On Writing: Flashbacks and Backstory!

in my video on pacing we discussed the signed quest problem where obstacles in the plot may extend the story but ultimately don't contribute to narrative power from the end meaning those obstacles grind the story spacing to a halt like for example random segues where I say today's video is sponsored by curiosity stream which you can watch for free at WWE city stream calm such hello future me links down below flashbacks often face a similar pacing problem because the reader is forced to step away from the core narrative what is often called the front story to learn about the past something often unrelated with stakes that they may not care about now this doesn't need to be the case but I want to be clear about this the most important question about flashbacks and backstory before you put them in your book is this part one should it be included at all one of the most common mistakes that I see is write as thinking that because there is backstory it must be communicated but it's false no way this one was invented by a writer the skill is in knowing which stuff to include and which stuff to summarize or leave out so let's look at a good example in the Great Gatsby by if scott Fitzgerald the character Gatsby is desperately in love with a daisy who is married to another man and all the wealth he makes in the story is to win her over and in a flashback as detailed as any other dramatic scene in the book Fitz Jo takes the time to recount how gets be thought himself worthless when he met her as a penniless man without a past and yet because he managed to disguise that through his military uniform they shared a passion at time together Fitzgerald works to show us what John Truby would call Gatsby's ghost the source of the hero's psychological and moral weakness believing that his wealth is his worth now you might conclude from this example that if it's a defining moment for your character it should be included but once again is toe pure fiction it's fiction the distinction is relevance to the narrative while this backstory helps us understand why Gatsby is the way he is his ghost that's not all it is the tension in the Great Gatsby comes from Gatsby's reckless pursuit of Daisy that ultimately culminates in his death and the theme of the story is about the failure of the American Dream rags to riches this flesh pack is crucial to understanding both of those things by heightening the narrative tension around Gatsby's reckless pursuit and developing the major theme of how easy and toxic it is to associate wealth with happiness now this is a pretty broad rule but what I'm trying to get at here is that flashbacks that work don't only provide backstory exposition whether they're sympathetic or not they have to provide something else as well often helping develop theme or tension for the narrative payoff which is why flashbacks so often relate to a character arc because we derive tension from those in the story backstory that just gives more information about a character doesn't necessarily feel that relevant to the narrative and thus slows the pacing and to be honest there are more efficient ways of explaining motivation or inspiring sympathy for a character that don't require the reader to step away from the front story and risk stalling the pacing especially because showing how the emotional experiences of a character's past affects them now is often more moving for a reader backstory like a lot of world-building is like an iceberg the reader may only see parts relevant to the story even if the author knows that there's a lot more down there and this is why the fact that anime gives every single secondary character an entire episode of Banks story can be so frustrating but I personally feel that relevance to the narrative is a pretty high bar when it comes to flashbacks in my book a character has a traumatic backstory but I never actually flashback to those traumatic events themselves even though they have intense dramatic emotional weight and they ask seme related to the themes of the story this is because depicting it wouldn't actually help understand the character or directly build tension because the story is really about the struggles of dealing with trauma in the years after and I want to develop empathy based on those experiences not simply the trauma itself now it wouldn't be bad writing to include it but I just don't think there's the justification there needed for it even for such a major event for one of my main characters and if I did include it I fear it could be kind of gratuitous but there are two exceptions that I want to touch on firstly you want to include it this is your book your creative control matters if you want to include those flashbacks and your passion about it go for it secondly it's a different case for parallel stories which take place in two different time frames like arrow if you are creating a whole story arc with these flashbacks then they don't necessarily need to be relevant to the other storyline because it's ultimately an independent narrative whereas a fictive flashbacks exist to support the core narrative that being said part two two kinds of flashbacks so you've figured out which parts of your backstory need to be included as flashbacks but how long and detailed should they be well there are kind of two different types of flashback on a spectrum as methods of exposition delivery half scenes and full scenes and they each serve different purposes narrative Lee let's look at how author John Green uses these two different types the opening of Paper Towns where