I've got a thriller I'm writing and there are a series of flash backs. I'm trying to do it so as not to confuse the reader, but with the flashbacks there are revelations that help set up the story. Any thoughts, examples of books that use multiple flashbacks that I can look at to see how it was set up? Thanks
Flashbacks
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I like the well-crafted third-person, omniscient, flashbacks in Lonesome Dove, the 1985 Pulitzer Prize western by Larry McMurtry.
Stephen King's sleeper, The Colorado Kid, is one of the best mysteries I've read in recent years. It's almost totally flashback to a chilling cold case.
Stephen King's sleeper, The Colorado Kid, is one of the best mysteries I've read in recent years. It's almost totally flashback to a chilling cold case.
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- Start in the past. If you have a lot of backstory to cover, might as well start in the past.
- Create two separate time periods. One for the main plot, the second to step back into. The flashbacks spring up when a point needs to be shown in order to make the next scene make sense or to fill in gaps before the next part.
- Focus on a single event to collect the flashbacks around.
- Skip them. Yes, yes, yes, we all think that those scenes are absolutely needed to tell the main story, but maybe not to the reader. They can appear sudden, needless, boring. Every story has a past to it, but it doesn't mean you have to show us it or bring it up at every relevant point in time. Sometimes, not showing the past makes the main story stronger.
- Create two separate time periods. One for the main plot, the second to step back into. The flashbacks spring up when a point needs to be shown in order to make the next scene make sense or to fill in gaps before the next part.
- Focus on a single event to collect the flashbacks around.
- Skip them. Yes, yes, yes, we all think that those scenes are absolutely needed to tell the main story, but maybe not to the reader. They can appear sudden, needless, boring. Every story has a past to it, but it doesn't mean you have to show us it or bring it up at every relevant point in time. Sometimes, not showing the past makes the main story stronger.
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I used the two separate time periods approach for the first half of my time travel book. The two come together in the middle of the book.
Margaret Atwood has written a number of books that take place in two timelines that converge at the end of the story. I'm pretty sure Amy Tan has done this sort of thing too.
It's been a while since I've read it, but I believe that Chuck Palahniuk's book "Choke" has quite a few flashbacks to develop the main character's and his mother's relationship dynamic, and none of his work has ever disoriented me.
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