posted
I recently posted the first 13 lines of a short story in the Fragments & Feedback section. Some of the feedback said that if you go into a flashback early on in the story then you're probably starting at the wrong place.
I have tried rewriting the opening several times, with the story beginning earlier on, but none of my attempts feel right.
How strict is the rule about not having a flashback so near the start? Has anyone had a similar problem? How did you solve them? Thanks.
posted
In general, I would say the rule is not an absolute.
It would depend on how much time elapsed between the event shown in the flashback and the point you want to begin the story. If it's a fairly short time, you should probably use it to open your story (maybe make it a prologue?). My guess would be that a character would carry recent events in their conscious thoughts so things would leak out a bit at a time as they went along.
If it's a long time (years) then ask is it critical to the story to have the flashback at the point you have it now? Could it be delayed? And could the infomation be delivered to the reader effectively without disrupting the flow of the story (i.e., is it even necessary to have a flashback at all)?
I think what you would want to avoid is jumping backward in time before a reader has had a chance to get well grounded in the flow of the story.
posted
You could start further ahead in the story...but I took a glance at your "first thirteen" and, yeah, I can't say how much "further ahead" you've got.
Seems I've read bunches of stories that were essentially all flashbacks---Lovecraft comes to mind, but there certainly are others.
Keep in mind that in a all-flashback story, your viewpoint character knows what happened---but the reader, and his earlier self, will not know.
posted
I think the "rule" is less literary and more practical advice for helping the odds of keeping your story out of the circular file at an editor's office. The only use I've ever seen of flashbacks near the beginning of the story were to allow the author to set an artificial hook by showing what kind of interesting things will be happening later on if the reader or editor just bears with him. Personally, I like a lot of stories written this way, but my impression is that editors looking for any reason to reject aren't so kindly disposed.
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posted
Think about the REASON a flashback doesn't work... it's less interesting to be told, and more interesting to be shown. In other words, a flashback is you telling the reader "this happened." To be shown is to put the reader in the moment of the action, and to involve them in it.
The suggestion that you started in the wrong place is based on "don't tell me about it this event, SHOW me."
posted
Maybe you could summarize the story, and we could give suggestions of where to start.
No rule is absolute in writing, but there's a cost to everything (says OSC). There's a cost to flashback in that you're taking the reader out of a time and place, and he may not want to go (and may put down the book). It's sometimes worth it, but it's still a cost.
posted
I had a similar issue with my own story a while back. I started it, enter a flashback about halfway through chapter one and pulled back into the story by the end. I got some feedback that suggested the reader wanted to know more about what happened 'in the past' and why. Around the same time I stumbled across some information that said I should start earlier in the story.
I wasn't sure how far back I should go either. The best advice I can give you is what I did. I brainstormed. I sat down with myself and a laptop and started asking myself questions about my story. Then I would answer myself. I have pages and pages of brainstorms. When I would get stuck, I'd call a friend and start ask them some questions that would help me get going again.
In the end, I figured out where my story truly started and I learned a lot more about my characters in the process. The one thing that stuck with me through the whole brainstorming session was "This is my character's story. So what was the first event in his life that sent him down this road and makes his story worth telling?" That's how I found my true beginning.
Hope it helps, sorry that my response was long-winded. ^_^;
posted
I went over to the other forum and took a look at your first thirteen. A couple of follow-up thoughts.
It's not clear to me you're in full-blown flashback mode. The character seems to be in the present recalling a past conversation, which is a normal part of thought.
The implication is that the MC has just (effectively) killed someone, and that he's upset about it. In that state, would he calmly recall a conversation line-by-line? He might jump to the most relevant statement from his former mentor (the point, so to speak).
It seems like you skipped an action scene (The MC mortally wounding the other guy) and jumped straight into a reaction episode to start the story. In that case, you would want the reaction to be really interesting. It might be easier to start somewhere else (not necessarily at the time of the conversation).
posted
Flashbacks lack dramatic tension. It's as simple as that.
Not every line or even page of your story should be full of drama. But the opening needs to establish a lot of things, and dramatic tension is one of them. If you go into a flashback after less than half a page, you show yourself to be either totally ignorant of the needs of dramatic economy or radically overconfident in your abilities to establish the character's current situation.
One way you can go into flashback that quickly is if the current situation is absolutely cliche, something that any reader will recognize instantly. Hero is hanging from a cliff over sharp rocks level cliche. In a case like that, you virtually must go into a flashback right away because the existing situation is so overdone. It does work, in a weird sort of way. You basically say, "I'm going to show you how this otherwise sensible character got into this laughably stereotypical situation" and confront the reader's skepticism head on. But I don't think that it's easy to pull off, I've never even bothered to try it because my characters generally don't get into those kinds of situations...they're too well read
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