Meg Chittenden Waves
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Flashbacks

Suppose your character is walking along a cliff path, or sitting on a bus, or driving a car, and you want to relate something that happened to this character in the past. You are writing in this character's viewpoint, but you don't want simply to tell the reader about the past event, you want to show it dramatically.

Perhaps it goes something like this:

"It had been raining that day too. Harder than this. Marlene had run into the library to escape the sudden downpour and there was Leland, sitting in front of a computer, his back ramrod straight as usual.

She'd put her hand on his shoulder. "Leland," she said. "How come you're not working at the bank today?"

Obviously startled, Leland swung around. "I'm not...I wasn't supposed to...I'm sick."

He didn't look sick.

You can now go on with a whole scene in which Marlene questions Leland and becomes more and more suspicious of him, then you can switch back to Marlene looking at the sea from the cliff.

Two things to remember when writing a flashback: Leading into the flashback, use a few "hads" as I did in the above example, to move the time sequence from simple past tense, in which most story action takes place, to the past perfect tense.

Once the past has been established in the scene, use regular past tense again. For example: "Leland," Marlene said. And "Leland swung around." On the way out of the scene, use "hads" again until you are back in the "present."

Also be sure the time covered in the flashback can be accounted for in the present. In the example above, I have Marlene hiking along a cliff path as the reader learns about Leland. Probably a half an hour at the most would pass in this flashback, so the reader will accept that Marlene could be hiking for that long.

Many beginning writers, and some established writers, fall into the trap of having the flashback take place while the viewpoint character is, say, climbing the steps to his apartment. The flashback might cover an hour, a week, even a year of time and at the end of it, the character is just reaching the top of the steps. Readers would wonder how anyone could climb steps this slowly.

This is one of the problems that turned me off flashbacks, but sometimes they are useful. I used several in a recent novel, trying to do them differently each time. Occasionally, I wrote a brief narrative that wasn't quite a flashback. In one, I had the viewpoint character, who was nicknamed Fairy, drinking tea and remembering her friend Bliss telling her about the man in her life:

Growing up, Fairy and Bliss had talked hour after hour about love. They had expected so much from love. Too much. Even poor old Stubby hadn't quite managed to come up to Fairy's expectations, though he'd given it a valiant go. Prince Charming himself would have been hard pressed to fulfill expectations fed by films of the thirties and forties.

Love. Setting down her cup, Fairy hummed along as she heard Bliss's soprano voice singing sweetly across more than fifty years.

As Time Goes By.

"It's our song, Fairy," Bliss had said. "Paul's and mine. You should hear Paul sing it. You will hear Paul sing it. He's coming to Penmorton next week. He's coming to be with me."

Even after all these years Fairy could recall every detail Bliss had told her. Every scene was as clear as if it had been made into a film by Mr. J. Arthur Rank. She could feel the sun shining warm on her head just as if she'd been there. She could smell the salty air, hear the tumbling roar of the surf, as Bliss Penberthy and Paul Carmichael walked out together in Penmorton on a beautiful sunny day.

I used flashbacks in that novel, As Years go by, because it was a double love story, one taking place in the present, one in the past.

In general, I think you should avoid flashbacks whenever possible. Usually, I prefer to make brief references to the past in the dialogue, or in a character's thoughts. If you do use a flashback, however, be sure it adds to and doesn't interrupt the story.