Quentin and Margo find a dead body as children is a full scene flashback it's got all the sensory detail any other part of the story would have it's long at 1500 words it's not summarized and it's even separated into its own chapter this does two things a it signals to the reader that this part of his backstory is particularly relevant to the front story in a way that characters simply recounting the event might not be and be the extra detail gives these moments more dramatic emotional waits than a character simply summarizing the event would I recommend checking out my prologues video if you want more specific advice on when to use a flashback as your prologue like Green does here in contrast consider this half same flashback in The Fault in Our Stars where hazel recalls spending an afternoon with her father in a river just in conversation it's briefly summarized it's short at less than 150 words and as few lines of quoted dialogue half scenes a useful for less important moments of backstory that still give insight into characters but they don't risk disrupting the pacing because they take the reader away from the front story flashbacks don't need to be as long or short as these but figuring out which elements of your story are important enough to be full scenes and which should be half scenes is up to you as the writer just consider those four factors narrative importance dramatic emotional weight insight into character and pacing how much less impactful would Snape's memories of Lily's be in the deathly hallows as a half scene instead of a full scene and how annoying would it be to get repeated flashbacks to Ron's past part three making flashbacks work in Harry Potter and the half-blood Prince Harry spends a lot of time persuading Professor Slughorn to tell him what he told Tom Riddle about making Horcruxes slow corn gave Dumbledore a fake memory but eventually gives up the real one to Harry and the story has a full scene flashback to the past even though told from the perspective of Harry it is fundamentally Bank story but it works for a couple of reasons firstly mystery Rowling takes careful page time to invest the reader in a question what did Slughorn tell Voldemort we wonder and she gives an answer in a flashback Brandon Sanderson talked about this technique and saying flashbacks let you build a mystery and then answer it or build a mystery and then continue it in an interesting way so it's often more about the information that the reader knows you're withholding from them rather than the information that you give them secondly Rowling's flesh banks actively move their narrative forward instead of slowing the pacing when flashbacks work well they are adding to the forward momentum of the story by giving the reader the information they need to understand the context of what's at stake the backstory doesn't only build theme or tension like in The Great Gatsby but Rowling structured her stories so that learning what Slughorn told riddle actively moves the story into the third act by establishing new stakes destroying a Horcrux it doesn't just feel like we're halting the pacing at all fundamentally some flashbacks work because though they step away from the front story chronologically they stay with it in terms of narrative momentum so give the flashbacks something to change your story going forward maybe it reveals a foreshadowed secret or it introduces a new problem now there are some pretty broad guidelines about not having flashbacks in the first 50 pages or the first five chapters buds are made up - it's a total fabrication it's true that randomly splicing flashbacks across your story will be jarring for the reader and stall the pacing so a lot of writing advice tends to focus on how to best segue into a flashback through a book or a dream or a triggered memory when a character see something that sort of thing but how you seek way in that sense really doesn't matter if you get it right in terms of part for scene structure one of the things that a nonlinear narrative does for you is it allows you to present the narrative pieces in the order that the audience needs for maximum emotional impact story structure is less about the chronology of your story and way more about controlling the order in which the reader experiences things with this in mind a common structure used for flashback scenes is placing them so that they comment on or give a deeper context to the front story scene either immediately before it or immediately after it in the last airbender we see a number of flashbacks to Aang's past during the episode the southern air temple in particular the center around Aang's relationship with monkey and so his mentor but the scene is almost immediately followed up by the discovery of monk Gyatso's corpse the flashback hero not only built into the episodes tension of Eng discovering the genocide of us people but it gave extra context and emotional weight to the specific scene in the front story that followed it the let's take scene structure to a deeper level in writing fiction for dummies Randy Ingham ascend highlights two different types of scenes proactive scenes where a character has a goal a conflict and a setback or resolution and in reactive scenes which are those that follow proactive scenes with a reaction a dilemma and a decision you'll notice these in your own writing but flashbacks are often seamlessly incorporated into reactive scenes here's how in the last time we say goodbye by cynthia hand the character licks is struggling to stop blaming herself for the suicide of her brother in this hand