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Flashback are hard. I don' t know why I tried to use one. Simple forward narration is so much easier. Continuity gets tangled too. Simple forward narrative avoids that complexity. Granted this was only my second try at sharing story with you all. I think I want to do more. You have all been so kind. It might have been better to pick something easier from my drafts folder than this one. But when I opened the editor this is what spilled out into the file.
I'm going to take some time and read more about writing flashbacks. Looks like a quick DDG search returns a sizable list of coaching articles. I'll read through a few and see if I get a better idea how to manage them. This short story writing thing is harder than just spitting words onto a page. I guess always seems that way. Someone told me that Blaise Pascal once wrote, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't write 17th century French: "I apologize for the length of this letter. I did not have time to make it shorter." Writing is a craft, words and grammar are just the most basic tools. There is so much more to learn. I'm going to spend some time "sharpening the axe" as it were. Getting better at using the tools.
Writing does not come easily for me. I fight with my fingers. I fight with the 'd' key which seems to want to be hit more frequently that it deserves. I fight with spelling, syntax, grammar, and a fear of commas. I never wanted to write as a student. Later as computers became more common I began to write more frequently. First memos, proposals and specs for work. Later for the joy of it. Finally I write to share with others. To share with you all.
Now that I have started I don't think that I will stop publishing. Between fighting my imposter syndrome and narcissistic self aggrandizement I hope to find a happy balance. I want to thank you all for providing this wonderful platform and the many lovely denizens here who share their wisdom so I may grow.
Thanks for reading this and I'm interested in your thoughts, ideas and comments.
Comments
I mostly write in a linear fashion
but my advice would be to write what brought on the flashback first, then the flashback itself, then what effect the flashback has afterward
If you think flash backs
are a problem - flash forwards are even worse!
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Especially...
...if you don't finish writing the story, so we don't know where it fits in.
(Yes, I have one in mind, from 2009. I'm still annoyed about it.)
Eric
Flashbacks
A couple of personal and professional observations? Memories are often crystal clear in some ways but indistinct at first in others. Also? If you include professional help. anyone versed in trauma treatment will not purposely induce any memories, but will instead come alongside the client tby asking open questions like what do you recall or how dis that feel rather than asking for specific details or emotions - allowing as much objectivity as possible. Flashbacks arise through spontaneous triggers.
Love, Andrea Lena
Can be awkward
Flashbacks can be awkward.
If they are just presented as a sudden jump to another time the flow of the reader is interrupted; all they want to do is continue from where the original thread left off. Personally, I get irritated by flashbacks presented like that. Even more so when there are a number of them scattered through the plot. Even more so when they jump between more than two times!
On the other hand, if it is just one of your characters recounting something that happened to them earlier, then a flashback-style retelling is always acceptable. I have used this a time or two but infrequently.
Good luck with your endeavours. For me, the best training was just to write and keep on writing, but reading is necessary too.
Penny
Flashbacks
"Continuity gets tangled too. Simple forward narrative avoids that complexity." Not always true, at least for me. One still may forget what one wrote earlier.
A first draft of one of my stories, I realized, had at least two levels of flashback -- flashback in flashback. Maybe three -- flashback in flashback in flashback. It required serious revision. The final version -- I began with a single-sentence paragraph in the shower, and then went back to telling the summer's story. So that flashback might be considered the actual story. I think that the first quarter, telling rather than showing the summer, needed that opening paragraph because it gave a sense of going over the bad memories. Then came the story proper: the afternoon before the shower, dialogue and everything -- as well as the shower and what followed.
In "A Bikini Beach Summer" and several unfinished stories, I have a definite reason for flashbacks: they didn't happen. They're either false memories or the products of reality-shifts.
It's probably very difficult -- as in I can't do it yet, but see if you can ignore your mind's tendency to hit the d-key. Catch it on revision and spell-check. (If you cut something in revision, its superfluous ds don't matter.)
In general, one should go back and revise one's stories. My original writing of "What happened?" was a mishmash of possibilities until I realized that I could chop it down to the barest minimum.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Cheating works too
Sometimes you can get the same job done with a dream as a flashback. Just saying.
It's all in the backstory.
In order to make good use of a flashback and keep the continuity straight, the author needs to have a good understanding of the backstory... that is the story that preceded the one they are telling... who are the the main characters in the story and what in their past influenced them to be who they are. That's what defines the character and drives their dialog and actions.
The backstory of some of the lesser characters can also be important in the same way. It might be helpful while preparing to write to first establish who's in the story and write a profile or a short synopses of their life up to the start of the story. That way, when you feel the need to write a flashback, you have something to reference that portion of the story.
I generally write in first person past tense. That is my narrator is telling something that has already happened and come to its conclusion. I often set the hook, the part that catches the readers attention at the beginning of the read, as something that happens near the conclusion, something that cries out for resolution, and then tell the entire tale as a flashback, marrying up with the hook in the last chapter or in the final part of the story if it's too short to really have chapters. "Give Me An R...O...S...E" is a good example of that. The story opens with Joe near tears looking at the vacation photos and then the narrator (Joe) tells us he needs to explain what happened to put him in that state. The story is then a giant flashback until he reaches that point. What happens after that in the story is a kind of epilogue. The loose ends are tied up and the future is hinted at.
That's why it's important to me to know the end of my story before I begin writing. The end is the point of telling the story in the first place. Without the ending firmly in mind, the story has no direction and wonders off on rabbit trails and sometime the author writes themselves into a corner and ends up like the cowboy telling the story of him being surrounded by hostile Indians. He finds himself in a situation that he can't escape and has to end the story by saying, "That's when the killed me."
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Highlander
As total (and imo excellent) cheese as it was, I've always felt the movie Highlander did a great job with the flashback sequences. The transitions were artistically done as the image frames moved into each other. The technique definitely inspired a lot of the stories I've written (or GMed in RPGs), attempting to weave deep historical/mythical backstories into a 'present' narrative.
The challenge is to make sure the scenes from the past carry enough reflections/contrast with the mainline story as the reader is pulled through both. It helps if there are parallels to anchor to in themes/situations. It may be cheating a bit that in mine they are usually dreams/recovered memories of mythic events 'falling' into the present understanding, but the use is similar to a regular style flashback and I think it works a lot better to show such past events rather than have them simply told either by the narrator or another character. So they are good for situations where there's a tight mainline sequence of events but the backstory is more scattered across the past yet is worth showing rather than telling. Though I would say it's usually best if the timeline of the flashbacks is still revealed in normal time order and not confusingly mixed about to get the two parallel stories effect. Otherwise the reader could get lost wondering 'wait a minute, is this flashback before or after the previous one? Or the one before that? Ack!'.
Anyways, main thing is I find them fun. :)
It's sometimes hard to differentiate
what's flashback and what's current timeline. One device that helps is to change type. Another is to use extra spacing before and after the flashback. Another option is to have one character describing what happened so it is introduced in the past tense. Using introductory words like I still remember or I can't forget works too. Something marking the end of the flashback is also good.