Flashbacks

Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by EdFromNY, Jul 1, 2018.

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  1. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I don't remember ever really being tempted to include a flashback... so, no, not at all hard to avoid them!

    Oh, no, wait - the story I'm working on now has a character who was damaged in a variety of ways by his childhood, including seeing his mom killed in front of him (she was walking him home from school and a recklessly driven car hit her. She was conscious for a tiny bit before she died but couldn't speak. She just fought to breath and stared at him as if begging him to help, but he was just a kid, even the adults didn't know how to help her so what was he supposed to do? But he should have done something and it's stuck with him until the time of the novel...).I thought about having him tell someone else about the scene, but that would actually be out of character, and I thought about having him think about the scene but he avoids thinking about it, and I'm writing in limited third so I can't just tell about it myself, so... kill your darlings. It's not in there.
     
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  2. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    It all sounds interesting, @BayView. You're probably farther along than I am. I keep getting distracted and writing short stories. I am going to finish this novel. I did write one other one many years ago, but nothing came of it, and that's probably for the best. I really want it this time. I believe I'm writing a good story. I don't hate it at all. Sometimes I'm not a shit writer. Sometimes. Keep me in mind when looking for betas.
     
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  3. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    That sounds like it would have been a great flashback though. Definitely the kind I can't help writing! So it's just not in the book at all or do you drop hints of what's happened in other ways?
     
  4. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    I don't recall if I've ever read a flashback sequence. I'm trying to think if I've ever wrote one. They work pretty well in movies -- I love the one in Hitchcock's Stage Fright but it's got to be ten times harder in fiction. You don't have those nice little shimmery dissolves in movies or those tinkling notes and fading narrative -- when I was a little girl ...
    Most books tend to just take you there, tell you about their history, ala Lolita either in the opening when Hum's discussing his childhood with Annabel or in the entire book -- the whole set up of the narrative. Everything technically takes place in the past, aside from the omnipotent narrator, but it's not a flashback.
    I would actually think only a first person perspective could manage a flashback -- how can you flashback to another character in the third person?
     
  5. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I'm mildly confused here. Surely the third person POV character of the moment could be experiencing a flashback/memory?

    (I've never written a flashback and am not crazy about them, but I don't see that first versus third would affect whether it's possible to write them.)
     
  6. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    So far it's just:

    Ethan wasn’t sure how far he could push. “How did your mom die?”

    “She got hit by a car. We were walking home from school, and—” Alex stopped. His voice had been strained from the start, and Ethan felt like the world’s biggest asshole, pushing Alex into memories that were clearly too painful for him. It wasn’t like he was looking for gossip, though. He wanted to understand. To help. But Alex took a deep breath, shook his head, and changed the subject.
    Traditional m/m pronoun confusion there - will have to tidy up eventually!
     
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  7. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    Whoops yes, the main pov character could flashback no matter whether it was first or third. I think I'm still stuck in my head about using the flashback as a way to narrate an event like they do in movies. And I can't see how that could be done in a book.
     
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  8. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I've seen it done with verb tense shifts. Not quite the same, but similar. So, for example...

    As soon as I saw the lamp, I knew I'd seen it before. But where? Copper and glass, sitting in the dusty corner of a junk shop, now, but in my memory, dancing with the reflected glow of... of a thousand fires. That was when I knew, and I sank into the nearest chair and stared at the newly familiar object.

    I'm just a child, and I'm afraid. I'm trying not to show it--for my whole life, I've believed that things are only real if other people can see them. The fires are burning everywhere and my mother is out there somewhere, dancing in the flames... etc.​
     
  9. Cohen

    Cohen Member

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    I'm kind of in the camp where I cannot, for the life of me, think of a book that had a flashback scene. Can't say I've ever written one, nor do I have any inclination to do so. To me, it just feels like it would remove me from the action of the piece I'm writing unless it was contained within its own chapter. Anyone have any examples of good/bad flashback uses in novels?
     
  10. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    There are books that are told almost entirely in flashback, like To Kill a Mockingbird... there's a brief framing device establishing that we're seeing these events through the eyes of adult Scout, but most of the story takes place earlier. Google tells me Hunger Games has a brief flashback to Peeta giving Katniss bread years before the main story happens. And apparently Harry Potter uses the "pensieve" as a way to get into other people's memories and see things that are not only in the past but also in someone else's POV? (Clever POV tool!).

    But none of these are the "separate scene" type of flashback... I'm sure I've seen that, but have no idea where!
     
  11. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    @ I have another questions for you, @BayView, if you don't mind. Since you've pulled off books with no flashbacks, I am wounding if it was harder to develop your characters and how you did this without dipping into scenes from their pasts? I've been thinking about this, and I use flashbacks as a way to develop and round out my characters. I didn't even realize this is something I do quite often, though, I have learned to not overdo it and not stray for too long from the present narrative for the most part. But it's very hard for me to imagine writing a story with no flashbacks. I really don't think I could pull it off. No one has ever told me it was a problem to use flashbacks or to avoid them. I have been told not to stray too far or too long from the present narrative. I think the exception to that would be a bookended story. Flashbacks are something that was a problem for me a few years ago, but with much practice I've gotten better with this and become more aware of when I'm slipping into a flashback and how long I'm staying in that scene.

