posted
The current story I am working on "The Price of a Memory", has a lot of flashbacks. (Before anyone squawks, yes they are absolutely necessary, and no I can't rewrite it without the flashbacks.) Based on advice from The Writer's Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, I started each flashback in past perfect, then switched to past tense after a few sentences.
One of my critiquers was fairly adamant that I should use past perfect throughout the flashback. So I went through and changed them. Unfortunately, this removed a lot of the punch from the memories.
Now in the second pass of critiquing, I have both people confused about where the memories begin and end (!) and also one person wanting to change it back to normal past tense.
Now, I liked the first way better anyhow, and writing each flashback in past perfect didn't seem to help people follow the story flow any better. So I'll probably take all those "hads" back out. What other ways are there to signal to the reader that a flashback is starting?
Currently, at the beginning of each flashback, I use the word "memory" or "remember" to signal that a flashback is starting. Then at the end of a flashback, I have the protagonist's reaction to the memory, to show that we are back in present time. I had hoped that framing each flashback like that would make it clear. What else can I do?
posted
I'm the one who was recommending simple past for the whole thing. But I think a sentence or two in past perfect then shifting to simple past would work, too. I thought it was pretty clear when they began and ended.
Mel's right about the flashbacks being necessary, and they work.
posted
I'm having a little trouble following your references without an example to look at. Could you post a sample of what you are talking about? Then I could comment.
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
|
posted
I hope I didn't add to any confusion on the first go around -- and if I gave any bad advice, sorry. Nevertheless, my advice now is to handle it the way you want to handle it. It is, after all, your story. And if it isn't working for you, then you need to make it work for you. You won't please everyone, but starting with yourself is likely the best course of action. If only you are happy and everyone else moans, then you need to consider.
My rule: In the case of conflicting advice, the author decides (wins).
posted
Let me clarify a bit. I have decided to go back to only using past perfect for the first few sentences of each flashback. I'm now looking for other ways to make it clear where the flash back begins and ends, since there are now fewer grammatical clues.
All of the flashbacks are too long to post in their entirety, but here is a truncated example of what I am doing:
quote:In moments, [Gerald] was overwhelmed with memories again. He clutched his head in agony, but they refused to leave. The people playing in the park had seemed so happy. [rest of flashback here]Gerald found himself sprawled on the floor of the bathroom, his cheek pressed against the cold tub.
See? First sentence mentions memories. Then the flashback. Then Gerald's reaction to the memory. Every flashback in the story has this structure.
Does anyone have any other tips or tricks to make it more clear? Or should I just resign myself to the fact that some people will always be confused, no matter how clear I think I am being?
[As an aside on confusion: I think that some can be a good thing. The first time I read Madeleine L'Engle's book A Swiftly Tilting Planet I got to the end and immediately turned back to the first page and read the entire novel over again. This was the only book of hers that I have particularly liked.]
ONE of your critiquers....do NOT, and I repeat do NOT ever make sweeping changes based on what only one person tells you unless you have a significantly good reason. In thise case, it does not seem as if you did have a very good reason at all. Your research told you that you were doing things correctly. And for the record, I would say this even if I was the one person who had given you such advice.
BTW, the way I handled a recent flashback that seemed to work fairly well was to start with past perfect as you described, fade into the regular past tense of the memory once we had a clearly established flashback, and at the end I used a page break:
#
Before going back to the present. I found this quite useful since I had switched into the usual past tense. Nothing else I tried was as clear when it came to putting the reader back in the present of the story.
quote:do NOT, and I repeat do NOT ever make sweeping changes based on what only one person tells you unless you have a significantly good reason
That is good advice Christine, and in general I agree with you. I just have trouble imagining how some changes will affect my story, so I implement all of them and see what happens. I have a new file for every revision, so I can easily go back at any time.
At first, this one seemed to be a decent trade-off: lose a little suspense, but gain readability. But when people were still getting confused, it clearly wasn't worth it.
I'm going to try your page break idea, see if I like it. It might add some clarity.
Jeraliey: LOL, yes I thought of you when I was posting this. Maybe we need to start up a Flashback Commiseration Group.
Ooh, a new item for the HUB! The Flashback Navigator: navigate a fractured timeline with ease!
EDITED to say: if only we had had one of those in the last adventure...
[This message has been edited by MCameron (edited April 05, 2005).]
posted
He remembered. When she'd said that to him, he'd been devastated. "How could you?" he asked her. "I was just playing with your soul," she answered. Today, it didn't seem to matter so much.
(To me, that seems to work: brief intro with past perfect, then shift to past. I might stick with past perfect for such a short piece, but for a long one, it would be trying.)
You could do this:
He remembered what had happened, that day in the park. # The park was nearly empty ...
posted
I presume this is actually a PTSS type flashback, from the fact that he had an episode and woke up on the bathroom floor. In such a case, the character is actually experiencing the flashback in the "present moment" of the story. Going to simple past tense ups the ante because it indicates that the POV character is actually "reliving" the memory.
A PTSS style flashback is different from a normal "reminescing" flashback because the character loses touch with the temporal context of the moment and experiences these memories as if the events are actually recurring. You might try throwing in some dream-like elements to indicate that this action is taking place within the character's head despite being based on real events, but that's up to you.
Anyway, given the assumption that the reason the flashbacks are necessary has something to do with the fact that the POV character is actually prone to PTSS flashbacks, your critic was simply wrong. Also, you don't need a page break or anything like that. The lines immediately preceding the flashback make it perfectly clear that he's having a flashback (and a psychiatric rather than literary one at that).
Printer-friendly view of this topic
