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What are your thoughts on Stories with Flashbacks throughout
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I've used flashbacks in my work, but I'm always really careful to make sure to only show what's absolutely necessary. I would stray away from flashbacks if you're trying to tell two parallel stories - at that point you might be better off writing two stories instead of one. If you require that much backstory/flashback, is there a reason why you're not just showing us the past in earlier chapters rather than flashing back throughout? You can always have a time jump instead.
If done right, they are a wonderful tool to use as a writer, and I love watching a good story pulled off this way correctly. If done wrong, they shatter the illusion of the story, and pull me away from a work I might otherwise enjoy.Truth to tell, as long as the writing is good, and it all syncs up, you should be just fine.
If done right, they are a wonderful tool to use as a writer, and I love watching a good story pulled off this way correctly. If done wrong, they shatter the illusion of the story, and pull me away from a work I might otherwise enjoy.Truth to tell, as long as the writing is good, and it all syncs up, you should be just fine.
Flashbacks are fine if the author is skilled enough to do it in a way that works. The trouble is, there are a lot of authors out there who can't do it successfully and that ruins the effect. So long as the story flows well and people can follow it it should be okay.
pretty much as everyone says, if you do it right then it's awesome. But it seems to be one of those things that's just very difficult to accomplish. More so if the story depends on multiple flashbakks. I can't really think of any story that does it though. Most that i read, tend to bypass flashbacks by having the character tell it as a story (in example Aztec and The Wind Through the Keyhole or Wizard and Glass
I dont read romance but I dont mind flashbacks, I use them too. However, as a reader, one thing that irritates me is if the flashback is always in a dream, I just think its so overdone and really how often do we have a flashback in a dream? Never? Realistically, we have flashbacks when we're awake. My two cents worth.
I don't really like reading flashbacks. I prefer a story to continue going forward. It seems like the tension sags when the author dives into a flashback trying to explain something. I think it would be much better to keep the conflict going forward by weaving the information into the present.
I thought I put in my 2¢…anyways, I've used flashbacks for a few of my stories and hand no complaints. my most difficult one was about a psychotic soldier with issues (and that series deal with a lot of dreaming, memory and concept of reality ). interweaving the flashbacks (and dreams and memories) along with the present story was difficult but doable. some found it confusing at first until later it made sense. i tried as separate stories following the timeline but I had 20 years to work with and I didn't want the series any longer than what it is (and the books are thick already).
try writing the segments separately. if it's too weak on it's own find a way to weave it in that's natural and don't make it into a dream sequence. flashbacks are triggered by a defining sight, smell, phrase or even by touch. flashbacks happen due to some event that deeply effected the character, whether or not its traumatic. get to know your characters well, and once you get this flashback down it won't feel tacked on.
My Game Warden Novel has many flashbacks, but each one is almost like a separate story. That was to set the tone of the series, and I probably won't have many, if any, in the series in the future. They seemed to work, maybe because it didn't confuse the ongoing story too much.
Yes, but they're not always something everyone needs to know about. ;-)
They're dangerous because they interrupt the forward flow of the story. Also, they may confuse the reader about the sequence of events.
Okay so you guys all have given amazing feedback (which I appreciate) but I think I'd like to give an example of what I'm talking about if that's cool.The flashbacks really aren't as important to forwarding the plot as they are reflecting the difference between where the character is now versus where they were in that moment one year prior.
For example (without overloading you with too much detail): The opening chapter (which I'm debating stripping) features a brief scene of my MC and her best friend in her bedroom the night before her birthday. She's convincing her BFF to go with her to sneak into her old brother's end of the year party on his college campus. It ends with her agreeing to go. Then the chapter would continue PRESENT DAY one year later, my MC's birthday....her first one without* her best friend who's death was the result of what happened at the party she dragged her to.
