Messing with Time
Flashbacks can advance a story's plot in meaningful ways.
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this article first appeared in a 2021 blog post on my official author website.
Following a strictly linear narrative does not work for every story.
Imagine how boring a detective story would be if the story unfolded in chronological order and you learned right away the killer’s identity and how they committed the murder. Playing with time through flashback (or flashforward) sequences can be a useful plot device for revealing key information at a time and place when such a reveal offers the most dramatic impact.
I regularly utilize flashback scenes in my novels. I love using flashbacks as a framing device to explore a character’s motivations. They are also a useful narrative device for recounting earlier events that influence how the main plot or a key subplot unfolds.
Flashbacks: Good or Bad?
Some wannabe authors and uninformed critics are quick to condemn using flashbacks as a narrative device. Their objection is rooted in a notion that flashbacks interrupt a narrative’s natural flow and remove you from the action. I disagree with this criticism wholeheartedly. Skilled authors know how to weave a flashback into a narrative and put flashback scenes to clever use in situations where the story calls for one.
On a fundamental level, flashbacks make a story feel more authentic to real life. How often does one of your five senses trigger a latent memory? Spotting a broken-down car along a highway may cause you to recall an earlier time when you wrecked your own vehicle. Smelling a particular perfume may bring to mind a similar fragrance your wife wore on the night when you proposed to her. Incorporating flashbacks in a similar manner makes a character feel more relatable and real to readers.
Weaving flashbacks into your narrative
Like I mentioned earlier, I employ flashbacks to unfold subplots for key characters in my novels. I make a deliberate choice to use this element to create a sense of mystery around the character in question or lend greater dramatic weight to their actions and choices as the narrative progresses.
When Dean is first introduced in Pandora Reborn, readers see an obsessed hermit who guards a buried chest both day and night. His actions seem insane and neurotic at first glance. Flashbacks give valuable context to Dean’s motivations. Readers learn how he grappled with an ancient witch 55 years earlier and everyone dean loved suffered a violent untimely death at her hands. It gives Dean’s character arc a tragic complexity as his story unfolds.
The same formula fills in the blanks with Todd as the events in Under a Fallen Sun play out. When readers first meet him, Todd is hiding inside a boarded-up house and has imprisoned a hostile humanoid alien in the basement. During Todd’s interactions with his prisoner and other characters later in the story, readers learn how he and his wife Caroline became trapped in Travis and, eventually, uncover her fate. It builds suspense and, ultimately, paints a vivid picture explaining why his actions are so cold and calculating through much of the narrative.
Flashbacks play a critical role throughout the main Alien People Chronicles trilogy.
Key flashbacks in Alien People reveal how crashing a spaceship on an asteroid led to Lance being demoted in the Stellar Guard and suffering survivor’s guilt. Flashbacks in Dark Metamorphosis show how Calandra eventually lost her arm after suffering a severe injury on Earth to give context to fear and despair consuming her through large parts of the narrative. Among Hidden Stars uses flashbacks to show how Xttra and Calandra became alienated from their families while fostering a rebellion against the chief sovereign to show the price they’ve paid for their opposition.
These examples demonstrate the narrative power a flashback can bring to a story.
Flashbacks, if used in the right way, function as tantalizing pieces in a larger puzzle given to readers to assemble. It feels rewarding as a reader to complete such a puzzle and see a more detailed and complete picture. Well-written flashbacks have an unmistakable ability to create a lasting emotional connection with specific characters in a story.
Check out the My Books page at Strange New Worlds to get further information and purchase links for the stories mentioned in this article.
This is an excellent topic. Thank you. I also really like using flashbacks, or putting the reader inside the protagonist's mind, as if they were on a journey. Have you read António Lobo Antunes?