Make A Scene (28 page)

• Use the past tense.
Flashbacks often begin with words that conjure the idea of the past, or indicate the past through verb tense. Here are a few examples of transitional sentences that let the reader know she is stepping into the past through the use of the past tense. From the story "Mothers," by Sylvia Plath:

A few days after they had moved into the house, Tom called her downstairs for a visitor.

From there, Plath quickly drops into a scene where the character Esther meets a Kenyan professor who has an affect on her religious decision. And from Neil Gaiman's novel
Anansi Boys:

He had spoken to Mrs. Higgler several years earlier, when his mother was dying.

This memory comes in the middle of a scene in which the protagonist, Fat Charlie, is trying to explain to his fiancee why he doesn't want his father to come to their wedding.

• Use a specific date or incident to refer to the past.
There's no more direct way to transition into the past than referring to a time or date that the reader know has already passed. Using a date is a nice sturdy way to transition, especially if the date has significance to the protagonist, like in the story

"Police Dreams," by Richard Bausch:

On the morning of the day she left, he woke to find her sitting at her dressing table, staring at herself.

In the frontstory the reader knows that the narrator is divorced. By leading the reader directly back to "the morning of the day she left," the author clearly signals that he is now moving into the past.

•Use reiteration.
Sometimes you can set up the reader by having a character tell him in words that you will be moving into the past, as in this example from the novel
Carolina Moon,
by Jill McCorkle:

"Anyway, that old Barry just wouldn't let it rest and kept right on talking; I'll do my best to re-create his exact words. ..."

The reader knows that the speaker is about to move into the past because she's referring to a conversation that has already taken place, which is why she has to "re-create" his words.

• Use remembrances.
Some writers make it very obvious that a detour into the past is imminent by using specific phrases like "I remembered when," or "She remembered the day." This technique leaves no question that the character is stepping back in time, but is a little less seamless and elegant than some of the other techniques discussed above.

Using the past tense and providing just one transitional sentence between the scene at hand and the flashback is one of the most effective ways to dip into the past without jarring the reader too far out of the present narrative.

how to use flashback scenes

A flashback is still a scene for all practical purposes, but since the scene has already happened, it does not need to do quite as much, and can be a great deal shorter than a typical scene. You don't need to do nearly as much work with the setting, for instance, because setting details slow down the pace and attract the reader's attention; with a flashback, you want to focus on action, information, and character interactions.

In all essential ways you structure a flashback like any other type of scene, except you take into consideration the role of each flashback. Here are reasons to use flashbacks:

• The past is directly responsible for present plot.
In some narratives, the significant situation of the plot may stem directly from something that happened in the past, and that past event may need to be reopened in order for the reader to understand what happened. Flashback scenes are very useful in this case.

A good example of this comes from Elizabeth Kostova's sprawling gothic novel,
The Historian,
about a father's legacy to his daughter, linked to the existence of the real Dracula. The significant situation occurs when the daughter finds a strange book in her father's study, along with an unusual note. When she asks him about it, he tells her about the night when he first found the book:

You already know, my father said, that before you were born I was a professor at an American university. Before that, I studied for many years to become a professor. At first I thought I would study literature. Then, however, I realized I loved true stories even better than imaginary ones.

What is masterful about Kostova's transitions into the past is that they are elegant and subtle, so the reader never feels herself moving through time. The scene above opens with the narrator's father talking
—in the frontstory—
to his daughter. Then, slowly, as you can see in the next example, she shifts out of the frontstory with just a few sentences; with the use of the phrase "one spring night" the scene slides into the past, and then very quickly she sets the scene of flashback so quietly with the words "I was in my carrel" that the reader doesn't think about the fact that she's moved into the past—the reader is just immediately drawn there. It's a brilliant technique:

One spring night when I was still a graduate student, I was in my carrel at the university library, sitting alone very late among rows and rows of books. Looking up from my work, I suddenly realized that someone had left a book whose spine I had never seen before among my own textbooks, which sat on a shelf above my desk. The spine of this new book showed an elegant little dragon, green on pale leather.

I didn't remember ever having seen the book there or anywhere else, so I took it down and looked through it without really thinking. The binding was soft, faded leather, and the pages inside appeared to be quite old. It opened easily to the very center. Across those two pages I saw a great woodcut of a dragon with spread wings and a long looped tail, a beast unfurled and raging, claws outstretched. In the dragon's claws hung a banner on which ran a single word in Gothic lettering: DRAKULYA.

Notice, too, that even though the flashback scene takes place before the significant situation and the narrator's storyline, it still meets the criteria of a scene: There is setting, action, a protagonist, dramatic tension, suspense, and most importantly, a sense of relevance to the narrator's plotline.

The Historian
is built on a weaving of past and present, and eventually the two storylines merge. The past catches up with her father—in the narrator's present. When the narrator's father goes missing, she becomes involved in the search for him, Dracula, and the mother she never knew. The flashback scenes prepare the reader for this plot direction.

This type of structure works well when you intend to merge the past and present events—that is, when the events of the past will come into play in your protagonist's life in the present storyline. This is why the flashbacks in
The Historian
begin early on in the narrative—they continue, coming more and more into the recent past, until the past and the present merge.

