Flashing back

Flashbacks are tough. When should you use them, if at all? Editors such as me and, I'm certain, most agents, see scores upon scores of manuscripts with openings suffocated by the weight of flashbacks and explanatory exposition.

Some say to never use them, and that's possible. But there are times a flashback can enrich a story, add depth and meaning, that would otherwise not be there. There are other times when, without prior knowledge, a character's actions will seem unmotivated, and thus not credible.

So when and how do you use flashbacks? I've always advocated only when the knowledge revealed in the flashback is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to understand what's going on in the story's present. Beginning writers need to be tough on themselves here. They'll feel like a reader needs to know things about a character that, truthfully, are not necessary for understanding the NOW. It's the NOW that readers want to be immersed in.

In my most recent wip, though, I discovered another reason for flashbacks. Or perhaps it's merely a variation on the one just cited. My protagonist is, at the novel's opening, planning on killing herself, and her voice is cold. Critique partners and readers let me know that the character wasn't sympathetic enough to engage them emotionally. The second reason for a flashback is necessary characterization.

We pause for notes on the how of creating a flashback.

1. Weave it as seamlessly as possible into the action. Words such as "remembered" and phrases such as "thought of the time when" are bright red flags that signal to many readers that coming soon to a page near them is a part to skip. Transitions are key.
2. Make the flashback a true scene with action, dialogue, tension, and all the storytelling elements that you use to keep a reader engaged. Avoid telling a past event (unless it can be done in one brief, crisp paragraph). Readers want to experience what's happening, not just receive information.

My solution was to break the flashback story into pieces and weave it into the action. In addition, I avoided flashbacks until the second chapter in order to give my story's action a chance to hook the reader.

Here's the first piece of the past and how I wove it in. The protagonist has entered the Chicago Art Institute for a last look at beauty before she ends her life. A key transitional element is that something that happens in the NOW triggers THEN.

A couple studies a directory, holding hands. Like a double exposure of life, I see Graeme and me on our last day together. After a visit to the Met, we had held hands as we strolled in Central Park, past trees bright green with new spring leaves.

I said, "The new sculpture exhibit was excellent."

Graeme shrugged. "Perhaps." He gestured at the people who plodded through the park. "But there's little else of excellence from that sorry race."

My contrary side reared its head. While I was not fond of our unskilled cousins, I rebelled at the unfairness of the bias Graeme inherited from his father. "There is plenty of good in the lessi, and you know it."

"I do not." He surveyed the people around us. Dozens wandered, for it was a sunny day. "See their colors, Ailia. Is there kindness or good will anywhere?"

I looked, and he was right. The lledri auras around their heads writhed with the nasty burgundy of hostility, the yellow-green of lies, the ash-violet of depression, and the bruised red of violence. That, of course, only served to rally my resistance. "Perhaps not here, not now, but there are many good-hearted lessi."

Graeme got the grin that I loved so, the way it painted his face with mischief. Behind it lived a wide-eyed, little-boy-lost wonder at the immensity of life that made me want to wrap my arms around him. Though he was a decade my senior, our hearts were not a minute apart. After a hundred and fifty years together, we knew that we were One, that rarest of blends that has a chance of lasting for the long centuries.

He made an exaggerated moue and said, "A wager?"

I picked up the gauntlet. "Yes." I pointed down a curving walk. "We'll go that way, and we'll find a worthy lessi."

"The stakes?"

I ran my hands over my breasts and down my belly.

Oh, that smile of his. He said, "It's a bet."

If only I had not taunted him. If only . . .

I shake off the vision as I pass exhibits of medieval armor that look like little metal men. They make me think of my former father-in-law, Drago -- short of stature and hard. I wonder if Drago's venom has abated. Though why should it? He has a right to hold me responsible for the loss of his son. I led Graeme to his death, did I not?

With luck, I've let the reader see a likeable version of my protagonist, saucy and lively. With luck, this snippet of the past was entertaining enough to be engaging. It has conflict, and it has a bit of a cliffhanger ending that raises a story question: what happened?

I hope the way I eased into the memory -- Like a double exposure of life, I see --doesn't trigger the part-to-skip alarm, and that my exit slips  my reader back into the action.

Here's the second part of the flashback. In terms of the characterization I felt was needed to create an empathetic character, there are two elements: the tragedy that struck her husband, and her nature as a healer. It also illustrates my take on the use of a natural kind of "magic," a core piece of the novel. Now we're inside a museum exhibit.

