Jumpin' Jack Flashbacks!

The story I'm working on now has two flashbacks; I might add a third in later, if it's necessary for character.

Anyway yea neither of them serve as infodumps; one is early in the story to establish something of a motivation for one character and the other is later in the story because one character is trying to make the other understand her because there's kind of a misunderstanding.

They're not annoying if they don't drag on and on forever, basically, and if there isn't a flashback every two pages.

Just like I usually find one MC in a multiple protag work more compelling, yeah, I'll find one thread more compelling in a story with two timelines. Hopefully it's the main thread.

I have a loooong flashback close to the beginning of my story, and I worried it would be a deal breaker for agents. However, of all the revisions that were suggested to me, no one ever said I needed to cut out or shorten the flashback.

I think the reason why (they seem to feel) it works is that it is all told as "show" not as narrative exposition, and every element in it is immediately relevant to the events happening right before and after the flashback. You don't need to wait until page 300 for the payback.

You shouldn't have flashbacks for the sake of flashbacks, but sometimes they can be quite inventive.

In movies, my favorite flashback pic is Out of Sight, where the story goes back and forth all the time between different characters. I didn't read the original book, so I don't know whether it also had the same kind of structure.
George Clooney's latest, 'Michael Clayton,' starts with a couple of disjointed scenes, and then goes back four days before returning to the opening scene. The opening serves to fire your curiosity, the flashback explains how things came to be that way.
As you can tell, I kind of like flashbacks. Having said that, my WIP is very rigid chronologically, going from Monday through Sunday.

The writer who does flashbacks the best, IMO, is Michelle West. She has a flair for integrating them with current action and making them relevant. Her Sun Sword series shows her abilities to their best.

Like everything else, when done well it works for me. I don't care if it's told in flashback or not, as long as it's well told.

They have to work, yes.

The story I'm reading now has way too many, IMO. I'm at like chapter 7 (or 8) and almost to the halfway point of the book, and I'm still waiting for the real story to happen, because every time the MC does something or thinks about someone, off we go back to her childhood, her teen years, to when she dated so&so, to when someone died, or whatever, and the story never moves forward. To me, it's all backstory.

Apparently it works as the author has mulitple books out. It's just not my cuppa. But it did make me realize that there are no rules. I've had people tell me when I've done a 1-2 short paragraph flashback to NEVER use flashbacks. So obviously that's not true.

My debut novel, had two storylines...one in the past, arguably, one long flashback. Normally, this is referred to in the UK as a 'timeslip' novel. It works, because there's enough of it that the reader identifies it as the 'main' story, whilst the present day thread is a secondary 'intruding' storyline.

I think the reader will forgive you flashback scenes long or shot, just as long as he/she senses there's a point to the scene. ie: it reveals a plot point, advances a character, explains a motive etc etc.

I've had a story published with a central flashback taking about 25% of the text. The flashback occurs at a crisis point for the MC and he descends through a succession of fears until he stops at a level beyond which his mind won't go. In this heightened inner fear he finds the resources to fight against the current crisis. The flashback ends as his consciousness returns and he finds himself succeeding in the struggle.

The flashback in this case is not a narrative of the MC but the chaotic descent within his own mind as one event links to another. The flashback has the double purpose of explaining some of the events that brought the MC to the present situation, and to give him an occasion to move from a lifetime of vulnerability to an active decision to fight.

When flashbacks have created thier own storyline, I don't mind them. When they are sprinkles on the cake, I don't mind them. But I throw in the towel when they start doing what sneakers145 said

I'm still waiting for the real story to happen, because every time the MC does something or thinks about someone, off we go back to her childhood, her teen years, to when she dated so&so, to when someone died, or whatever, and the story never moves forward. To me, it's all backstory.

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^I hate those kind of stories.^

-Feathers

I think the key is getting in and out of a flashback. You don't want to run out with a big sign that says FLASHBACK... FLASHBACK. You know, "John couldn't help ebing reminded of the day he and Gloria spent at the lake..." I've heard that compared to the old movies where everythings gets kinda out of focus and swirly, then your MC is suddenly a high school kid, or the camera closes in on his eyes, fades to black and then he's playing football.

If you insert a trigger event that draws the character into it, you can almost make it seamless. Just a few had had's or had been's to clue the reader that they're in the past.

In one of my books a daughter says something and her mother replies, "That's exactly what Janet said at the time." Then the story moved into the flashback. It came out again with the mother glancing out the car window as she mused about the effect of these past events.

I recall reading Alexander Key's "Rivets and Sprockets" at around age 10. It started off with a flashback, and it was interesting because it was the first time I had come across this in a book or story. It felt like an "adult" book because of it, even though it was definitely a children's book.

I have a novel that tells a whole backstory in flashbacks. It's a story within a story. It starts with a few present time chapters, then after that each alternating chapter is a flashback, telling a story of one of the MCs lives to that point. Each chapter,present day or flashback, ends in a cliffhanger.

I may be in the minority, but I find flashbacks jarring. I like to stay in one time and place. I will say that I enjoyed The Time Travelor's Wife, even though it bounced around. It worked for that particular story.

I have a flashback in chapter 3 of my current WIP. It's going to be the only one, and it's there to establish what set off the MC in the first place, and it's ritualistic. Each night he forces himself to relive the murder of his daughter as he hunts the man who killed her. It's really only about 4 pages and it's told in stream of consciousness, with him even saying aloud "No" when he blacks out the moment in the past when he heard what the murderer exactly did to his daughter. I think it works.

