Breaking Writing Rules Right: "Don't Use Flashbacks!"
At some point in your writing journey, you may have had someone complain about a flashback in your story. Or maybe you were the one complaining about someone else’s. Or maybe you axed one simply because you were told to, but you don’t understand why.
Want to know one of my not-so-secret secrets? Just as I love great prologues, I love great flashbacks! Every time someone told me they were bad, a little particle of my creativity died, because a number of my all-time favorite stories use flashbacks–and they were sometimes some of my favorite parts! (Isn’t that so bad?? ;)
Flashbacks are scenes that take place in an earlier time than the story’s main timeline.
Advice that is commonly given to writers learning the craft is,
Why are flashbacks such an issue?
A lot of new writers overuse flashbacks and use them at the wrong times and in the wrong ways. I’ve looked at a lot of unpublished story openings. You might would be shocked how often stories begin in the present and then have a flashback only several paragraphs in. This is a problem for a few reasons, but some particular to this opening are:
- If you flashback too early, it might be a sign that you started the story in the wrong spot
- If you flashback too early, it might be a sign that what’s happening in the present doesn’t have enough tension or intrigue to hold the audience, and you are trying to make up for it by going backwards
- If you flashback too early, the audience hasn’t had time to get grounded into the story and characters. Until they care about the story and the characters, they likely won’t care about the flashback.
You may be tempted to have a flashback in the opening of your novel or somewhere in your first five chapters. You probably should almost never do this. The audience needs to care about what’s happening in the present first.
But flashbacks can go wrong at other parts of the story too, not just the opening. It’s just that they can be particularly problematic in the opening, and they are surprisingly commonly put in there.
One of the main problems with flashbacks is this:
Because flashbacks happen in the past, they immediately and inherently take immediacy (and therefore tension) out of the story.
What has already happened has already happened, and it can’t be changed, and it’s in the past, so typically it can’t be as interesting as the present. Remember a week ago when I said more tension is created by looking forward, not back?
A lot of times, unpublished writers want to put in whole scenes of flashbacks when a bit of summary or backstory weaved in would work fine. Whatever they are trying to include does not need or deserve its own flashback scene.
What is included in the flashback doesn’t usually need its own scene. The information can be weaved into the main timeline
Uugh, but a great flashback and be so, well … great. Let’s move along.
When and How to Break the Rule
Remember a few sentences ago when I said that the audience won’t care about the flashback until they care about the story and characters? This is why you should almost never have a flashback near the beginning. On some rare occasions you can get away with it if you absolutely have to (in a particular type of story tricky to pull off, they may function as teasers)–but if you use one early, it should be short. After all, in the beginning of the novel, you are still trying to get the audience invested in the story, and killing tension and immediacy is not a great approach.
(Worth noting is that using flashbacks once or a few times in a story is different than having a story that follows two or more different timelines that are weaved together. In that case, you would be showing multiple timelines in the opening of the story and that’s fine, though it has its own advantages and disadvantages.)
Flashbacks are typically most powerful when looking back is effective because of what we know or suspect in the present or predict for the future.
There has to be some kind of value in looking back that’s worth the change in time and the lack of immediacy.
The audience doesn’t usually care about the flashback until they care about the present story and characters, so, in order to make a flashback most effective, you relate it to what is happening or could happen in the story. This might be done obviously, or it might be done more covertly.
You’ve probably seen this time and again and may or may not have realized it.
There are really two main reasons to use a flashback.
1. Character Background and Motivation
Flashbacks should not be your automatic go-to for backstory and motivation, but it can be a good reason to have a flashback if having something in the past rendered dramatically adds to our understanding of the character in the present (or in some cases, future).
Not all backgrounds deserve their own flashback, and you want to be careful that in putting this information in a dramatized one that you aren’t actually diminishing your character’s subtext and intrigue by revealing everything on the page about them or revealing it at the wrong point. Even with the flashback, they should still have some subtext.
The subtext should always be greater than the flashback. This means the flashback either maintains some subtext or introduces new subtext.
The backstory needs to be interesting enough to sustain the audience despite the lack of immediacy.
These kinds of flashbacks provide insight into why a character is the way he is or how she knows what she knows, or anything like that. But they are probably one of the most overused flashbacks, because writers may care more about the character’s past than the audience actually does (which is why it needs to be particularly interesting)
In the movie Split, protagonist Casey is unusual compared to other girls her age, and when she and two others are abducted, Casey understands how her abductor operates better than the others (and how to survive). The audience wonders about her unusual behaviors and demeanor and methods, but in flashbacks it’s revealed that like their abductor, she has also had to weather repetitive abuse. Watching the flashbacks play out is more powerful because of how atypical she and her backstory are. They wouldn’t have been as emotionally effective if relayed in dialogue or summary.
Once again the flashbacks are powerful because our understanding of the past is important to the present (her character and the fact she’s dealing with an abductor) and future (because of her background, she has success getting away.)
One key of writing particularly great flashbacks is to get the audience to wonder, want, and yearn for them before they happen. That way when they do happen, readers are glued to the book.
2. Important Past Events and/or Information
Like character background, key events or information might be important for the audience to understand or appreciate the present (or future of the) story. These things should add depth or significance to the narrative. If they don’t do either of these things, you might want to reevaluate if you really need them as a flashback.
For important events, it might not be plausible to fit them into the story in the typical ways. If it happened long before the main story–perhaps even decades–it might not work well at the beginning of the novel. In some cases, you can make it work as a prologue or opening, but only if it carries the right promises and gives the right impression of the main story.
With events and information–these things may not seem important or pertinent to the story at the beginning, in and of themselves. But as the story develops, so does the need for them. Again, this may relate to having the audience hunger for the flashbacks before they are on the page.
Other times, having this important information enter the story at a particular point adds value both to the flashback and the present story. This can be really great for mysteries and undercurrents.
