Fiction: To use flashbacks or not to use flashbacks?

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

I've heard an editor from the Ted Dekker site say that in the publishing world flashbacks are pretty much frowned upon. Is this a narrow viewpoint or the truth? I for one love a good flashback (they reveal more of the character, mystery, story etc) at a point when we care (or should care) more about the characters.

Some of my favourite tv shows use flashbacks heavily, often well.
Notably The Pretender (anyone remember it?) and Lost (although it was a bit silly at points). They very much helped the story. The flashbacks certainly weren't boring and they added much depth and allowed for suspenseful and huh? moments to be later explained and then the wonderful 'oh, now I understand it' moments.

What say you? Flashbacks or no?

[noodlegirl]

I've heard that flashbacks are okay in moderation and not in the first chapter. However, I am reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, which is chock full of flashbacks almost from the first page.

I think you should write what makes sense to your story. And then listen carefully to your crit buddies, if they have any concerns about the flashbacks.

[paulchernoch]

I just watched the movie "The Prestige" a week ago. Imagine a reel of straight line narrative thrown into a paper shredder and spliced together again and you'll get the picture. The movie was confusing, but I loved it anyway because it was skillfully done.

The more you use flashbacks, the more effort you must employ to ensure narrative clarity. I just can't resist using them. Most of my first two novels and a huge chunk of my third are told in flashback (really someone reading another man's journal, but basically the same thing). But because the flashbacks are so long, there are few flashback transitions. I think the problem is in the transitions - not too many (which confuse and break the flow) and not too long (which makes you forget what is happening in the front story).

In the first two books in my trilogy, I devoted the beginning of most chapters to one time period and the end of the chapter to a second. Most of the flow occurred in these two streams, few flashbacks were to a different time, and they were very short, mostly recollections related to a court case. My aim was to tell two separate stories headed for collision. The flashback story spans twelve years, while the "current time" story spans two years (in the first two and a fraction books), after which the stories combine.

- Paul

[Tarin]

I find that flashbacks work significantly better in a film media than they do in books.

For the most part, esp. with lengthy flashbacks, readers will get bored. They already know the character lived through any drama in the flashback, so they'll want to get back to the present drama as quickly as possible. There are, of course, exceptions. For some stories the entire point is the flashback - such as with The Prestige. Told in a straightforward fashion, that movie would never have been as interesting. But, the only reason the flashbacks were successful is because they were contributed to the general chaos of the movie. Nobody had any idea what was going on until the ending - hence the flashbacks were just as interesting as the real-time stuff (if and when you could tell them apart, that is). BTW, have you thought about what a nightmare that film would have been to edit?:eek:

[paulchernoch]

You make a good point, Tarin. Thus for a flashback to contribute to suspense or intrigue, something other than life must be at stake. Examples I can think of are showing the roots of a grudge, or showing an unexpected character trait, such as a vice in the hero, that challenges the reader's expectations of how events in the present may turn out.

One of the small but key flashbacks I show in my series is a mystery. A straightforward reading of the flashback says one thing - the hero is a coward pretending to be a hero, but there are clues to the mystery that is eventually exposed - his cowardly act worked out for the best because the comrades whose lives he could not save in the battle were actually betraying him and our country, and had he tried to save them he would have been killed and their betrayal successful. So because he lived, the hero feels like a fraud, and that haunts him for many years.

- Paul

[Lookin^Up]

A writing instructor of mine once offered these rules for handling flashbacks.

1. Keep them short. As Paul mentioned, a lengthy flashback will bore readers and make them either skip ahead or stop reading altogether. Flashbacks in my work are rarely more than a page long, one and a half at most.

2. Start and end the flashback with past perfect verbs. Or past tense verbs if the story is in present tense. It can begin with something like "Phil remembered when he had first heard of hazing. He was in college and wanted to join a fraternity ..." That makes an effective segue into the flashback sequence so the reader instantly knows he's reading about the distant past, and past tense keeps it going. Then it could end with "That left him literally with egg on his face. He had never forgotten the humiliation. [paragraph break] Now he regarded Sam with a skeptical eye ..." That easily brings the reader back into the front story.

3. Use them sparingly. Most backstories can be handled in dialogue or snippets of facts from the target character's POV.

The movie Titanic, as huge as it was, was told mostly in flashback as the elderly Rose explained her experience to the modern world. It seemed to work in that case, but that's more an exception rather than the rule.

[mel3]

It really depends on how you write the flasback. If it is well written and kept short, it could work. They usually fare better in film.

[Phy]

The movie Titanic, as huge as it was, was told mostly in flashback as the elderly Rose explained her experience to the modern world. It seemed to work in that case, but that's more an exception rather than the rule.

What the flashbacks in Titanic did was kind of brilliant. We tend to see old people as old people, not as vigorous, silly, energetic, bundles of hormones and moral quandries. The flashbacks allowed us to see her as a young woman full of fears and dreams and raging desires. It worked very well, so well that (for me) it changed how I saw the old woman. I found I could begin to see vivacious, terrified, sultry Rose, and not this specimen that time had ravaged. I also found that I saw her as a complete person and not just some random elderly person. And in a sense, it changed the way I see all older folks.

I'd say those flashbacks worked to good effect. I remember the scene where the entire staff is gathered around to hear what happened next.

That's the way it should be.

[righter1]

This is a thread I'm going to watch with great interest!

Most of the books I read don't utilize flashbacks, so I've never really used them. Until I started writing a book that needed it. I have no idea if I'm using them correctly in this story (which is currently on hold until I can develop the plot better and finish the 2 stories that precede it.) But I think that you have to use them skillfully if you're going to use them at all.

Here's a question for you--do you ever think you should substitute your flashbacks for an extended prologue, or is it better to use the flashbacks in tandem with a short prologue?

[Phy]

Here's a question for you--do you ever think you should substitute your flashbacks for an extended prologue, or is it better to use the flashbacks in tandem with a short prologue?

I'm on record as D) None of the above. I don't like prologues for Event Stories, period. However, I don't usually use flashbacks to bring people up to speed, I reveal backstory in other ways, mostly through organic event and dialogue.

[Lookin^Up]

Based on this and a couple of other threads, I'd say a flashback would be more widely accepted than a prologue. Readers will skip prologues, but flashbacks pose as part of the main story. As long as they're kept short and engaging, they can come and go without the reader being aware they've just read prologue material.

Phy's post beat mine by seconds.