The odd things is I've already written most of the flashbacks first. But I'm wondering if I should simply condense it all into one prologue and go from there. And the only thing that's stopped me from just doing that straight away is because I don't necessarily want the reader to know everything that happened all at once. I kind of want to unveil each piece of the puzzle the further along her relationship gets with the male love interest because both her past and his are the same f*cked up situation but on opposite sides of the spectrum; they each offer the other a perspective that isn't black and white, which is the way they see what happened to their loved ones prior to meeting one another.
Doing them occasionally along the way can certainly work, especially if there's something you want to reveal. Flashbacks always have the potential to work, it just depends on how they're written and used and how many there are,
i think if you can flow it into the story without interrupting the narrative or force feeding it to the reader would work best. prologues are good, that's a whole other trick in and of itself lol one i have yet to master so i can't speak on that
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I've read a book that had lots of flashbacks and unfortunately I got confused.
flashbacks can be a great tool to make a story clearer, but it's really hard to make it do that. on TV, I get confused viewing Arrow or Quantico bec fb's are part of each episode. they're actually telling more than one story. I think telling one linear story shld be a priority, and everything shld serve that.
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I think it needs to be weighed heavily on the present to be done well. I'm kind of over the Arrow flashbacks, but in some media it's done much better. Scott Lynch does a more balanced set of flashbacks in the Gentleman Bastards series and I like them a lot.
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I think flashbacks are a good way to get to know a character. It can explain why they are the way they are and show the origins of the story. Done well I like them.
I usually don't think flashback scenes work. It's too easy to get stuck writing a flashback at the beginning of the book, especially if you're a writer still developing your skill, because flashbacks are a common way to establish character backstory. Like you'd have a chapter where Detective So-and-so was given a new case, and it's raining out, and Detective So-and-so smokes a cigarette while thinking about his parents' death, which occurred on a rainy day such as this one, and his parents' death was the reason he became a detective... it's way too dramatic. Not everybody needs to be Batman. I've read multiple writer's guides that say you shouldn't make heavy use of flashback scenes and instead you should just figure out your character's backstory and then add references to it throughout the book. It lets the plot move along at a faster pace, instead of getting stuck in thought processes.I would strongly recommend Linda LeGarde Grover's books The Dance Boots and The Road Back to Sweetgrass though, if you want examples of books that make good use of alternating timeframes. Each chapter is like a short story, some of which take place in the 1970's, others in an earlier time, others in the 1990's or 2000's. She often meanders into the characters' thought processes, referring to dreams and to moments that happened earlier in the characters' lives, but it's a stylistic device and I think she did it to illustrate a particular type of storytelling style and conversational style. Her prose tends to read like someone is talking.
Like I said, I don't think that flashbacks are usually a good idea, but I'm more forgiving if it's a stream-of-consciousness type of writing style. I think those are more flexible. And even as I decry their use, I'm sure I've used them myself at some point or another.
Any kind of temporal hop-skip-and-jump does make it harder because you have to keep cluing in the reader about what time it is now -- otherwise if Margery is first introduced to Meggy in a scene after Meggy is Margery's maid of honor, the readers get confused.Another good one is First and Only by Dan Abnett. An amazing timeframe filled with flashbacks. It even ends -- perfectly -- in the middle of one.
Fringe Fiction Unlimited
Books mentioned in this topic
First and Only (other topics)The Dance Boots (other topics)
The Road Back to Sweetgrass (other topics)
Aztec (other topics)
The Wind Through the Keyhole (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Dan Abnett (other topics)Scott Lynch (other topics)
Do any of you know of any novels (romance in particular) with story lines that switch between present day and Flashbacks???
I understand why constant flashbacks would annoy some readers because it doesn't translate as well as it would if it were the plot points for a TV show (I.e: HTGAWM; Arrow) but the story I'm writing calls for more flashbacks than the initial preface now that I'm further into it. I think the challenge is making both the past and present equally interesting because that's the usual complaint about stories that do the back and forth
Your thoughts?