Speaker 1: In my video on pacing, we discussed the side-quest problem, where obstacles in the plot may extend the story, but ultimately don't contribute to narrative payoff in the end, meaning those obstacles grind the story's pacing to a halt. Like, for example, Random Sequence, where I say, Today's video is sponsored by CuriosityStream, which you can watch for free at www.curiositystream.com slash hellofutureme. Links down below. Flashbacks often face a similar pacing problem, because the reader is forced to step away from the core narrative, what is often called the front story, to learn about the past, something often unrelated, with stakes that they may not care about. Now, this doesn't need to be the case, but I want to be clear about this. The most important question about flashbacks and backstory before you put them in your book is this. Part 1. Should it be included at all? One of the most common mistakes that I see is writers thinking that because there is backstory, it must be communicated. But, it's false. No way. This one was invented by a writer. The skill is in knowing which stuff to include and which stuff to summarize or leave out. So, let's look at a good example in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The character Gatsby is desperately in love with a daisy, who is married to another man, and all the wealth he makes in the story is to win her over. And in a flashback as detailed as any other dramatic scene in the book, Fitzgerald takes the time to recount how Gatsby thought himself worthless when he met her, as a penniless man without a past. And yet, because he managed to disguise that through his military uniform, they shared a passionate time together. Fitzgerald works to show us what John Truby would call Gatsby's ghost, the source of the hero's psychological and moral weakness, believing that his wealth is his worth. Now, you might conclude from this example that if it's a defining moment for your character, it should be included. But once again, It's totally made up. Pure fiction. It's fiction. The distinction is relevance to the narrative. While this backstory helps us understand why Gatsby is the way he is, his ghost, that's not all it is. The tension in The Great Gatsby comes from Gatsby's reckless pursuit of Daisy, that ultimately culminates in his death. And the theme of the story is about the failure of the American dream, rags to riches. This flashback is crucial to understanding both of those things, by heightening the narrative tension around Gatsby's reckless pursuit, and developing the major theme of how easy and toxic it is to associate wealth with happiness. Now, this is a pretty broad rule, but what I'm trying to get at here is that flashbacks that work, don't only provide backstory exposition, whether they're sympathetic or not. They have to provide something else as well, often helping develop theme or tension for the narrative payoff. Which is why flashbacks so often relate to a character arc, because we derive tension from those in the story. Backstory that just gives more information about a character, doesn't necessarily feel that relevant to the narrative, and thus, slows the pacing. And to be honest, there are more efficient ways of explaining motivation, or inspiring sympathy for a character, that don't require the reader to step away from the front story and risk stalling the pacing. Especially because showing how the emotional experiences of a character's past affects them now, is often more moving for a reader. Backstory, like a lot of worldbuilding, is like an iceberg. The reader may only see parts relevant to the story, even if the author knows that there's a lot more down there. And this is why the fact that anime gives every single secondary character an entire episode of backstory, can be so frustrating. But I personally feel that relevance to the narrative is a pretty high bar when it comes to flashbacks. In my book, a character has a traumatic backstory, but I never actually flashback to those traumatic events themselves. Even though they have intense, dramatic, emotional weight, and they are seemingly related to the themes of the story. This is because depicting it wouldn't actually help understand the character, or directly build tension, because the story's really about the struggles of dealing with trauma in the years after. And I want to develop empathy based on those experiences, not simply the trauma itself. Now, it wouldn't be bad writing to include it, but I just don't think there's the justification there needed for it. Even for such a major event for one of my main characters. And if I did include it, I fear it could be kind of gratuitous. But there are two exceptions that I want to touch on. Firstly, you want to include it. This is your book, your creative control matters, if you want to include those flashbacks and you're passionate about it, go for it. Secondly, it's a different case for parallel stories, which take place in two different time frames, like Arrow. If you are creating a whole story arc with these flashbacks, then they don't necessarily need