Hi, on the basis that there is no such thing as a stupid question. I would like to ask if there are any golden rules about these? I know that a flashback in the first page of an unsolicited manuscript is enough to dump a writer on the 'no' pile but they must have a place, surely?

I think the answer has to be no, there are no golden rules. As with so many aspects of writing, flashbacks are a matter of personal choice for the writer as well as the reader.

Personally I don’t use them. If I did, I wouldn’t have one in the opening chapter. You need to establish your characters and the scene, get them fixed in your readers’ minds before jumping to a flashback.

Hope this helps

Dee

My whole novel is one big sequence of flashbacks.

JB

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It is a tricky form, and even though my book has been signed, it isn't a method I would be keen to revist. Telling a story backwards, forwards etc, while keeping the 'present' intact is really exhausting.

Plot holes cape and time frames slant and the editing process to get it all in sync took over a year. Hence, when I came to writing another book, I chose a linear form and it is so much easier.

JB

JB, you're write, it is tricky. I had a novel which had two different MCs in two different centuries, each looking back from old age and telling a story of their youth. I made a rule that the first sentence of every new section had to have enough in it for the reader to know where they were - from language, names, facts, whatever. And I still ended up slightly reluctantly dating each section to keep the reader straight. Yes, exhausting, but it intrigues me endlessly, because that is how our perception of life is: layers of memory far and near, constantly intruding on the stream of the present. Sorry, mixed metaphor.

I think I would be wary of flashbacks, though, if they are actually a substitute for making my present story interesting enough. Especially at the beginning - remember the thread on prologues? The present story, even if it's largely a frame (no harm in that if you can control it and even the dimmest reader always knows exactly where they are) has to have its own motor, so that you could remove the flashbacks and still have something with its own coherence and narrative drive.

Emma

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JB, actually you're right, not write. (Well, maybe that as well)

I was very ambitious for a first novel. My whole story takes place over a year, with the MC starting at the end and gradually revealing why they are what they are. Except they have a slight amnesia brought on by parental abuse, and a tendency towards being rose tinted, living in a fairyland etc etc.
The present mirrors the past, shatters the mirror of the past, and raises serious horrors about the future.

It isn't very comforting, and I think that's the main part I found exhausting - trying to convey how our own hopes, dreams and memories trick us. How are own identies can be nothing more than gossamer on a shifting tide.

JB

Hi Shika,

I don't use Flashbacks but if I did, my personal rule would be to:-

NEVER flashback in the middle of a scene(it drives me nuts), and kills the magic.

Dawn

Guys, thanks so much for all the advice. I suspected that I was going down the wrong track. Shika

Erm...when you're writing fiction in the past tense, you are, in fact, writing everything in the form of a 'flashback'.

JB

Oops, in the novel I'm writing I have two flashbacks in the first chapter and the whole of Part One is a series of flashbacks (within a five-year period). I've enjoyed the challenge of writing it - it seems to suit my main character and her story.

Myrtle

I wouldn't get sniffy about it. The entirety of Frankenstein, one of the greatest books ever written, is told in a series of flashbacks too. It is traditional, and clearly something for the literarti to quaff at, but that;s overlooking the fact that it is a powerful and effective tool when used correctly.

It all depends on the context, the form, and how good the writer is. To say flashbacks are rubbish, is to say 'chairs are crap'.

JB

As I recally, Wuthering Heights is largely flashback too. I don't think I'd use the term flashback, if the section was long enough for the reader to forget that they're 'really' in the later time. i.e., less than a chapter? If it's more, I would think that it was simply that the novel has a non-linear structure.

Emma

My response to the question was that I don’t believe there are any golden rules about flashbacks. Perhaps I was not as clear as I could have been. I’d say there are no fixed rules about any aspect of writing. Most of the ‘how to’ books teach the basics and perhaps the most common methods but any writer can break any ‘rule’ as much as they like. The result might be that the novel never sees the light of day… on the other hand it could be a best-seller. Just read After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell.

Dee

Dee,
I'm a huge Maggie O'Farrell fan. Did you enjoy it?
M.

Loved it, Myrtle. Absolutely loved it. Funnily enough, I haven't read anything else she's written. Must catch up!

Dee

I read 'After You'd Gone' which I enjoyed and then 'My Lover's Lover' which I didn't.

I found out that she is giving a talk in Paris in three weeks (thanks, e.g.) so I think I will go along and hear what she had to say.



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'has to say' since she hasn't said it yet!