writes a proactive scene where leox has a goal trying to stop another boy taking their own a conflict she has to break into his house and a setback she finds out that her brother called this boy the night he died the reactive scene that follows perfectly segues into a flashback of the night her brother died we see her reaction this is a deep shock she faces a dilemma she doesn't know how to deal with her intense emotions and she makes a decision she processes them by journaling her memory of the night he died flash banks often detail the emotional make up or explain the thinking of a character so they very naturally fit into exploring the emotional reaction that they have for how they deliberate on the dilemma by showing how they've dealt with things in the past or how Cynthia hand does it by integrating it into the decision part fundamentally how usig way into a flashback is a lot less important than where you fit it into your scene structure and narrative overall if you get that right I honestly don't think it matters that much though I will bring up one technique mentioned by youtuber shale and rights and a video linked down below about filter words filter words are verbs like realized notice - remembered for calls they remind the reader that they are being told about a thing rather than being shown consider this passage in rainbow Rowell's eleanor and park a park end thought about that either the first time he saw Eleanor on the bus he remembered thinking that was bad enough that she looked the way she did he remembered feeling embarrassed for her and now now he felt the fight rising up in his throat these terms remind the reader that they're being told about something rather than showing them it imagine if it was written like this but Parkin thought about that either the first time he saw Eleanor the bus he thought it was bad enough that she looks the way she did he felt embarrassed for her and now it was a fight rising up in his throat this feels more immersive because there isn't an extra layer put between the reader and the characters experiences so rather than using filter words to begin the flush Bank considered just starting it so long as you indicate when this happened also if anyone's ever told you to just use italics when you're in a flashback boss no way not this time but sometimes a flashback doesn't serve to comment on or give a deeper context to the front scene before or after it but that doesn't mean it's useless part five recontextualization in teaching story of your life the narrative is repeatedly interrupted by a series of odd scenes the film adaption of this 2016's arrival depicts these scenes as flashbacks for the main character but the short story depicts them more as a woman imagining her future daughter's life and then there will be times when I see you laughing like the time they'll be playing with the neighbours puppy but I'm not sleepy your whine it that sort of thing but what matters here is that these are nonlinear scenes they take us out of the chronological narrative which is the character talking to the aliens and they don't really provide any extra context or depth to the front story immediately around them until the end now spoilers for one of the best sci-fi stories and films ever made but it turns out that these nonlinear scenes are actually flash forwards in time because as the front story progresses the main character develops the ability to see parts of the future and she now knows that her daughter the future daughter is going to die young at this point the front story entirely recontextualizes our understanding of these nonlinear scenes with a twist at the end littering these scenes across the story was still crucial to the narrative pay off in the emotional weight of the story and the themes behind it it just wasn't immediate like we see in the half-blood prince avatar robbed my diary from the edge of the world and if it wasn't littered throughout the story then it wouldn't have been nearly as effective if we showed these ideas after we found that out and because he knew that there wasn't going to be immediate payoff teaching employs a couple of techniques to keep the reader engaged he writes these non-linear scenes in second person present teens for the most part you do this you do that and though it reads like a woman imagining the future it feels off because not only would we usually read this kind of scene in past tense or future tense but the woman suddenly imagines her daughter dying something that no hopeful mother would usually do the reader immediately understands that there's something weird going on here Ching subtly introduces a question that he answers at the end and if you're going to pip a backstory throughout the book then this is a good model building a mystery around them keeps them interesting now remember that quote we had from before about using flashbacks to change chronological order and maximize emotional impact yeah story of your life is a fantastic example of this for that reason bringing us to part six trauma it's difficult to talk about flashbacks without address in the context and which they're often used traumatic experiences in the past now this isn't the video to get into a meditation or analysis about the social complexities around that I've actually made a video on writing mental illness it is the best video I've ever made it's linked up in the corner and I really would appreciate your going to watch that if you are interested in their topic but um flashbacks are often used to show the origins of trauma particularly through repressed memories and