Hi,
I have a very long flashback in my finished novel, in fact, it's one of the longest chapters in there. I done it as my main female characters memoirs on her laptop; there are things on there that she would never voice to people, as she likes others to think she's a tough little madam. By doing this, my other main MC realises he has her down all wrong, which he was beginning to suspect anyway and finds out for himself as he gets to know her better. But there were still things in there that she would have never told anyone willingly, not even her beloved foster-parents.

The memoir is like a whole new story within the story, and to be honest, all of my beta-readers wanted me to include it in my submission chapters whilst I am querying agencies with it, as they all loved that chapter.


Elodie

Soccer Mom said:

I may be in the minority, but I find flashbacks jarring. I like to stay in one time and place. I will say that I enjoyed The Time Travelor's Wife, even though it bounced around. It worked for that particular story.

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This is a very interesting comment. It made me wonder whether a flashback moves to a previous time and place. Or does it move the previous event into the present?

As far as I can remember, I've only used a flashback once - and I'm not 100% sure it counts as one. The MC meets two secondary characters who tell him their story which started a short while before his. Once their story is done, I go on with the main story.

I like to read novels with flashbacks and I use flashbacks in almost all my short stories and novels. It's an effective story telling tool, when done right. The author has to transition well into the flashback, it has to be relevant to the story, and the flashback itself has to be well told. I think of them as short stories within a larger novel narrative, and I happen to love short stories.

Letting the back story come out in bits and pieces can build suspense. The first season of Desperate Housewives starts with a suicide. We learn a little about the victim's life every episode, but we need to wait to the end of the season to learn why she killed herself.

It's much more suspenseful then a flashback to her committing suicide.

I have used them with some success. They were absolutely necessary to a story, and had their own build so the reader wasn't taken by surprise. By then the reader wanted to know what had happened.

In one the hero had to recall in detail the situation that resulted in the driver for the novel. A flashback was needed to show, not tell about the event. I used a whole chapter for the sequence, then brought things back to the present. It kicked ass, no apologies, and was a bitch to write as well as great fun.

In another the actions of the hero four years in the past had a direct bearing on his current mystery. The flashback was a substantial portion of a long chapter and set apart by a distinct break. I think I even put in a date and location so the reader would have an anchor point.

I don't care for flashbacks that sneak up on me: one second the character is having coffee, the next she's re-living yesterday's cookie-bake sale that caused her life to spin out of control. You start THAT story at the cookie-bake sale.

In my writing, flashbacks HAVE to be absolutely necessary to the plot. They're planned, not dropped in just-because. If its only function is to explain some character glitch, that's not enough for me. One should be able to do that in the main storyline.

("E-vul Granny from the Old Country spanked me and locked me in a closet, so I hate small dark places and old ladies with foreign accents." is better than a lengthy retelling of The Great Spanking Event ---and I don't-care-if-Stephen-King-does-it-you-ain't-him.)

I have read books with multiple flashbacks that explained a character, how she got to her current situation and personality, and I enjoyed the ride. But-- the writing was outstandingly well done by an experienced story-teller.

I noticed she set things up for several chapters before putting in a break and inserting the flashback. By then I was very involved with the MC, rooting for her, and eager to find out more about her. Then it was several more chapters before the writer used the device again.

A flashback is easy to misuse or over-do. It can be a too-easy fix for problems. "Well, the MC does this, because just last week..."

No need to be too eager to explain in detail why things are in such a mess. I see that in some of the newer books when the writer could have waited a bit and let the characters figure things out in the present--in which case the device is not necessary.

I tend to put back books that use the device in the opening pages. Unless the writing is bloody fantastic I have to figure the writer wasn't experienced enough to know just when to start the story.

You wouldn't believe the stuff that comes up when you do a 'quick' search on flashbacks!
I didn't want to start yet another thread because I knew what I wanted would be in there somewhere. Then I found this

sneakers145 said:

They have to work, yes.

The story I'm reading now has way too many, IMO. I'm at like chapter 7 (or 8) and almost to the halfway point of the book, and I'm still waiting for the real story to happen, because every time the MC does something or thinks about someone, off we go back to her childhood, her teen years, to when she dated so&so, to when someone died, or whatever, and the story never moves forward.

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Now I'm worried. This is my book.
I can't see another way of writing it. My MC has to experience flashbacks for her to develop and change at the end of the book. Problem is, will anyone read to the end of the book?

A lot--if not most--of the flashbacks I read in published novels bore the crap out of me, and I skim past them. The ones I don't skip past are usually so damn interesting that they're like a story within the story. So if it's relevant to plot, and is exciting as a scene of its own, yeah it can work, and work wonderfully. Most of the flashbacks that annoy me are the ones that exist solely for character BGs, his/her life history. When it's about a pivotal point that has led me to the NOW of the story--if interesting and done well--it captivates me.

So do it well. And don't tell me about his third-grade teacher unless she tried to kill him.

When used sparingly to illuminate character, flashbacks are a very good thing. I used to know a couple of books that pulled it off but their names escape me now. The thing with flashbacks if you have to have an actual story, and that actual story has to be tightly constructed because flashbacks are just so flabby by nature.

I can only think of a movie that uses flashbacks well. That is Saw IV. Through flashbacks, we see the development of Jigsaw's character, his past, etc. There were a lot of flashbacks, maybe too many, and it almost made you lose track of what was actually happening, but I think Saw IV is still a very good study. The present-plot is constructed very tightly and very simply, so it accommodates the heavy flashbacks somewhat. The lesson here is that flashbacks are good in the right hands and situation, but too many will kill a story, no matter how good it is. (Could you imagine if the story wasn't any good?)