to be relevant to the other storyline, because it's ultimately an independent narrative, whereas effective flashbacks exist to support the core narrative. That being said, part two, two kinds of flashbacks. So you've figured out which parts of your backstory need to be included as flashbacks, but how long and detailed should they be? Well, there are kind of two different types of flashback on a spectrum as methods of exposition delivery. Half scenes, and full scenes. And they each serve different purposes narratively. Let's look at how author John Green uses these two different types. The opening of Paper Towns, where Quentin and Margot find a dead body as children, is a full scene flashback. It's got all the sensory detail any other part of the story would have, it's long at 1,500 words, it's not summarized, and it's even separated into its own chapter. This does two things. A, it signals to the reader that this part of his backstory is particularly relevant to the front story, in a way that characters simply recounting the event might not be. And B, the extra detail gives these moments more dramatic emotional weight, than a character simply summarizing the event would. I recommend checking out my prologues video, if you want more specific advice on when to use a flashback as your prologue, like Green does here. In contrast, consider this half scene flashback in The Fault in Our Stars, where Hazel recalls spending an afternoon with her father in a river, just in conversation. It's briefly summarized, it's short at less than 150 words, and has few lines of quoted dialogue. Half scenes are useful for less important moments of backstory, that still give insight into characters, but they don't risk disrupting the pacing, because they don't take the reader away from the front story. Flashbacks don't need to be as long or short as these, but figuring out which elements of your story are important enough to be full scenes, and which should be half scenes, is up to you as the writer. Just consider those four factors. Narrative importance, dramatic emotional weight, insight into character, and pacing. How much less impactful would Snape's memories of Lillie's be in The Deathly Hallows, as a half scene instead of a full scene? And how annoying would it be to get repeated flashbacks to... Ron's past? In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry spends a lot of time persuading Professor Slughorn, to tell him what he told Tom Riddle about making Horcruxes. Slughorn gave Dumbledore a fake memory, but eventually gives up the real one to Harry, and the story has a full scene flashback to the past. Even though told from the perspective of Harry, it is fundamentally backstory, but it works for a couple of reasons. Firstly, mystery. Rowling takes careful page time to invest the reader in a question. What did Slughorn tell Voldemort, we wonder? And she gives an answer in a flashback. Brandon Sanderson talked about this technique in saying, Flashbacks let you build a mystery, and then answer it, or build a mystery, and then continue it in an interesting way. So it's often more about the information that the reader knows you're withholding from them, rather than the information that you give them. Secondly, Rowling's flashbacks actively move the narrative forward, instead of slowing the pacing. When flashbacks work well, they are adding to the forward momentum of the story, by giving the reader the information they need, to understand the context of what's at stake. The backstory doesn't only build theme or tension, like in The Great Gatsby, but Rowling structured her story so that, learning what Slughorn told Riddle, actively moves the story into the third act, by establishing new stakes, destroying the Horcrux. It doesn't just feel like we're halting the pacing at all. Fundamentally, some flashbacks work because, though they step away from the front story chronologically, they stay with it in terms of narrative momentum. So, give the flashbacks something to change your story going forward. Maybe it reveals a foreshadowed secret, or it introduces a new problem. Now, there are some pretty broad guidelines about, not having flashbacks in the first 50 pages, or the first 5 chapters, but... It's a made-up tale. It's a total fabrication. It's true that randomly splicing flashbacks across your story, will be jarring for the reader, and stall the pacing. So, a lot of writing advice tends to focus on, how to best segue into a flashback. Through a book, or a dream, or a triggered memory, when a character sees something, that sort of thing. But, how you segue in that sense, really doesn't matter if you get it right in terms of, Part 4, Scene Structure. One of the things that a non-linear narrative does for you, is it allows you to present the narrative pieces in the order, that the audience needs for maximum emotional impact. Story structure is less about the chronology of your story, and way more about controlling the order in which the reader experiences things. With this in mind, A common structure used for flashback scenes, is placing them so that they