Flashbacks good or bad?

I think one of major complaints about flashbacks is that they decrease the tension. After all, the past has already happened, so it's harder to get the reader worked up about what's going to happen.

It sounds to me like you'd be using flashbacks in quite a different way, which might work well if it were handled skilfully.

That's just my opinion, though.

KiwiChick

Personally, I think that's a literary device that might work, if used sparingly. However, I have not seen the story, so that's as far as I can comment.

My question: Does it work for you? You're the writer. And stories abound of authors who colored outside of established lines and wound up with a best seller on their hands.

Listen to your heart.

Mari

I'm not sure I know what you mean by 'is this a bad idea?'

Do you mean to say this is your whole story's concept? Or just a character trait of your prot?

Some of the other posters have indicated that this might decrease drama rather than increase it, and I have to agree. Maybe in limited usage... but not all the time.

Famous 1,

It might work if you really know what you're doing, but flashbacks are history - they've gone, and the here and now is usually of more interest.

Famous1 said:

My main charactor escapes the present by delving into the past via nocturnal dreams.
Example(s): If mistreated by day she returns to a time when she was loved. If hungry = feed. If told she's ugly she dreams of the time/place when she was pretty...and so on.

Is this a bad idea?

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Depending on genre, this could be a way to give depth to your character. As others have said, if your story hinges on suspense, too much escape from the here and now can deflate the tension. King has done this a few times in his stories and I find myself trying to "get back in the mood" when we come back to the present. If your story is more literary (before you ask, I don''t know how to tell) or romantic, this method of character exposition is almost necessary.

Another thing to consider, is that dreams are often messy and hard to interpret, and usually incorporate issues, places and people from recent experiences. If you want a clean look back at pleasant events from the past, daydreaming (wool-gathering, whatever) may be a better vehicle to expose these memories. Plus, you don't have to wait for her to go to bed to bring it about.

Flashbacks are useful, but should be given in small doses (in number and length). A significant risk is they can take the reader out of the flow of the story. With that said, I love psychological suspense, and if you play with that, it could really add to the story. We all have those "I wish I would have said..." moments, and mental re-hashes of events steeped in righteous indignation. In my daydreams, such events always come out different than in real life. So, you could capitalize on that, even going so far to give your character a different name in the mental re-hashes. This way, you could ultimately have your main character change by gradually adopting the attitude and ways of the other-named, imaginary character. Alternately, you could build conflict where the other-named character takes over the personality of the main character, with a bad outcome. This could create an internal struggle for the character that could play around the edges of the main plot. There are lots of ways to play with backstory like this, but I'll return to the original caution. Keep it infrequent and keep it brief unless you have a truly unique (and intriguing) way to use it.

Famous1 said:

My main charactor escapes the present by delving into the past via nocturnal dreams.
Example(s): If mistreated by day she returns to a time when she was loved. If hungry = feed. If told she's ugly she dreams of the time/place when she was pretty...and so on.

Is this a bad idea?

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I'm curious about this ability. Is it that she simply goes to bed and dreams of her happy past?

Or can she summon those memories into her dreams like we remember a phone number? Does she actually "go into" those memories and interact with the people of her past, thereby creating another line of action within the dream sequences? Kind of like "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?"

Or are the dreams just a way to tell her backstory?

The former could be very interesting, if handled well. The latter...well, not so much.

1) You should only break strict chronology if absolutely necessary.
2) Dream sequences are often a sign of using the first choice (rather than the best choice) for revealing information.

Uh oh... I'm just about finished outlining a story where a good chunk of the story is a flashback. I never gave this a second thought.

What I wanted to do was start the "now" story near the end, and spend most of the story in the past leading up to what happened. The "now" thread is basically the character's reaction to what has happened...Kind of like "The Black Corridor", only without the tense switching (which I'd love to do but I doubt anyone would buy it in that way).

I mean, to me it seemed like an interesting way to write the story, and when I think about rearranging it into a neat chronology, I don't get as excited about it. Does this sound like a bad idea? To me it's not a true flashback, only a different way of arranging the story, but I don't know squat.

It's been done. (See, for example, the film DOA (with Edmund O'Brien).)

Doing it well trumps any theoretical discussion of how stories should or shouldn't be structured.

Yup, it's been done. I think one mainstream love story (title escaped me) had the reverse chronological order. It begins with "now" with the two protagonists, and end with some 50 years ago when they were children and first met.

Of course, the film Memento was told in reversed order.

Question about flashbacks/past:

Is it best to just not include past information about a character even if that past comes back to haunt them in their present?

For example, I have a section where my main character is unconscious and dreams about the past. Later men fom that past become part of his story.

Would it be better to just have them mention it or something?

By the way... the (to many) greatest film of its generation: Sunset Blvd starts with our prot dead, in the pool. The rest of the film is a flashback.

