Diversion #5: flashbacks

Flashbacks are really a form of short story, but as they can be more reflective and character focused, they deserve a special mention.

If you are a planner, you probably have plenty of notes on your characters. A lot of it probably isn't relevant to the story you're telling. Flashbacks give you a chance to integrate some of that material into your narrative. On the other hand, if your improvising, the chance to explore a bit of character background can also be useful.

We all know what a flashback is. For some reason, a character envisions stuff that happened at a different time or place. Perhaps Mitch's wife is leaving him, and he remembers what it was like when Stacey Gregorson cheated on him in high school.

The only real rule for flashbacks - and even this rule isn't hard and fast - is that it has to be motivated by something. A character can't start remembering the night his brother was run over while he's making love to a beautiful woman. Okay, he could - but it would be really odd. So you'd better know what your doing if you're going to try something outlandish like that.

Other than that, it is pretty open. Characters riding from one city to another, in the pouring rain? A character thinks back to riding to market with her father on the old dappled mare. It wasn't raining then, of course, but that's the point, isn't it? And then at markets she got separated from her father and met some dodgy characters who recruited her into the world of picking pockets and started her on the road to adventuring ... which is, ultimately, why she's now riding from Valgrad to Hultinstead, in the pouring rain, in chains and accompanied by some very unfriendly guardsmen. See? Motivation.

I don't tend to use flashbacks much, because I like to wing my stories and it can be difficult keeping track of what is happening in the here and now, without worrying about what happened in the Ganges Delta twenty years before ... But I did find one example, here, from my 2005 effort. The main character, Judy, is looking for her freind Bonnie, who works as a stripper at a seedy club. While waiting for Bonnie, Judy remembers her own attempt to get work there. It is a slightly unpleasant story, so precede with caution.

1 - 'Judy's audition,' in the November archive. Or click here: http://writehandpalm.blogspot.com/2007/11/judys-audition.html