Writer’s Phrasebook: Flashbacks & Memory

DISCLAIMER: None of these excerpts belong to me. They’re drawn from my reading and are meant to jog your imagination, so please do not copy them.

IMG: lonelyplanet.com

Memories are great for characterization. They help give a life to your character past the pages to enhance credibility. The phrases here might help get your mind jogging on how to phrase these flashbacks:

Awoken some old memory

Triggered (memory)

“Still gruesomely fresh in his mind”

“In her memory, painfully sharp”

His memory could pull up

Place (“Leberlingen had no time to waste trying to place him.”)

“Her thoughts were still out there in the dark waters of the Pacific.”

“Dipping into her unhappy memories”

“He strained his memory to his time in Inys”

“Struck a chord in his memory”

“She hadn’t occupied any particularly distinct spot in my memory”

Sparked his memory

“Zeno. Where had I heard the name recently?”

“Refresh my memory.”

Offhand I can recall _

“Tickled at Keilan’s memory”

“Stained my memory”

“Why dig up a matter that has lain undisturbed for twenty years or more?”

“Bloodshed clotting his memory”

Stirred memories of

Halls of memory

I’d know that voice anywhere. (cog rang a bell)

“The cloudy recesses of his mind”

“Had lain hidden in the hayloft of his memory”

“Couldn’t remember the last time”

“Words echoed dimly and frighteningly in the darkened alleys of his mind”

Sour memory

gilded thoughts

rosy reflections

Fuzzy memory

My mind slipped back to _

Lapses of memory

Distant (memory | what was a distant memory to Hector was a nightly torture to Mateo)

Unforgettable

The name rang a bell

“She’d rehash all their arguments” (put old ideas into new form without significant change or improvement)

Committed to memory (“committing every tree and rock and bush to memory”