#24: Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.
@brightephemera, @knamil, @depizan
I decided to write a more in-depth answer to this one because all three asks wanted #24. I'm guessing this is in reference to the reverse-chronology thing I mentioned last week, but regardless, here goes.
As all writing tools, flashbacks and flashforwards are useful. I have no issue with them in general. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we ought to be less prescriptive about writing tools, period. Passive sentences are fine. Adverbs aren’t evil. A story can be complete and interesting without action or conflict. Short sentences with simple, punchy words have no inherent benefits over complex sentences and polysyllabic words.
Writing tools are like a well-stocked spice box or pantry. Choose what works to make what you want to make. If it tastes good at the end, you made the right (write? Haha? No? ok.) choices.
That said, I can’t deny that conventions exist, and exist for a reason. Typically, stories move chronologically from earlier time to later. That’s how we as humans experience time. It’s familiar. While we personally experience linear time, we also remember things ala flashbacks or predict things ala flashforwards constantly.
Cutting away from the story for an extensive flashback/forward interrupts the flow. The question becomes: is what you’re telling the reader important enough to share at that particular moment?
Short, maybe one-sentence flashback? I doubt anyone would argue with it. Even then, does it fit the moment? What is the purpose? Why is it here?
Longer ones? Ah, these are the ones people fight over. Still, if the scene contains information you deem it important for your readers to have, then do it. It informs the story or the character or both. Maybe it suggests a traumatic event from your character’s past. Maybe they perceive something in the way events are unfolding that others miss. Maybe it points to anxiety or overconfidence. Put it in.
I maintain these are questions best answered in edit and less in the first draft. I find it hard to judge these scenes until I have more of the surrounding story finished.
Choosing a completely nonstandard chronology asks more of a reader. We aren’t accustomed to stories that unfold that way. In my personal experience, a story that jumps all over its own timeline can be hard to follow, but not impossible. Examples that come to my mind--that I enjoy, I should add--are Catch 22 (book), Cloud Atlas (movie and book), The Prestige (movie), and Hellboy: Blood and Iron (movie). I maintain that the core story, the most important thing the writer wants to convey, can’t be overly complicated if the presentation is nonlinear. Otherwise it gets lost.
I have little to no patience with flashbacks or forwards when they appear for the sole purpose of hiding things from the reader/viewer, or because everyone else is doing it. When Lost was popular (which I did not watch), the hopping around the timeline thing became so common I hated it. The Event (2010 TV, I managed one and a half episodes before bailing) seemed determined to show only the dull connecting bits of its story, cutting away every time they might move the plot forward. Megamind was a fun movie; it’s opening was an unnecessary complication. If I read/see one more “I suppose you're wondering how I got here” beginning that doesn't need to be there, I am going to break things.
Guess what. Despite despising that kind of opening, I used it. I think it works for that story. I still do.
