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Flashbacks are a tricky proposition if handled wrong. Readers for the most part don't like their stories interrupted by constant, lengthy flashback scenes. The reader want present action & being interrupted by cut scenes to things that happened in the past is irritating and breaks the pace of the novel because one minute your reading about Joe fighting off drgaons, the next instant- the writer flashes you back to his early childhood. What that does is forces the reader to abandon the present action and have to wade through irrelevent flashback scenes- The reader will be basically indulging the writer by reading through the flashback scenes, but will be itching to get back to the present story at hand.
Now, some succesful stories have been built on flashback scenes for sure- but it's extremely hard to do properly.
I just got through reading a story where the author kept flip-flopping between presebt and past & although I did read all the way through, it was annoying and I don't think I'd ever buy another book by this author.
Small flashback scenes can be introduced- BUT space them out, AND make sure the flashbacks are relevent to the story that is taking place in the present. Also- DON'T start your flashback scenes with "Carpenter John saw the bleachers and immediately it brought him back in time to when he was young. The days were hot, the fields muddy, and the equiptment were old and worn out. As a young boy, he had had an awful time trying to get the eldders of the town to agree to spend the money to fix the old park up. Oh, He tried for sure, but his youth and stuttering presentation made a fool of him before he even got started begging for the money. The caw of a crow snapped John violently back to the present. He yawned knowing it was going to be a long day."
Introduce the flashback scenes suptly and quickly like "Carpenter John winced when he saw the dilapidated bleachers he was supposed to fix. He saw the splintered benches and remembered the ballgames he played as a child in Brighton N.J on the muddy fields of the old run down park. Money was no longer an issue now, and the elders of the town all looked to Carptenter John to fix the old park and restore it's former glory. Stuttering was no longer an issue, and Carpenter John had long since overcome his boyish intrepidness and boldly had gone to the town officials to ask for the needed funds to repair the old park. He yawned knowing that he had his work cut out for him"
Here we see John remembering his past, but we see it in the present. We see into John's mind & see what he is remembering rather being taken abruptly out of the present and into the past like in the first example. In the first example, the reader is being jerked between tenses- in the second, the reader remains comfortably in the present while briefly seeing the past
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I'm just wanting to find some answers or suggestions because I am very serious about writing, and want to do it right. Thanks again for writing back,
