Do you like 'em? Do you hate 'em? What are the problems for the writer/reader with flashbacks?

Can you point me in the direction of some fiction that uses them, to good or ill effect?

HB x

I think the basic decision is whether you keep the Now of the story in play, as it were, as the past stuff is narrated, or jump completely back into the past.

As I remember, The Blind Assassin in made up of different segments of the MCs story, if you see what I mean - I can't even remember whether it's the past or the present that's the "main" story, IYSWIM.

ASA has two of its three strands built on flashbacks - one is mostly Now, with bits of Then, the other is a thin frame of Now for a story which is mainly Then. I blogged about this issue here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/10/flashing-slipping-and-mixing-things-up.html

I do like them if they're done well. A glance at my bookshelf to the left of me and I see Anne Tyler's "The Beginner's Goodbye". I loved this book and she uses it brilliantly to open out the history of the marriage of the main protagonist.

Doesn't Kate Atkinson use it a lot too?

I quite like flash-backs as a method of providing necessary or desirable back-story but too many of them can become irritating. If what went on in the past is sufficiently substantial to qualify more as story than back-story, an uncompromising reversion to the time in question - a section or a chapter - can be much more satisfactory. If nothing else it avoids frequent switching between tenses which can have a jolting effect on the narrative.

Sometimes a device can be employed to deal with the previous material, such as the contemporary re-working of Adam's notes by James in Paul Auster's Invisible.

If what went on in the past is sufficiently substantial to qualify more as story than back-story,

Maybe that's part of it: if you decide what you're really trying to achieve with this flashback - what its function is as storytelling - then how you should do it begins to come clear...

Which is probably to do with whether this bit of the past actually affects what happens next in the present, or merely explains it, or even more merely adds a bit of atmosphere.

In narratology, nipping back into the past is called a retroversion, and we talk about "closed" and "open" retroversions: a closed retroversion doesn't affect the present moment of the narrative, just colours things in a bit.

An open retroversion would be, for example, where a character thinks back to the past and then thinks, "You know - now I know his car had broken down, maybe it wasn't him who pushed her off the bridge. Maybe he was telling the truth after all. I'd better go and tell the police, and then they'll release him..."

I haven't read it, but remember Jenn saying A Kind of Intimacy uses lots of flashback.

I have several in my wip, from two character, as well as two time frames a century apart. But time and the effect of then on now (and inability to move on from 'then' is one of the themes I'm exploring.

Helen, I read something recently about different modes of time in narrative, it was really useful discussion & references fiction that uses the different modes. I'll look it up when I get a chance.

I read something recently about different modes of time in narrative, it was really useful discussion & references fiction that uses the different modes. I'll look it up when I get a chance.

I think you mentioned this one before, and I meant to get the details from you because it sounds right up my alley - but then forgot. I'd be really grateful for the details.

I might well have mentioned it before, but I can't actually recall.

It's a little book (in page size and length - more of an extended essay really) called 'The Art of Time in Fiction' by Joan Silber. She looks at how time operates in some of her favourite novels & short stories, dividing them into the categories 'classic time' (a natural span such as a month, season or year), 'long time' (decades, lifetimes), 'switchback time' (moving back and forth among points in the past and present, 'slowed time' (brief moments in detail) and 'fabulous time' (non-realistic fiction). Fiction discussed includes Chinua Achebe, Scott Fitzgerald, Flaubert, Marquez, Alice Munro -- this is the main one she uses for switchback time, Proust (of course!), Virginia Woolf...and others I can't remember.

I've read the classic time and swtichback time sections in depth but only skimmed the others. In fact, I must go back and read the rest properly.

It's one book in a series of which I've a couple of other titles as well. They all - highly unoriginally, but don't let that put you off - start with 'The Art of'...e.g. 'The Art of Subtext', 'The Art of Description, 'The Art of the Poetic Line' etc.

I got really annoyed by some books I've read that basically advised 'don't do flashbacks'. I think what they meant was don't do flashbacks badly, or because you haven't thought through to the right place and time to be narrating the story from. Handled well I see no problem with them, in rather like them.

Richard Skinner has a short section on flashback (just a few pages) in his book 'Fiction Writing'. It talks about some of the pitfalls. From memory I think the main one was losing narrative drive & flow. Oh, and using so many the reader becomes lost as to what the point is. I expect there's a copy in the Goldsmiths library.

I keep adding to this post and now it's double it's original length...had better post it now before it gets even more out of hand.

Thanks, Michelle - I'm sure I can track that down.

I got really annoyed by some books I've read that basically advised 'don't do flashbacks'. I think what they meant was don't do flashbacks badly, or because you haven't thought through to the right place and time to be narrating the story from. Handled well I see no problem with them, in rather like them.

If there's anything guaranteed to get me frothing at the mouth, it's the way that so much writing advice is based on this idea that you're "not allowed" to do things until you can do them well.

How the bloody hell are you supposed to learn to do things well? We all do things badly first, as part of learning... It's like saying, "Oh, we shouldn't teach dyslexics to write, because they're such terrible spellers."

To quote Vaughan Williams, who was criticised for not being nastier to his composing students:

I would rather encourage a fool than discourage a genius.

We all do things badly first, as part of learning...

Very true - you have to be willing to do something poorly to then learn how to do it better.

It's such a stifling attitude, too. If everything potentially tricky is avoided in case it's done 'badly' than the result is lots of safe & bland conformist fiction, lacking freshness and vitality. Nothing innovative would ever get written.

Michelle, thanks for all this. You're a star.

I'm trying to get straight in my mind and then explain in my MA commentary why the use of flashbacks versus seperate narrative strands is an important distinction.

HB x

I love flashbacks when they are done well. I think they are almost essential in crime writing. The sleuth figure in the present needs to find out what happened in the past. It would be tedious for it all to be reported speech.

If everything potentially tricky is avoided in case it's done 'badly' than the result is lots of safe & bland conformist fiction, lacking freshness and vitality. Nothing innovative would ever get written.

That's a great point. And inspiring too.