Flashbacks
Right around chapter three, I succumbed to the uncontrollable urge to insert flashbacks into my wip. Four of 'em. About 300 words each, italicized.
I decided to make my hero, if not actually an anti-hero, at least conflicted. To wit, he's working as a snitch for the tyrants, and then agrees to their scheme to pretend to be the predestined liberator of the slaves, so as to expose and deliver any potential rebels to their oppressors. Since this is less than laudable, I wanted to show the reader how he came to do this, and how he justifies it.
It's possible I didn't need to use flashbacks. I think they work. I actually prefer to have a scene that shows us the past as if it is unfolding now rather than read dreary paragraphs of "he had thought" "he had said," etc. If it were a tv show, it would be the piece where suddenly the film turns a slightly different hue. I love those scenes. If integrated right, they add a richness to the storyline.
In a sense, they aren't flashbacks so much as an independent chronology. This is a much stronger feature of my Dindi books, which each has several different interwoven chronologies. For this WIP, I don't plan to employ multiple chronologies much -- they will probably only appear in this chapter.
Comments
One - the novel opens with some dull scene, waking up or on a plane, and immediately uses past perfect to convey backstory.
Two - in the middle of the story, a chapter ends with a cliffhanger, then, inexplicably jumps to the character already safe and sound. The escape from the cliffhanger is then related in the past perfect tense.
Basically, I don't think it's flashbacks people hate, it's the past perfect tense!
Not all stories are best told chronologically.
For Monarch, it has been a pain. I've finally gone with no italics and just transitioning into the memory of the character, using the same tense as the rest of the story.
Either way, I've had to be very careful, and it has taken a lot of work to get things to flow right. For Monarch, I ended up taking out the flashbacks (you remember the jungle scenes?) out altogether, and then I put them back in several drafts later. That book has been such a pain. Amazing what some drafts teach us, huh?
Good luck with yours! I liked your excerpt from your other post. Really interesting, and great descriptions!
I don't think italics should be used for scenes longer than a page. These flashbacks were no more than 300 words each, so I decided it would be more distracting to break for a new scene each time than just use italics. Depends on the work.
I loved the jungle flashbacks in Monarch, so I hope you leave them in, ultimately. I was thinking of Monarch, actually, when I wrote this post. I think that is definitely an instance where you are weaving together two story lines that are not chronological.
Yeah, the flashbacks in italics for Cinders are pretty short. The longest one is probably only 150 - 200 words. I'd have to check.