Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Flashbacks-- I know, I know. AGAIN.

This is topic Flashbacks-- I know, I know. AGAIN. in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Lullaby Lady (Member # 1840) on :

Has anyone seen the series "Lost" on ABC? The jumping around back and forth from flashbacks to the present fascinates me. Are they cheating? Can they only get away with giving the viewer more information than the characters because they're a television show? Is that a big "no-no" for a novelist?

I'd like to hear your opinions on this.

(If you haven't seen the show, you can read the recaps on the website. http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/show.html )

~LL

Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :

From what I've seen, its the best show on television right now. Unfortuntely, it comes on Wednesday, a night I'm never at home, and my wife tapes American Idol. So I can't record it either.

I guess I'll catch up when it comes out on DVD...

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

Flashbacks in fiction aren't inherently bad; they're just hard to do well - in the same way that omniscient POV isn't necessarily bad, just hard to make work right. Try it, if you want; just don't be surprised if it's a miserable failure.

Lost is extraordinarily well-done and they make it look easy - but Olympic athletes make the stuff they do look easy, too.

Posted by RavenStarr (Member # 2327) on :

If you do flashbacks, please do me a favor and avoid doing flashbacks in flashbacks... I can't remember what book it was that I was reading (it was a series though), but it did that so often that it made me dizzy...

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

> Can they only get away with giving the
> viewer more information than the
> characters because they're a television
> show? Is that a big "no-no" for a novelist?

This is done all the time in written fiction. Just having two POV characters means the reader knows more than either POV character.

The flashbacks are not "cheating" at all. It's not a problem that the characters know more about themselves than we do. The flashbacks are a way of giving us more information about the characters.

Where Lost "cheats" (to some extent) is when we see a character see something and react, but we don't get to see what the character sees. That means the show is deliberately withholding relevant information at the time we most want to know what it is -- and letting us know that it is being withheld.

There are ways to withhold information without being blatant about it. To use Lost as an example, information about someone's physical condition before the plane crash was deliberately withheld until we learned about it in a flashback. But we didn't know the information was being withheld until the moment of revelation at the end of the flashback. While it might be considered "cheating" to do that, at least it's not nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-I-know-something-you-don't-know in-your-face annoying about it.

Despite that, I still love the show.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

Flashbacks are usually problems because of how, how often, and the frequency of them. If you jumpt to a flashback for 10 pages it can be jolting to the reader when they get brought back to the story present. Shifting into a flashback can be jarring as well if not done properly. The worse is when it happens so often the reader gets confused about what is supposed to be going on.

Writing and Television are not the same. They are both telling a story, but with TV or movies they have the visual aspect you don't get with words. The reverse is true as well, tv has a hard time showing the viewer what goes on in the character's head.

If you think you need a flashback, look at the relavance of the information the flashback will provide. Is that information needed? Can it be portrayed in some other way? If you find you do need a flashback, make it short. Remember to bring the reader back to the present as smoothly as possible.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Flashbacks/prologues/dreams/etc. usually end up being a problem because some writers think "Oh, this is a flashback/prologue/dream/etc. so I don't have to follow all the rules of narrative technique everyone is always nattering about".

Flashbacks/prologues/dreams/etc. written by good authors are almost never bad. But when written by bad authors, the point is usually to avoid having to deliver the information using solid narrative technique (which that writer hasn't mastered and only vaguely understands).

Everything in your story should be narrative, there are no exceptions to this rule. If it's not narrative, it doesn't belong in your story, end of discussion.

The narrative art of television and movies is very different from that of writing, even though there are a few commonalities. I agree with the above point that in a multiple POV text, you're giving the readers information that is not all available to any of the characters. There is also the point that the text cannot contain the exact information available to the character, only an approximation (to a certain extent this is true of movies as well, and the conventions of the artform accentuate this separation). It is a simple matter of fact that the characters in a book or movie aren't getting their information by reading the book or watching the movie (except in fourth wall violation comedy "Oh, wait, I read this part of the script already!").

My rule is simple. If it's in the story, it's narrative.