TECH: Flashbacks can be fun

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writers Digest, October 2004, page 20 and 21 have an article by James Scott Bell concerning the use of flashbacks.

James recommends that we start by asking whether we really need to use a flashback scene. Is it really the best way to provide the story information at this point? Remember, you're making the reader go back in time, and that's always a little bit disorienting. Lots of people use flashbacks to provide motivation or explain why characters are acting a certain way, but you can often do that with a little bit of information in the present moment. If you're going to do a flashback, it needs to work as a scene. It needs to be immediate and confrontational, with some real dramatic action, not just a camouflaged information dump.

Getting into and out of the flashback with a natural flow can be tricky. James suggests using a strong sensory detail in the present scene that triggers the memory of the point of view character. Sensory detail, a sentence or two setting the time of the flashback, and then write it as a dramatic scene. How do you get out of this? Return to the sensory detail. Pretty simple, right?

James also warns against using "had" (is that past perfect? Only the grammarians know for sure! :-) You might use one or two to get into the flashback scene, but then stick with plain old past tense.

James suggests that one alternative to doing a flashback scene is a back flash. What he means by this is a bit of dialogue or point-of-view character's thoughts that drops some information about the past into the present-moment scene. Dialogue is a good way to reveal something, with someone remembering the shocking information from the past, the dark secret, and revealing it at a tense moment. The character's thoughts are similar, but take us even closer into the POV character. You can also use the character's thoughts as a transition into a full flashback scene, of course. He remembered how it had been . . .

You might want to think about an exercise on flashbacks. One is to take a scene that you are writing or even borrow one from a story or novel, and write in the transition into a flashback, a flashback scene, and the transition back into the present tense. You might also like to try taking a flashback and converting it into some back flashes.

It's interesting that one of the differences I notice in the Japanese samurai dramas and mysteries is that the mysteries often have people talking about what happened before, but as a foreign speaker of the language, it is very easy for me to get lost in the talking heads. The samurai dramas, on the other hand, do full flashback scenes a lot. Whenever anyone says "I remember" or "That was the day" we're about to do a full flashback scene, and actually DO it all and see it. Much easier for the foreign speaker to follow.

In any case, think about what you need to make your writing the best possible.
And then, well, write!