Hello

I'm currently redrafting a novel that I completed last year which uses quite a lot of flashback. The MC is a modern-day woman but the flashbacks are to parts of her grandmother's life when the latter was young.

My idea is for the two stories to interweave but, having read back the first draft of the novel, I think my approach with the flashbacks is much too clumsy, ie modern-day woman reads Grandma's diary and ... here comes a big chunk of flashback...

I know I can do better with this if I try and was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of authors who have used flashbacks effectively. I have done a search on the site for previous posts and William Golding came up, which I shall look into, but if anyone has further advice, I'd really appreciate it.

Cheers
Sharon

<Added>

Can I just add that when I knocked my use of flashback above I wasn't actually knocking the method of diary and flashback, ie anyone else's use of it. I hope I didn't offend anyone.

When I read my own use of it back it was cumbersome and didn't flow well, that's all I meant.

Have I posted this in the wrong forum?

Thanks :)

Sharon,

It might work better if it was the Grandma herself having the flashbacks, as someone reading a diary cannot have flashbacks. They can imagine what must have happened, but they wouldn't have the flashbacks.
So, if you have the MC and her grandmother talking together, then granny gets her old diary and reads bits out to the MC, granny can then have flashbacks, do you get what I'm saying?

Katerina x

I have a feeling that there were flashbacks in an old Rosamund Pilcher novel...it might have been The Shell Seekers.

Private Papers by Margaret Forster is good. It does use a kind of daughter reading mother's diary thing, but the MC starts arguing with everything which creates conflict and makes it really engaging to read. Also you start to wonder why the mother wrote the papers in the first place which questions the reliability.

Hi Katerina

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I have rather been thinking along the lines of Gran coming out with 'intriguing' snippets of her life which will have her granddaughter feeling the need to look deeper.

I'll look into the Shell Seekers. I read that years ago and remember really enjoying it.

Thanks again
Sharon
x

Hi Snowbell

Thanks for the tip - I shall get hold of a copy of Private Papers. I'd quite like to do a mix of verbal flashback from Gran (as I mentioned to Katerina) with some diary or letter reading but definitely need to improve my use of the latter.

Cheers
Sharon
x