I move to a display of medieval Celtic swords, artful because of their wonderfully crafted grips, yet their blades are instruments of death.

Once again it's now and then -- in Central Park, Graeme and I came upon a woman pulling a two-wheeled shopping cart. She radiated a rosy gold, the rich hue of caring. Perhaps sixty years old, she was stout, anchored to the earth like an oak tree. I pointed. "See that, Mr. Skeptic?"

Graeme spread his arms in surrender, lifted his gaze to the heavens and said, as if to a higher power, "Why have you once again given Ailia victory over your poor servant Graeme?"

I poked him in the ribs and said, "I believe you owe me."

He pulled me into his arms and pressed me to him. "I'm ready."

His body let me know that he was indeed ready. My pulse quickened, and I wanted to take him by the hand, find a cluster of bushes, cast a shadow illusion for concealment, and make love.

The woman stopped before a trio of homeless men who sprawled on ragged blankets. She opened a brown paper bag from her cart and I caught the aroma of bologna. The woman took a paper-wrapped sandwich from the sack and handed it to one of the men. He sat up, ripped off the paper, and attacked the food.

I couldn't resist adding another straw to the camel's back. Pushing away from Graeme, I said, "If we're so advanced, we should help."

He laughed, and then put on a thick French accent. "But of course, ma cherie." Stepping to the woman's side, he gestured to the sack of sandwiches and said, "May I?"

She smiled and nodded, and Graeme took a sandwich from the bag and thrust it at a whiskery man whose bristles made him look like a wild boar.

The boar man scrambled to his feet, digging into a pocket. Too late I saw in his aura the acrid tornado of colors that means madness. He pulled out a knife, flicked it open and thrust it into Graeme's chest. Graeme collapsed as if a puppet whose strings had been cut.

I fell to my knees beside him. Widening my sight to see bright motes of lledri coursing around us, I gathered a stream and plunged it into Graeme's chest to heal the wound. But his heart had been sliced almost in two. There was no way I could mend him. I looked into his eyes and saw terrible fear . . . and then an even more terrible absence.

I sprang to my feet and sent lledri into the killer's torso to grip his heart. I could crush it or incinerate it. I had only to decide.

The thin yellow of fear streaked the man's whirling colors, mixing with jagged bursts of red-orange: his pain. I'd been a healer for too many years; reflexively, I probed his brain and found it ravaged by swarms of Borna virus, the cause of his schizophrenia.

My One had been killed by bits of malicious RNA.

I released my hold on the boar man's heart. Graeme would have chided me for being a do-gooder, but I couldn't resist my next impulse. I wielded lledri to break the viruses into harmless molecules. It would take time for the man's symptoms to abate, but he immediately looked down at Graeme's bloodstained chest, and then at the bloody knife in his hand. Horror twisted his features. He cried out, dropped the knife, and ran away.

My foolishness had killed my One.

If only . . .

Movement pulls my mind from the past. The stocky guard appears at the entrance to the Celtic exhibit, her full cheeks flushed, her body tight, clearly on the hunt.

I can't be discovered.

Once again I used a real-time stimulus to trigger the association and transition into the flashback, blades that cause death just as the boar man's knife ended her husband's life. This was the end of my flashbacking for this character. I used a similar approach for the other primary protagonist, breaking a key event in his childhood into two small pieces that are eased into the story in the same way.

That's my take du jour on the use of flashbacks. I hope these examples have proved both entertaining and helpful. Let me know what you think.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Free edit. Email a sample for an edit that I can post here.

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© 2006 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[David Thayer]

Ray, cheers for tackling this subject. As you point out the flashback in the wrong hands is a story killer.
Nice transition at the end of yours.

[th]

Thanks for the examples Ray.

One question re your excerpt - why the use of the attribution tag before dialog rather than after? e.g. you wrote -

He said, "It's a bet."

- vs the more traditional use as -

"It's a bet," he said.

[Ray]

Thanks for asking, th. Clarity is the reason. You'll notice that I frequently use action beats instead of attributions. In this case, the narrative preceding his statement was really interior monologue by Ailia. If the quote had come first, it would have "sounded" as if she were saying it instead of him.

To expand, I frequently feel that attributions should come first, primarily because at times placing it after forces the reader to backtrack, and sometimes the attribution is needed first to make clear who is speaking. Make it easy for your reader to know who's doing what.