If you're only going to use flashbacks to illustrate or deepen the reader's understanding of a character, you may want to let a bit more action unfold, getting further into the plot before throwing in a flashback, as flashbacks can slow the pace and lose the reader's interest in the first part of your narrative.

• You need to create a more suspenseful plot.
When you want to use the

past as a way to create suspense in your plot, then you will absolutely need to use flashback scenes to let the reader see the events of the past in limited bites.

For example, in Mary Doria Russell's bold novel
The Sparrow,
Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz returns in 2059 as the sole survivor of a mission sent more than seventeen years before to make contact with the first known sentient alien life, on the planet Rhakat. All the reader knows early on in the narrative is that Emilio Sandoz—once a respected Jesuit priest—behaved in such a way while there that he is now referred to as a "whore" and "child killer," this based on what little information the rescue team was able to provide. Emilio's hands have also been mutilated beyond use, and he is too traumatized by events to discuss anything.

The front storyline revolves around Sandoz's superiors interrogating him so that they can decide what to do with him and how to punish him. The reputation of the Jesuit priesthood rests heavily on their decision, since media attention is focused on his story.

Through careful flashback scenes of the actual mission in Emilio's point of view, Russell builds suspense as she slowly dips back in time, showing us a man who does not seem capable of being the "child killer" he is accused of being. Here's an excerpt of a scene in which the reader gets to see Sandoz in the past for ourselves:

Then a juvenile, much smaller than anyone who'd spoken earlier, came forward with another adult, who spoke reassuringly before gently urging the little one to approach Emilio alone.

She was a weedy child, spindly and unpromising. Seeing her advance, scared but determined, Emilio slowly dropped to his knees, so he would not loom over her, as the adult had loomed over him. They were, for the moment, all alone together, the others of their kinds forgotten, their whole attention absorbed. As the little one came closer, Emilio held out one hand, palm up, and said, "Hello."

This
Emilio seems like a thoughtful man in the flashbacks, and in the disparity between what his superiors believe of him in the frontstory and what the reader actually sees in the flashbacks, suspense is built.

In order to use flashback scenes to build suspense, you need to dole out plot information slowly and be sure that each flashback provides a new piece of information. In Emilio's case, the reader sees that Emilio is a man who can be patient and kind to a child, which contrasts starkly with being a "child killer." But this is not the end of his story—it's only about halfway through the novel—so there is still a note of uncertainty about what kind of man Emilio is and how events might have changed him. The reader has to keep reading! Withholding crucial plot details keeps the reader engaged and reading on.

• You need to convey character depth and
death.
There are plenty of instances in fiction when a character has had an effect on the protagonist but is now either dead or not present in the frontstory. Yet you still want to show the effect this absent character has had on your protagonist. Narrative summary just doesn't cut it when it comes to understanding character depth or motivation. You'll need to use a flashback scene to render the effects visible to readers.

In Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel
Anansi Boys,
protagonist Fat Charlie is planning his wedding to his fiancee, Rosie. In an early scene they have a conversation about how she wants him to invite his estranged father to the wedding, and Fat Charlie wants nothing of the sort. He explains to Rosie that his father was a man who constantly embarrassed him at the most inappropriate times. There is no reason to doubt Fat Charlie, but the reader doesn't really relate to his feelings yet, either, so there's a need for proof of how embarrassing his father really was. So Gaiman takes the reader back in time to offer an experience of Fat Charlie's father. In the excerpt below, Charlie's mother is in the hospital for cancer treatment, and his father shows up out of the blue to visit her in a most unusual manner:

Coming down the hospital corridor, ignoring the protests of nurses, the

stares of patients in pajamas and of their families, was what appeared to

be a very small New Orleans jazz band. There was a saxophone and a

sousaphone and a trumpet. There was an enormous man with what looked like a double bass strung around his neck. There was a man with a bass drum, which he banged. And at the head of the pack, in a smart checked suit, wearing a fedora hat and lemon yellow gloves, came Fat Charlie's father. He played no instrument but was doing a soft-shoe-shuffle along the polished linoleum of the hospital floor, lifting his hat to each of the medical staff in turn, shaking hands with anyone who got close enough to talk or attempt to complain.

Fat Charlie bit his lip, and prayed to anyone who might be listening that the earth would open and swallow him up or, failing that, that he might suffer a brief, merciful and entirely fatal heart attack. No such luck. He remained among the living, the brass band kept coming, his father kept dancing and shaking hands and smiling. ...

"Fat Charlie," he said, loudly enough that everyone in the ward — on that floor—in the hospital—was able to comprehend that this was someone who knew Fat Charlie, "Fat Charlie, get out of the way. Your father is here."

Fat Charlie got out of the way.

The band, led by Fat Charlie's father, snaked their way through the ward to Fat Charlie's mother's bed. She looked up at them as they approached, and she smiled.

The flashback offers us insight into Charlie's father, who is not present in the real-time scene, and who, Charlie learns when he tries to track him down, is recently deceased. Without this insight, Charlie's resistance to having his father come to the wedding would not have any impact, and the reader would not believe him.

What's crucial about this flashback is its length. When writing flashbacks, you should also strive to make yours brief. It hones in on the memory for not much more than a page and then returns to the present. Remember to keep your flashbacks short, or else quickly paced so they hold the reader's attention.