flashbacks - style, tense

[AyJay]

Looking for some feedback on writing flashbacks in my novel. I don't want to go the route of italicizing or setting the scene off from the rest of the story. I have some pretty short (1-2 paragraph) recollections of the MC that I think can be pretty well integrated with the rest of the action.

I'm getting tripped up a bit with using the past compound tense in these segments however. My novel is third-person past tense, so to show that the MC is remembering things in the past, I'm having to use a lot of "had."

Here's an example:

Aerander had been lying around in the family parlor, and he did not know at what point he had caught the conversation. But his ears had perked up when Thessala had mentioned a boy from the city who had died that day. He was the son of a well-known moneylender, and Thessala had said that he was about the same age as Aerander. The father was insisting that the governors investigate the matter. The boy had been perfectly healthy when he had gone to bed for the night, but the parents woke up the next morning to find him dead.

Maybe this is grammatically correct, but it reads clunky to me. Do you think I could get away with starting things off past compound to show that the action is back, back, then switch to simple past?

[JustGo]

I recommend writing flashbacks in the same tense as the rest of your story. If you don't want to do italics, do something else to set it off - put "Ten Years Ago" at the top of the page, or mention that the character is dreaming, or, more subtly, make it clear how much younger the characters are in this scene (this can be done many ways; if they don't look much younger, perhaps they didn't have a scar they now have, or wore a different style of clothing).

Whatever you do, do not write a bunch of passive sentences with empty words like that! Toss out those was's and had's!

[maestrowork]

Basically, once you established the time using a past perfect tense, you can ease back into simple past unless it is really necessary (to denote something happening before something else: "I had eaten lunch before I went to work").



Aerander had been lying around in the family parlor, not knowing at what point he had caught the conversation. But his ears perked up when Thessala mentioned a boy from the city who died that day. He was the son of a well-known moneylender, and Thessala said he was about the same age as Aerander. The father insisted the governors investigate the matter. The boy was perfectly healthy when he went to bed for the night, but the parents woke up the next morning to find him dead.



(I also did some light edit: cut some unnecessary "that"s and "ing" words)

[windyrdg]

The best advice I saw said to use the past perfect tense in the initial transition to alert the reader to the time shift. "Things had been very different the day Jenny graduated." From there on go to standard past tense just as you would with the rest of the story. The ideal situation is a seamless blend that takes you and out smothly.

[Alpha Echo]

I agree with windy AND MAESTRO :D. That's how I do it when a character is remembering something.

[AyJay]

Thanks Just, Maestro, Wind. Your responses are very helpful. Maestro - I like your suggested edits.