posted
I have heard that flashbacks are a terrible writing technique. However, I have enjoyed reading them in novels, one of them being ‘Way of the Kings’ by Brandon Sanderson. Now, I use them myself, but the question remains, what is the problem? Why does it bother readers and writers alike? Why does it have such a bad reputation?
Not only that, but if it is ‘ok’ to write them then what makes a good flashback (comfortable for the reader)?
Cheers.
[ June 11, 2016, 11:18 AM: Message edited by: Sara Luikert ]
Posts: 14 | Registered: Feb 2016
| IP: Logged |
posted
The reason flashbacks are widely considered inappropriate is because they tend to stop the action of the story. The reader is in the present and then suddenly they get sucked back to an earlier time period, which means the forward momentum of the story can't continue until the flashback ends.
I don't have a problem with flashbacks when they're artfully done. Artfully done, for me, tends to be a few paragraphs (at most--one or two is usually best) of memory from a specific character's perspective. If the flashback is too long it detracts from the pacing of the narrative.
Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
| IP: Logged |
posted
Interesting point, Disgruntled Peony, but even in 'Way of the Kings' there are whole chapters of flashbacks! Does that still count as a flashback then? Or a parallel story?
Posts: 14 | Registered: Feb 2016
| IP: Logged |
posted
Flashbacks are recollection mode expression. They entail transition mode, too. Of the twelve writing modes, those two fuse for the sake of story movement's manifold criteria: plot, emotional, moral, physical, character, dramatic movement most of all. Dramatic to mean antagonal, causal, and tensional movement.
Effective flashbacks are set up by recollection transitions; they prepare readers for flashbacks such that readers are emotionally engaged and therefore curious about events that transpired prior to an immediate present now moment. Flash-forwards too. How is recollection setup done? Subtly, at first, in multiple steps or by jump transitions that frame a new time, at least, perhaps setting, maybe event and character differences -- some cues that clue readers into that a time transition is about to, is, has transpired.
Three transition steps is a useful metric and analyzing for their expression and placement in narratives and films aids mastery of recollection and transition modes.
When is a flashback needed? A common function is to express backstory at a more timely time than at a start. That raises why not backstory at a start? Starts' functions are to engage readers and start dramatic story movement, more or less the same function. The most important feature of which is complication-conflict introduction and development. A proverbial workshop strategy to do so is to give a protagonist a want-problem to satisfy and delay and prevent that satisfaction until a bittersweet outcome end.
Donna Tart's The Secret History, Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons, and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight each start at a future moment when story movement has begun full throttle up a roller coaster track's steep incline. Once readers are engaged, the narratives' timelines circle back to earlier times through transitioned flashbacks and catch up to the now timeline. Their flashbacks detail what causes the want-problem complication portrayed at the start. Each is of a victimism type; that is, external problems accumulate impetus until their protagonists are compelled to want to act proactively, which is the start of the action and each's opening part. Twilight's flashback, though, is less than ideally artful.
Their backstories matter to readers at their placement locations and their sequences satisfy reader curiosity about what happened to set their sequences of events in motion. In other words, effect A was caused by problem Alpha, problem Beta, and problem Chi; effect A causes effect B; effects A and B cause effect C, and so on. Problems cause wants; wants cause problems, both want satisfaction.
Proactivism likewise starts with a want-problem complication, more want at first though. What causes the want could be given linearly or nonlinearly and a flashback needed later for the latter's backstory development.
One other recollection type is that exact process -- a circumstance provokes a protagonist's memory of a prior circumstance. A difference is the memory transpires as introspection mode in the now present moment instead of being portrayed as a time transition. That type, too, can set up for the time transition type. A circumstance provokes a memory; the memory lapses into a past time, the past time unfolds to its conclusion, another stepped transition setup returns to the present time.
Recollections, too, could be either a tension raiser, maybe from delayed tension relief that leaves a satisfaction in abeyance for a timely and judicious time span, or itself a span of tension relief.
If a story's movement were graphed, the graph would depict a ziggurat shape, or a roller coaster of a similar shape, in any case, a general pyramid shaped staircase, with tension risers and tension relief plateaus. Risers and treads -- staircase terminology. A recollection of whatever type best practice transpires after a tension riser and is either a tension relief tread or develops into a tension riser.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dan Brown used flashbacks a lot in THE DAVINCI CODE, but he usually put them "during" a part of the story when the characters had left one location and were on their way to some other location. (Which more or less meant that the "forward motion" of the story--the travel to the next location--was understood and the flashback did not make the reader feel that the story's progress had been stopped.)