    That being said, I wrote a short story (around 5k words) that is flashback to flashback to flashback and so on. I workshopped this story in graduate school and got torn apart for my continuance sequence of flashbacks that never returned to the current narrative. I was told I can't do this by my fellow candidates, which turned into a discussion about flashbacks and their use as well as the ingrained rule that stories must end in the present narrative. However, my professor said she didn't want to suggest too much rewriting since this weird format seemed to be working for this weird story in some weird way. But I was pretty discouraged from that workshop. I tried rewriting this story and turning into something with a more traditional format. My thesis advisor pretty much hated the rewrite so that story never made it into my collection. In that case I used flashbacks to advance the plot, which I know is not typical or popular.

    This thread got me thinking about flashbacks and that story. I found the original, which is surprising because I have a new computer and rarely save different drafts. It's different, but I'm not sure it's so bad. I worked on it some more, but kept the flashback-to-flashback format. And this story is now on submission. And I don't think it's sh!t anymore. But I know this is a weird example, and I've not really tried submitting this story until now. I honestly don't know if anyone will take it, but I am targeting publications I've come to know like weird and quirky stories in less traditional narratives. You would be surprised how much the short story literary world loves a weird story if it's good enough, but editors also love traditional stories told in traditional ways.

    So, I guess it's just me, but I really can't imagine not using flashbacks and I still can't be sure if I've ever read a story without them. I do have to say I never gave it enough thought while reading to be sure now. I'm thinking of the literary cannon. I'm not sure all those books have flashbacks. Am I wrong? Probably. I think they must, but maybe some don't. I'm to scared to name any in fear of being wrong. I no longer have the personal library I once had to skim through the titles I'm thinking of. Does anyone care to name some titles that don't have any flashbacks?

    Man, I feel like lately I'm questioning everything and myself a lot.
     
  12. Lew

    Lew Contributor Contributor

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    I did one flashback in E&D, which helped complexify one of my villains. He is afraid of being recognized, found out as a traitor rather than the shipping master, in cahoots with a pirate to hijack of his own ships. It begins with the hammering of his heart, and goes on in italics, like the crucifixioner's hammer that might await him, reminding him as a twelve-year old watching his uncle who had raised him being crucified, the uncle who had told him that Roman justice was the best thing to happen to Syria, being crucified for a crime he didn't commit. Taking three days to die. There are no martyrs on the cross... the cross does not allow that, they all plead for death at the end.

    It gave some depth to his character, and even though he continued on to become that traitor, and near psychopathic as well, the reader always remembers that there are reasons, that he could have gone another way.
     
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  13. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    When you refer to flashbacks, @deadrats, how long are the passages you're thinking about?

    I might have parts that are a sentence or maybe two that refer to something in the past? But to my mind they're not flashbacks because I'm not expecting the reader to go back and actually "be in" the part from the past? Almost a show/tell thing - I might "tell" things from the past, but I don't "show" them. At least, not often, or I can't remember having done so...

    (Well, actually - one of the first things I wrote was this vastly sprawling epic when I was just coming out of fandom land (b/c in fandom land, anything goes!) and I ended up self-publishing a bunch of shorts and things from that world as promo for the published novels, and quite a few of the shorts were from the past. So within the individual short story there were no flashbacks, but for the series as a whole the short story itself was a flashback, if that makes sense?)

    In general, I think I do characterization by focusing on the present. You can also sometimes get information across via dialogue. So, for my current WIP - the same MC whose mom died was raised by an abusive father. It's not in his characterization to really share a lot of his pain, so I've had him go visit his father in hospital for some present-day abuse (and the realization that it doesn't really matter anymore) and I think I had another character say something about it in dialogue. Hints, rather than a graphic representation?
     
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  14. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    Not @BayView, of course, but as another writer who rarely uses flashbacks I can give my perspective. Usually I do this by a) dialogue - having a character tell another character about something that happened to them in the past or b) have the character think about an event in their past within the scene instead of breaking it into a separate flashback scene.

    For example, in my first book, I used the fact that contestants on reality shows are often interviewed about their past and personal lives to my advantage. This allowed one of my characters, Nate, to talk about how his dad died when he was very young and he wound up working in a restaurant to help his mom pay the bills. This also led into him thinking about what he should and shouldn't say, as his responses would be televised to millions of people eventually. So I managed to reveal some things about him that weren't included in the dialogue, but there was no literal flashback scene. For me it makes the memory part of the present narrative without blasting to the past.

    Does that make sense? I'm not always the best at describing my writing process, since I tend take a very informal/less technical approach to writing.
     
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  15. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    We're on the same page about flashbacks. I like your show vs. tell example, @BayView . I'm thinking of flashbacks as scenes that pull a reader out of the present narrative and temporarily put them in another time. I would say they can last anywhere from a paragraph to several pages to a whole book pretty much like Love in the Time of Cholera.