they are effective as full scenes for all the reasons that we've just discussed they make clear how important this moment is and afforded the dramatic emotional waves that it probably deserves but a couple of things here one in terms of developing reader empathy for a character trauma is just as much about how it affects them now as it is what happened in their past that's something I see a lot of writers kind of miss discussing the traumatic flashbacks in a short story medline am Ali Matar said what I wanted to do was to really dive deep into the sensory effects of the story so that you get a sense of what it would be like to have this really dislocating and terrifying thing happen to you and when she's saying this she's recognizing the flashbacks in the context of trauma aren't just a narrative device to look back on the past they're a visceral emotional and psychological experience for someone looking at how a panic attack in a flashback might happen at the same time describing the feeling of certain triggering things like if a victim of abuse was grabbed by the wrist by another character it might cause a flashback but describing the actual feeling of being grabbed is really important to understanding the traumatic context here and as I said before in my book I'm not even showing those maduk events and flesh Bank because I want my story to be about how they deal with those things now and the struggles around that secondly memories are not necessarily accurate or concrete and this is especially true for traumatic or repressed ones and they don't usually come all flooding back at once and one grand narrative reveal now that doesn't make it bad writing to have accurate flashbacks or to have a lot of memories all come back at once but you can use an unreliable narrator for effect just remember that people often have nebulous memories nebulous nebulae that reminds me it was a gray summer day when I discovered nebula a video platform with creators like just right lessons from the screenplay Lindsey Ellis and others it was a land of milk and honey there were no ads at all meaning it was built by and for creators and this magical place nebula I'm on there as well now and I know how you can try it for free through curiosity stream the subscription service were thousands of documentaries like the one that I was watching on that same grace on a day that the seemingly fantastical tale of Hannibal's march on Rome crossing mountains were the war elephants to march against the greatest empire the world had ever seen normally curiosity stream is $2.99 a month but if you go to dub dub dub curiously stream calm slash hello future me and use hello future me as your code and sign up you'll get both curiosity stream and nebula for free for a month go chickened out down below in summary firstly like we're building not all banks story needs to be communicated a good test is whether it is relevant to the narrative helping develop tension and core theme this is often through showing the reader the ghost relevant to a character arc secondly flashbacks can be written as half scenes or full scenes the more narrative importance the dramatic emotional weight inside the character of extra moment hairs the more detailed it should be but the longer it is the more likely it will slow pacing thirdly flashbacks are often made more effective by generating intrigue and mystery around them before they are revealed one way to avoid pacing issues is to use them to move the story forward by establishing new stakes introducing a new problem changing a character's position in the story altering how the story works going forward fourthly flashbacks can be used to manipulate story chronology for maximum emotional impact this is often done by a using a flashback to comment on the front scene immediately before or after it and be using one in a reactive scene following practicing's either in the reaction dilemma or decision stages fifthly filter words usually make flashbacks lists immersive these are words like remembered felt and recalled what matters is indicating when it takes place sixthly flashbacks don't need to comment on the front story scene if they're going to be wholly recontextualized by the end through a twist they still assist in narrative payoff however developing a mystery across them will will help keep them interesting till that point and seventh trauma flashbacks can be used to explore trauma but the experience of trauma is often just as much about how it affects them now as it is what happened repressed memories are often unreliable have gaps or psychologically painful to recall but that is all for me now you'd expect that I'd be saying thank you for the money that we raised last week on the charity stream but I'm filming this before then because I didn't want to screw myself over work and have to try and pump this out videos that I work really hard on in like under a week after doing a 24 hour stream it didn't think that's possible but thank you for the money that we raised we raised this amount yeah really impressive so go right figure out you want to use flashbacks stay nerdy and I'll see you in the future [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 199,311

Rating: 4.9745612 out of 5

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, education, writing, how to write, structure, flashbacks, backstory, character, development, narrative, worldbuilding, arrival, avatar, the last airbender, snape, harry potter, JK Rowling, half blood prince, book, publish

Id: s2dzRzPPAwY

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019