: Re: Do the following scenes feel like flashbacks? I wrote a short story. One recurring critique is that the flashbacks don't feel like flashbacks, so the readers get confused. The story is about

@Ogunnowo420

Vote Up Vote Down

Well... I can't tell what are and aren't flashbacks from your examples but I do have some tips on how to write a flashback. If you edit your question to have more context (see KitFox's comment) then I can edit this to better suit you. You don't have to do all of these things, but incorporating some might help.

Hook the reader. I guess you're always trying to hook the reader, but for flashbacks this is essential. If your reader is uninterested in your character or your character's motivation, a flashback to something that informs your character is meaningless. Definitely try to have flashbacks following strong scenes or at least have them take place outside of present day action. The last thing you want to do is be in the middle of enticing a reader and then ripping them out of the action to make them read something only tangentially related.

Make sure your reader knows you're moving back in time (or forward in time). One of the things that people tend to do when they can't seamlessly move back and forth in time via the text itself is to use some sort of ASCII/text image like ____ or *** or something like that. This doesn't really work because this isn't assuring your reader that you're moving forward or backwards in time. It's just an interruption that doesn't tell them anything in particular. For example, I could write:

The remaining officers on the scene gazed after the quickly disappearing ambulance. "Peter wouldn't hurt her. At least... I don't he would." Maria said. "After all... isn't Liz the only one who trusted him...?"
***
Liz threw the papers onto the chief's desk. "This is clearly the work of the Providence killer. And it's another person who slighted Peter Ashcraft! What more do you need? We should just bring him in!"
"We brought him in on the first two. They were related to him, but he was out of town." The chief said.
"But he must know something."

But when you read it, you wouldn't know when either of those lines were taking place. It could be happening literally seconds after each other. It could be happening days apart. If you say when things are happening, it makes things a lot more easy to understand.

The remaining officers on the scene gazed after the quickly disappearing ambulance. "Peter wouldn't hurt her. At least... I don't he would." Maria said. "After all... isn't Liz the only one who trusted him...?"
Two Months Earlier
Liz threw the papers onto the chief's desk. "This is clearly the work of the Providence killer. And it's another person who slighted Peter Ashcraft! What more do you need? We should just bring him in!"
"We brought him in on the first two. They were related to him, but he was out of town." The chief said.
"But he must know something."

You have to let your reader know when things are happening. You can add it into the narration or have an interruption, but you can't just use a visual representation of time progression alone.

Use a different tense in your flashback. You don't even have to stick with the new tense. you can start off with past perfect and then move into past tense.

"She had had a couple of drinks before he sauntered over.
"Hello beautiful," He said.

If you have a short flashback, like one or two lines, using past perfect tense all the way is probably your best bet. but if it's particularly long, consider writing the beginning in past perfect tense and then shifting into past tense.

Make it natural. Consider flashbacks in real life. For example, do you ever think about some specific childhood memory after looking at a picture? That's pretty much a real life flashback. An organic flashback, more or less, has some kind of trigger. You could use the trigger to segue easily into a flashback.

He hadn't heard Classical Gas for years. He could still remember the first time he heard it. His father had been busy that week, but still had managed to find the time to bring him to the old park. The place was in complete disrepair, but there was an old stage where bands played during town events. That day, some nameless musician was playing that song...

Make the flashback text different from the regular narration's text. This works better if there aren't many flashbacks, but if you're having one or two flashbacks, you can separate them from the regular text using formatting. For example, you could make all of your flashbacks be written in italics. Or you could center the text for your flashback sequences. If you make the reader notice this is different then they are more likely to be able to tell the difference between regular narration and flashback narration.

(0)

Login to post a comment!