Personally, I hate it. Tell me the story in order, unless you have a damned good reason not to.

sanctuary6284 said:

For example, I have a section where my main character is unconscious and dreams about the past. Later men fom that past become part of his story.

Would it be better to just have them mention it or something?

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Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you fell asleep and dreamed about an exact event in your past with perfect clarity and recall?

If the past is important, flashbacks can be helpful. For example, I'm reading a book right now where references to the past show that it's obviously important, and yet the author doesn't go into detail about that past. It's driving me crazy! So sometimes not using flashbacks can be just as bad as overusing them.

I can't say about your story specifically, but in general I don't think flashbacks are either good or bad. They can be either, depending upon the circumstances and how they're used. Think about the purpose of the flashbacks and that should help you determine if they're necessary.

Oh, almost forgot to add that dreams and flashbacks (memories) are different creatures. Dreams tend to be symbolic and immediate. Everything is happening in the present. Flashbacks are literal and you're allowed to do more with the timing. One of the worst books I ever read had a dream that used a statement like "five years later." Seriously, dreams don't work this way. Flashbacks might.

chaostitan said:

Let me ask you a question: When was the last time you fell asleep and dreamed about an exact event in your past with perfect clarity and recall?

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Good point. So should I just leave the past out all together? Any suggestion?

Can't you just refer to them as a memory?



I'm thinking of a Melvillish approach, where you just jaunt off into the past and recall a particular event that's germaine to the scene.



Don picked up the phone, and started dialing. For a reason he never did figure out later, something compelled him to look over his shoulder, and that's when he saw Jack Martin.

The last time he'd seen Jack Martin was 1987. And Jack was dead.



Now, Virtue's point about the purpose and meaning of dreams and flashbacks being different is a good one too, so there's good reasons for using one over the other.

sanctuary6284 said:

Good point. So should I just leave the past out all together? Any suggestion?

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What dclary said.

Could it be more impactful for those memories to surface when she's actually faced with those men from the past? Rather than an unconnected flashback, there is recognition on her part and a quick trip down memory lane.

When it picks back up in the present, we as readers have a more immediate understanding of why these guys are bad (or good).

Make sense?

Yup it makes lots of sense. I'll keep this in mind while writing and try to make sure I'm making good and appropriate use of both flashbacks and dreams. I may even have a twist of my own that I choose not to share at this time.

Maybe you'll read it in my published (hopefully) novel someday.

virtue_summer said:

I can't say about your story specifically, but in general I don't think flashbacks are either good or bad. They can be either, depending upon the circumstances and how they're used. Think about the purpose of the flashbacks and that should help you determine if they're necessary.

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This seems to me to be the best advise in the last 19 replies. Although your question is framed as one about "flashbacks" it is really about a plot device involving dreams of the past, which, not being the real events but dreams, wouldn't actually be flashbacks at all. Flashbacks are memories of the actual past (although you could argue that memories are often inaccurate.)

I use flashbacks extensively in my novel Arise Beloved, which will probably annoy some people, but it's the only way I could tell the tale I wanted to tell. The central core of the plot involves two prots (Becky and Gunther) who only meet rather late in the chronology of the story, but whose past lives are important to the caring about what happens to them when they do meet. The primary prot, Becky, gets introduced from the beginning along with some other characters and events in her life. When her life gets really complicated, it's necessary to introduce Gunther who had no place in the story up to that point, so getting the reader up to speed on him and his prior life, and the characters involved in his life, required a lot of back story, which had to be done in flashbacks. Then--and this is where the whole process gets complicated and fraught with peril in writing the story--when I brought the two primary prots together, I had to do some "catch-up" with the first prot--again as flashbacks.

When I first wrote the story, I switched back and forth between the two prots, which got complicated and unnecessarily confusing for the reader, like "But, what happened to Becky?" when all of a sudden, I'm writing about Gunther--raising the inevitable question "Who the hell is this guy and what's he doing in the story?" I couldn't explain his presence because that would have exposed the main plot prematurely.

I could have just abandoned the entire project as being unwritable (and I was advised to do so by one or two critics) if I had been afraid of flashbacks or too much flashback, but I chose to forge ahead, for better or worse, because I wanted to tell the story about Becky and Gunther. I have a plot synopsis at http://glynnsbooks.com if you're interested. Click on Glynn Harper's novels, then on "Arise Beloved" or go directly to http://www.glynnsbooks.com/AriseBeloved.html

Sorry to be so long winded.

Famous1 said:

My main charactor escapes the present by delving into the past via nocturnal dreams.
Example(s): If mistreated by day she returns to a time when she was loved. If hungry = feed. If told she's ugly she dreams of the time/place when she was pretty...and so on.

Is this a bad idea?

Click to expand...

Just my two cents worth, but I get bored reading about dreams in books.