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Sara Luikert: Interesting point, Disgruntled Peony, but even in 'Way of the Kings' there are whole chapters of flashbacks! Does that still count as a flashback then? Or a parallel story?
Those "flashbacks" weren't exactly flashbacks (which are more or less short interruptions of the story flow). When you have whole chapters that move back to a different time to tell backstory, that is considered a structural thing. Not all stories are told in the order they happened, and jumping around from time period to time period as you start each chapter can be compared to jumping around from character to character as you start each chapter.
This includes the infamous "cliff hanger" ending to a chapter after which some writers choose to jump to another set of characters (if not another place in time) in order to avoid resolving the cliff hanger (and to torture the reader as long as possible).
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
This includes the infamous "cliff hanger" ending to a chapter after which some writers choose to jump to another set of characters (if not another place in time) in order to avoid resolving the cliff hanger (and to torture the reader as long as possible). [/QB]
I'd use another verb in place of "torture". I tend not to read more by authors who abuse that particular trick--including Dan Brown.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
quote:Originally posted by Sara Luikert: Interesting point, Disgruntled Peony, but even in 'Way of the Kings' there are whole chapters of flashbacks! Does that still count as a flashback then? Or a parallel story?
Those "flashbacks" weren't exactly flashbacks (which are more or less short interruptions of the story flow). When you have whole chapters that move back to a different time to tell backstory, that is considered a structural thing. Not all stories are told in the order they happened, and jumping around from time period to time period as you start each chapter can be compared to jumping around from character to character as you start each chapter.
One of my current WIPs (BECOME) may end up with a weird structure like this. For now, I'm trying just to get the main story down in chronological order. I'll sort out the final order later.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I find in my own writing that flashbacks are NEVER necessary--there is always another way to get that information into the advancing narrative. True, sometimes it can seem like an insurmountable problem but there is always a solution if you are prepared to expend the time and effort.
quote:Originally posted by Grumpy old guy: I find in my own writing that flashbacks are NEVER necessary--there is always another way to get that information into the advancing narrative. True, sometimes it can seem like an insurmountable problem but there is always a solution if you are prepared to expend the time and effort.
Phil.
Maybe. I hope that will turn out to be the case with BECOME. On the other hand, I have quite a lot of background before the "real" story gets started, laying out the complex relationship between the hero and the antagonist (half-brothers), which I think is necessary, but may start to feel like it's not getting anywhere. I may have to find a way (hopefully artfully) to put that in out of order. Then, too, two of the other important characters aren't even born yet. So, I may find I have no choice in this one. Like I said, right now I'm roughing it out in chronological order, but I have a feeling it can't all stay that way.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
There is a type of story structure used more often in "literary" fiction, I have heard referred to as "revelatory" in which the point of the story is not to find out how it all resolves (as in what happens next), but to explore what led to the resolution or ending, which ending may often be provided by the author very early in the story.
An example that is a fairly quick and easy read is CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. You know up front that a particular individual is going to be killed at the end of the day/story, and then the chapters jump all over in time, including well after the day's ending, to explain why even those who knew this death would occur did or did not do what they did to stop it. (I hope that makes sense.)
So when a speculative fiction writer, such as Brandon Sanderson in WAY OF KINGS, or as Nebula-award winner Nicola Griffiths in SLOW RIVER, has chapters jumping all over time in order to tell the story, such structure doesn't really count as "flashback" so much. It's borrowing from the literary revelatory approach to story telling.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Meredith: I tend not to read more by authors who abuse that particular trick--including Dan Brown.
Same here, Meredith. Never did get around to reading his other books, and I really hate cliff-hanger chapter endings. I'll just skip to the chapter that continues on with those particular characters and maybe never get back to the one the author stuck in between.
Didn't ever read CATCHING FIRE because I heard it had a cliff-hanger ending, by the way. Too many books, too little time. I'll just read something else.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: There is a type of story structure used more often in "literary" fiction, I have heard referred to as "revelatory" in which the point of the story is not to find out how it all resolves (as in what happens next), but to explore what led to the resolution or ending, which ending may often be provided by the author very early in the story.
An example that is a fairly quick and easy read is CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Thanks. I may have to look that up. It could be that's something like what I'll need to do with this story in the end.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
