Flashbacks within a short story

HD Simplicityy

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I have a paragraph of my protagonist driving in snowy weather down a highway to his mom's house. Is this a good place for one or two flashbacks? Context is remembering better days when mom and dad weren't divorced, and a contrasting one with a diagnosis of depression, with drinking resurfacing as a problem too. The whole piece is part of a rewrite around 1000 words, more or less. Should these be really short due to the short story form or be written and integrated well enough?
 

Denevius

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Can’t really say without reading the story. It may work, it may not.
 

MaeZe

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Denevius is right, write it and see how it works.

A lot of folks ask these kinds of questions, 'is my idea good'? If you have an idea, you are ahead of people stressing over what to write. Go for it, see what you can do with it and go from there.

And for those stressing over coming up with that story idea, there are a lot of ways to develop ideas. What is the story you want to read is one. But you can find resources online for generating ideas as well.
 

HD Simplicityy

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Denevius is right, write it and see how it works.

A lot of folks ask these kinds of questions, 'is my idea good'? If you have an idea, you are ahead of people stressing over what to write. Go for it, see what you can do with it and go from there.

And for those stressing over coming up with that story idea, there are a lot of ways to develop ideas. What is the story you want to read is one. But you can find resources online for generating ideas as well.

Pretty much yep. I'm doin it.
 

David Odle

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As a rule, flashbacks are dangerous because they're boring. I totally agree, it depends completely on your story, but always look for ways to let the reader derive the past on present actions or dialogue.

As an example I saw recently: Within a short story, the writer delved deeply into the backstory of how a woman was deadly with a bow and arrow. It was interesting, but also boring - I didn't care. In a rewrite, he took the two paragraphs of backstory and simply wrote:
She fired her bow and split the feather dangling from his mouth.

Now, that's not verbatim, but the point is, I didn't need the backstory. Her action showed me she was deadly... I didn't need the writer to tell me.
 
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Paul Lamb

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I rely a great deal on flashbacks -- some of my short stories are almost completely flashbacks -- and I think they can be done well. If your purpose is to illuminate the present in some way, give some scene building or character building background, then a flashback is a reasonable way to do it. And it is natural in the ramblings of a human mind. At least in my human mind. I'm constantly recalling moments or events or suspect memories as I'm going about some mundane task, especially driving.

As the others have said, it may work or it may not, but you ought to give it a try.
 

Lady Ice

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There's not much room in a short story so I'd avoid using flashbacks unless you want the story to be jumbled up in order to keep the reader on their toes.

Also, flashbacks take you away from the present action. They're often almost an explanation for the present scene, which means that the present scene isn't doing its job.
 

Auteur

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It seems like flashbacks are a good way to conceal information up until a certain point for dramatic effect. Like say, you want your readers to form a certain opinion about one of the characters and then show them that the character isn't really that way. Escape at Dannemora is a good example of how they would have ruined the story had they revealed the true nature of the main characters early on.