Forum / A question for the group regarding fiction in the long form.

• 
  RW Spryszak

  Jan 28, 10:26pm

  Flashbacks or straight through?

  Recognizing that, traditionally, not generally appropriate for the novella and that it will always come down to a matter of style but also execution; in general which do you prefer and why?

  The story a to b to c, or placing bits of the past to enhance the motivations?

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Jan 28, 10:58pm

  It's not that simple. In general, I get very annoyed with writers who start you off in the middle and then flash back at some peak point to a time I don't care about. I just want to know what happens next. On the other hand, in my holocaust childhood writing, I am writing in b with a constantly weaving in and out, the past constantly in the present, until I get to c. I resent when a is used to manipulate the reader. In my own writing, I know no other way to tell the story.

• 
  James Claffey

  Jan 29, 02:38am

  i'm a fucker for flashbacks/cutaways, but i'm reining it in, adopting the more straightforward model, unless i'm convinced otherwise. i prefer flashbacks, partly because i like the disjointed story, the kaleidoscope at work, so to speak.

• 
  Gary Hardaway

  Jan 29, 03:35am

  Multiple narratives with points of intersection are most interesting- like V and Gravity's Rainbow. Non-linear, allowing extraordinary complexity and breadth.

• 
  Janice D. Soderling

  Jan 30, 12:46am

  I have to admit that I am a sucker for leisurely, descriptive narration. The kind that makes you stop, go back and re-read the page or the paragraph, roll it around on your tongue even though you're reading silently. Flannery O'Connor, Elizabeth Bowen. There are excellent writers now active who can do that kind of narration so well, that they regularly appear in "Best of", in Atlantic, in the New Yorker.

  That would be my answer if I had a gun to my head and required to make a choice.

  I'm not so keen on flashbacks that are discernible as such. But I like it when the story is chopped up and served in chunks--white space serving as passing time.

  It all boils down to the answer you don't want to hear, Bob, the writer can serve it to me any way he/she likes if it holds my interest. But you know that already so, okay, a,b,c narration, but it's hard to do and do it well.

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Jan 30, 11:30am

  I walk it out at home. I walk forward into my past. I trace the linear development on the woven border of a Persian carpet and I step to the side and in and out to honor brief flashbacks and swing, reminding myself of people who waltz or other ballroom dance, name unknown to me.

• 
  Gessy Alvarez

  Jan 30, 03:45pm

  The dance needs to be intricate and well-paced between past and present in order for it to work.

  The cut needs to feel painless to the reader. If you as writer can figure out the magic, then you are golden.

  It all comes down to music, rhythm, a preoccupation that enhances the action rather than take attention away.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 30, 04:38pm

  Flashbacks, a killing ground for some, can be delightful when properly handled, quietly, insinuating. In one novel, it was my habit to present them in italics, poetically rendered, little stories outside the thread that enhance the theme.

  In others, I tend to use them as thought... or as recollection in dialogue between the one who remembers and the one who asks questions... Sometimes the better path is in quiet tones of inner monologue, but always with the understanding that memory tends to override the facts, that the author lies to himself... and you should place clues to the inaccuracy in recollection ahead of time in the narrative. We are all imperfect witnesses. It is part of our nature, a natural inclination.

  Otherwise, generally, a narrative in the perspective of advancing time is the most engaging, the most generous method a writer can use.

  If you care about your reader, you'll give him or her space to be manipulated, time in which to decide questions. Mystery is the moment in which you can detain your audience, capoture them. People do and will judge possibilities. If you must impress them, do so with subversion. Such is art.

  There are no rules, only possibilities. Therein lies the attraction.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Jan 30, 04:40pm

  capoture = capture... a la Truman Capote?

• 
  Mathew Paust

  Jan 31, 08:12pm

  I write intuitively, rather than map things out and consciously try to manipulate the reader. I also read intuitively. A story works or not. If it doesn't, I usually don't bother much trying to determine why, unless it's close to something I'm trying to do or have tried to do. If it works, it's magic, and maybe the alchemy will lodge somewhere within me to emerge unbeckoned when I'm writing.

  If flashbacks feel right, in they go, but I don't set out to develop a narrative intending to employ that device or not. I assume that whatever I write will not be everybody's cup of tea. If it were I'd smile but know I wasn't really writing.

• 
  John Riley

  Feb 01, 02:33am

  This is the type of decision I tend to make a rule for so I can enjoy breaking it. Question: when a first person narrator is telling the story about something that happened in the past is that considered to be a flashback? Is all of "Moby Dick" or "Heart of Darkness" a flashback?

• You must log in to reply to this thread.