RebelGoddess

I'm considering using flashbacks in my novel to show a character's past. I was wondering what the best way to do that is.

I mean, what are the machanics of a flashback, i.e. how do I show on the page that it's different from the current story?

And, what's the best way to integrate a flashack into the story? Have the character thinking about their past, or just have the omnipotent narrator flashback?

Thanks!

Racheal

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Krim

People sometimes do present tense. For example, half of Iron Council by China Mieville was a flashback. It was written in present tense and when it came to dialogue he would use something like '<<' to denote dialogue instead of quotation marks.

I never understood using present tense. It is, after all, the past...

Nevertheless, it's available for your use.

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Kinniku Mantaro

For myself I often use italics to seperate the flashback from the story and then have the character reflecting on it after its taken place to intergrate it; present tense is also a good way of showing a seperation from the current timeline, but only if the story isn't already in present tense of course. Though I don't think there is a 'best' way to do it, after all it depends on the writer as to what techniques they wish to use as to how the flashback is written - good luck though with your novel

Ilasir Maroa

First, make sure the flashback fits. It should be related to what is going on, and triggered by something. There is describing past events, and then there is having a flashback. Flashbacks should have an emotional trigger, something that happens that brings the past events to mind. They should probably be in the present tense. Why? Because you are reliving a scene. No one relives a scene in the past tense. The past tense is used to describe what happened. The present is what is happening. It draws you into events, whereas the past tense provides a sense of distance and detachment. At least, that's how I look at it.


Italics can be used to show that it is a flashback.

Uriah

Roger Zelazny once said every short story needs a dream sequence or a flashback.

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Patrick Beverley

You don't need any special way of marking it out on the page. You just need to say something like, 'Bobby entered by the back door. Some years earlier, he had been a quite well-known piano player; however, he had given this up after he ...' etc., and there's your flashback.

For greater integration, you can have the present events referring to those of the past: 'As Bobby entered the room, something reminded him of his days as a pianist. Perhaps it was the flaking paint on the walls. The Riverfront, a club that had frequently hired his services, always had flaking paint, not to mention ...'

Kinniku Mantaro

That's meant to be a flashback? Seems more like exposition than a flashback.

Ilasir Maroa

That is exposition. It's not a flashback. It doesn't go back in time. it doesn't show, it tells.

blackthorn

You could put the text in italics, or say that the character is flashing back in the previous paragraph, then start a new paragraph to begin the flashback. Something like that.

CaptainFreedom

I usually put them at the beginning of a chapter and make sure that the reader knows it’s a flashback right away. If you wait to long to tell them it’s confusing.

That way you can either put the time and place centered at the beginning of the chapter ‘two weeks ago – George W. Bush Memorial Research Center – Mars’ or something like that. haha

Or you can make it obvious that it’s taking place in the past. Have a character in the book show up as a child or have somebody that got killed (probably for knowing too much) make an appearance.

CF

Patrick Beverley

A technique such as I have used can lead into a full telling of the story from the past, but if it really doesn't count as a flashback, I'll rephrase:

Don't use 'flashbacks'. Excepting the rare cases when they are appropriate, they tend to come off as childish and poorly written. Use a technique like this one --

instead.