How are you getting on with your novel? Are you writing a flashback scene and need some help with it?
In this post, we’ll show you how to write a flashback in a novel.
1. Know the difference between flashback, backstory, and prologue
Before writing a flashback, you need to understand what exactly it is and how to differentiate it from prologue and backstory. The three are very similar in nature, but vastly different in how and when they are presented (i.e. written) in a novel.
A flashback is a scene that is a memory of the protagonist. The protagonist is relaying something that happened to them in the past that they are remembering at that moment, and they are relaying it as a full scene – with descriptions, dialogue, and even conflict between the protagonist and another character, or the protagonist is solving a problem.
Backstory is information about the protagonist, or another character, but it is not a scene. The protagonist in this case would not relay the information in the form of a scene. Instead of showing what happened, the protagonist is directly telling.
For example, the protagonist is telling how they were bullied in high school for years, instead of recounting a specific bullying memory from their past. The author is not showing what happened, but telling instead. The same applies to when a character is sharing something that happened to them in dialogue (usually to the protagonist).
The prologue comes before the story begins. It can be a scene from the past of the protagonist, or another character, or it can even be an important event that is not directly related to the protagonist but it sets up the world itself. It can also be a scene that is yet to come in the novel, in which case it serves as a teaser to entice the readers to keep reading.
A prologue can be confused with a flashback when it is a scene from the protagonist’s past. However, it differs from a flashback because normally, the prologue is written in the same tense as the rest of the novel, it is not happening as a scene the protagonist is remembering at that moment in the story, like a flashback would be.
2. Ensure the flashback is important
If the protagonist is remembering a scene from the past, ensure that it is a relevant part of their past to the current story. It should help the readers to get to know the protagonist better, so that they can anticipate how the protagonist would react in situations in the story that have yet to happen.
The protagonist needs to be well-rounded. This means that you, as the writer, will know a lot more about the protagonist that the readers ever will. Think of your protagonist’s life as an iceberg that is about 70% submerged in water. The visible part is the one part that the readers need to know about.
If your protagonist constantly goes down different memory lanes and starts to share (i.e. remember) scenes from their past too often, it will bog the story down. Make sure that whatever flashbacks you include in the novel are important to the protagonist, shaped them to become the way they are today, or are relevant to the current problem they need to solve.
3. Use a trigger to enter it
Once you have determined that a certain flashback is needed for the story, the trick is to find the right place to enter it in the course of the story. Mainly, avoid using flashbacks past the mid-point of the novel. Keep the flashbacks limited to the first third of the novel, up to the middle at most. The latter half of the novel should be dedicated to the climax and unraveling of the story.
The important thing to remember is that you should not enter into a flashback randomly. A flashback is a memory, and memories are usually triggered by something: a sound, a smell, a specific word or sentence, or a very strong emotion. It can also be something visual, like a sunset, a sunrise, or a particular landscape.
In other words, the protagonist needs a reason to remember a part of their past, something that is important to them (and important to the story as well). The memory is overwhelming enough that the protagonist is playing it out in their head and describing it in the narrative.
4. Keep the relevant part of the memory only
Flashbacks are better when they are shorter instead of longer. When a flashback is too long, it can slow down the pacing of the story. An exclusion to this rule is when a story has a dual timeline – i.e. what happened in the past is juxtaposed against the present, in which case we have chapters where the events are happening in the past and chapters that show the action of the present.
In order to keep the flashback short, you need to include only the relevant part of the memory. Since a flashback is a scene, it needs to be written like one – with a brief introduction to the setting, and then quickly moving to what the memory is about.
For example, let’s say that the protagonist, who is an adult woman, is remembering the last time she saw her grandfather before he died when she was 16 years old. While she was at school, the grandfather had suffered a stroke, and when she came home, her father took her to the hospital to see her grandfather one last time. He barely recognized her, which left a huge impact on her.
In such a scene, we would have two important emotional beats – her father telling her what happened when she came home, and her grandfather not recognizing his beloved granddaughter before he passed. So, the focus of the scene should be on those two beats. We do not need to see the ride home from school, or the ride to the hospital itself. These two things can be briefly mentioned.
The moment when her father delivered the news – his face, his tone of voice, the way he looked at her – those parts would be embedded in her memory. And later on, so would be the scene in the hospital room – what the room looked like, what her grandfather looked like lying on the bed, the blank look in his eyes, the words he said, and maybe how he called her by a different name (perhaps the name of his daughter or his wife). Finally, the flashback would end with what she took away from that moment, the effect that it had on her.
5. Changing the tense and the formatting
One of the most difficult tasks when writing a flashback is to ensure that the readers are aware that the scene is happening in the past. Otherwise, they would be confused, which can detract from the reading experience (and even cause them to stop reading).
The general rule of thumb is to change the tense. For example, if you’re writing in the present tense, a flashback would be written in the past simple tense. However, if you are already writing in past simple, going back one tense further into the past means writing in the past perfect tense.
Writing out the full flashback in the past perfect tense is not advisable. It is better to start with the past perfect tense to “enter” the flashback, and give the readers a sign that the narrative is entering a scene from the protagonist’s past. Then, you can continue writing in the past simple tense.
The takeaway the protagonist has from that event in their past will give the readers a sign that the flashback has ended. Or, you can simply bring back the readers to the present in a more direct way, for example, using words like “now” or “presently”.
You can also use formatting methods to give the readers a sign that the narrative has jumped to a flashback. One option is using the italics font, another option is using a symbol in the middle of the page (like ‘***’, or ‘∞’, or ‘~’), to signify the beginning and end of the flashback.
6. Keep the pacing in mind
When it comes to pacing, you need to think about the overall pace of the novel, i.e. the dynamic interchanging of action or fast-paced scenes, and slower scenes that have very little action and a lot of reflection on what has happened so far in the story, and contemplation of the protagonist’s next step.
Flashbacks should not be happening in the middle of a fast paced action scene charged with conflict. The protagonist is too focused on what is happening in the present to take a trip down a certain memory lane.
Flashbacks, by nature, hit the pause button on the current action in the narrative of the story since we are entering the past. Because of that, they belong in the second type of scenes (slower scenes). The flashback itself might involve some action, which will help to invoke tension and anticipation in the readers.