: Re: Time flips / thinking about past too often In my story so far, in this chapter labeled "Longing", there are some time flips, where it begins in the present and then goes way into the past,

@BetL639

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The thing about flash backs is you don't want to do it too often or all at once. You are basically doing an information dump onto the reader who is struggling to keep up as your readers have mentioned. Instead of doing it all in a chapter, spread it out. Find other parts of the story where you can have a moment to think back that will provide pertinent information to the scene. It's okay to provide background history to a character to better understand them, but what you want to avoid is basically doing what you are doing.

Keep the flashbacks relevant. In other words, don't do a jump back, then a jump forward slightly, then another jump back and then present time again. It's too much and providing too much information at once that distracts from the current plot. If the information we learn from the flashback is not directly needed by the current present scene, then the information is not needed at that moment.

It's just like writing an essay, you want to keep the focus on a specific topic or specific reference point. If the reader needs to know all the historical information by time the current point in present is happening, then build up the history to that point by spreading it out in the previous chapters.

Plus it helps keep the reader interested in finding out more with teasing them on segments of the past. If you give away too much of the history at once, it ruins the mystery of their character as well as takes away from the adventure of getting to know a character slowly over a book.

So in the end don't try to provide a history book (especially jumping around multiple time points at once). Spread it out and let the flashbacks build up over time so that you don't overwhelm the reader.

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