    Can I ask you guys why you're not using flashbacks at all? I mean do they really hurt a writer or is it just that it's something a lot a aspiring writers struggle with? I admit I've had my share on flashback problems, but I think through a lot of trial and error, some guidance and direction, and reading more in general, I feel okay with my flashback use for the most part, at least some of the time.

    It's interesting how other writers approach things and their practices. The goal is always a good story, and there are endless ways to get there.
     
  16. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I don't consciously avoid them... I guess I just don't think they'd fit well, or don't think they're necessary? The only time I can remember thinking about one and not doing it was with the dead-mom example I already gave, and I think I decided against it because it just sort of messed up the flow...?
     
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  17. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    Same here, basically. I do have a flashback in my most recently written novel, but it takes place after a big time jump and I think it flowed well. I don't really write stories that jump all over the place in time (most of what I write takes place over a series of weeks or months, starting at Point A, then progressing to Point B, Point C, etc), so maybe that's why it doesn't occur to me to use them often? I'm a very linear person in many ways, so anything that takes me out of the present timeline can easily become jarring to me.
     
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  18. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    Ah, see, flashbacks have always been so tempting to me as a writer. As a pantser, I feel like it's the easy way to give my story roots. Done poorly (which I have done before), flashbacks can kill a story, disrupt the flow, and confuse things. Done well (which I believe I've also done), I think it's a way to add depth and roots. Of course, there are other ways of achieving that, but I quite like flashbacks for the most part.
     
  19. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    There may be differences between genre/literary and novels/short stories, too. I get the impression that literary readers are a bit more inclined to tolerate a slower pace than genre readers, and that short stories (esp. literary) may not have the same pacing issues a novel would have. For a genre novel, there's a common problem of a "saggy middle", and I can see flashbacks really exacerbating that sag...
     
  20. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    @deadrats , I'm feeling an increasing need for examples of flashbacks. While it seems that everyone's description of them matches, you see them in most books and I see them in almost none, and I wonder if there's some subtle nuance of what they are that explains this.

    As a currently-a-complete-amateur, my response to "how do you do character development?" isn't all that relevant, but that doesn't stop me from answering it. :) I generally refer to the past through the present. For example, Female Protagonist lived through a war in her adolescence, and that's pointed to by her present--by her attitude to people from the invading nation, by her interaction with food, by what she fears, by a medical man's observation that many people of her age lost much of their final adult growth to starvation. Male Protagonist gets a very slow reveal of elements in his past, mostly through his present actions and words.

    And there's some narrative summary about the past, and that's part of where I wonder about the definition of a flashback. I don't regard the following quickly scribbled example as a flashback. Do you?

    He'd always hated cats. His mother would rhapsodize about their cleanliness, but how could something covered in its own dried saliva be regarded as clean? She had them all over the house, let them leap up on the counter, and forbid him to evict them from his own bed. His tenth birthday party had been cancelled because Mittens chose that day to give birth to her kittens.

    Cats. Feh.

    I could slap a bit of dialogue in, but I still don't see it as flashback.

    He'd always hated cats. His mother would rhapsodize about their cleanliness, but how could something covered in its own dried saliva be regarded as clean? She had them all over the house, let them leap up on the counter, and forbid him to evict them from his own bed. He remembered her sneer clearly: "You're not even using it during the day, Michael. Don't be so selfish." His tenth birthday party had been cancelled because Mittens chose that day to give birth to her kittens.

    Cats. Feh.
     
  21. deadrats

    deadrats Contributor Contributor

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    I'm sure what you're saying, @BayView, does play into this somewhat. I know I've had to pull back on my flashback use. And I worry about my own writing a little when topics come up like this. My novel-in-progress is a murder mystery of sorts. I don't think it's genre enough to be classified as a mystery novel. It's interesting that you mention the pacing, because I do think my novel is at a slower pace than most mystery novels. I haven't really thought of that until now. I really hope it's not something that works against me.

    I'm not sure I see that much of a difference between the use of flashbacks in short stories and flashbacks in novels. That's my observation as an avid reader of both. I mean it's the same technique. I use them the same way at least.
     
  22. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    I didn't mention it, but I was wondering if the flashback thing might be genre-specific. I know I don't see them much when I'm reading within my own genre (which is pretty much all I read these days), and I've sure been coached by my editors and betas to keep a fairly tight leash on my pacing. I feel like most of the people who read genre Romance are in it to plow through the narrative and get to that well-deserved HEA, whereas Literary readers may be looking to enjoy the prose in and of itself a bit more.
     
  23. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    As a reader, I tend to dislike flashbacks for exactly this reason. I tend to find them frustrating and want to get back to the story proper. Same thing for dream sequences.
     
  24. Laurin Kelly

    Laurin Kelly Contributor Contributor

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    Oh man, if you include daydream sequences/fantasies that are their own little scene, I'm 100% guilty of these in my first drafts especially. I think it's one of my guilty pleasures, but they usually get rousted out by my editor. :)
     
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  25. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I did qualify it with “tend to” :D I have come across dream sequences and flashbacks I thought were really engaging and kept me interested.
     

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