please (._.)