comment on, or give a deeper context to, the front story scene, either immediately before it, or immediately after it. In The Last Airbender, we see a number of flashbacks to Aang's past, during the episode, The Southern Air Temple. In particular, the center around Aang's relationship with Monk Gyatso, his mentor. But, the scene is almost immediately followed up by the discovery, of Monk Gyatso's corpse. The flashback here, not only built into the episode's tension, of Aang discovering the genocide of his people, but, it gave extra context and emotional weight, to the specific scene in the front story that followed it. But let's take scene structure to a deeper level. In Writing Fiction for Dummies, Randy Ingermisson highlights two different types of scenes. Proactive scenes, where a character has a goal, a conflict, and a setback or resolution. And then reactive scenes, which are those that follow proactive scenes, with a reaction, a dilemma, and a decision. You'll notice these in your own writing, but flashbacks are often seamlessly incorporated into reactive scenes. Here's how. In The Last Time We Say Goodbye by Cynthia Hand, the character Lex is struggling to stop blaming herself for the suicide of her brother. In this, Hand writes a proactive scene, where Lex has a goal, trying to stop another boy taking their own life, a conflict, she has to break into his house, and a setback. She finds out that her brother called this boy the night he died. The reactive scene that follows, perfectly segues into a flashback of the night her brother died. We see her reaction, this is a deep shock, she faces a dilemma, she doesn't know how to deal with her intense emotions, and she makes a decision. She processes them by journaling her memory of the night he died. Flashbacks often detail the emotional makeup, or explain the thinking of a character. So they very naturally fit into exploring the emotional reaction that they have, or how they deliberate on the dilemma by showing how they've dealt with things in the past, or how Cynthia Hand does it by integrating it into the decision part. Fundamentally, how you segue into a flashback is a lot less important than where you fit it into your scene structure and narrative overall. If you get that right, I honestly don't think it matters that much. Though, I will bring up one technique mentioned by YouTuber Shaylin Writes in a video linked down below about filter words. Filter words are verbs like realized, noticed, remembered, recalled. They remind the reader that they are being told about a thing rather than being shown. Consider this passage in Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park. But Park hadn't thought about that either the first time he saw Eleanor on the bus. He remembered thinking that it was bad enough that she looked the way she did. He remembered feeling embarrassed for her. And now? Now he felt the fight rising up in his throat. These terms remind the reader that they are being told about something rather than showing them it. Imagine if it was written like this. But Park hadn't thought about that either the first time he saw Eleanor on the bus. He thought it was bad enough that she looked the way she did. He felt embarrassed for her. And now? It was a fight rising up in his throat. This feels more immersive because there isn't an extra layer put between the reader and the character's experiences. So, rather than using filter words to begin the flashback, consider just starting it. So long as you indicate when this happened. Also, if anyone's ever told you to just use italics when you're in a flashback, uh...

Speaker 2: It's false. No way. Not this time.

Speaker 1: But sometimes, a flashback doesn't serve to comment on or give a deeper context to the front scene before or after it. But that doesn't mean it's useless. Part 5. Re-contextualization. In Te Chiang's story of your life, the narrative is repeatedly interrupted by a series of odd scenes. The film adaption of this, 2016's Arrival, depicts these scenes as flashbacks for the main character. But the short story depicts them more as a woman imagining her future daughter's life. And then there will be times when I see you laughing, like the time you'll be playing with the neighbor's puppy. But I'm not sleepy, you're whine. That sort of thing. But, what matters here is that these are non-linear scenes. They take us out of the chronological narrative, which is the character talking to the aliens. And they don't really provide any extra context or depth to the front story immediately around them. Until... the end. Now, spoilers for one of the best sci-fi stories and films ever made, but... It turns out that these non-linear scenes are actually flash-forwards in time. Because as the front story progresses, the main character develops the ability to see parts of the future. And she now knows that her daughter, her future daughter, is going to die young. At this point, the front story entirely recontextualizes our understanding of these non-linear scenes with a twist at the end. Littering these scenes across the story was still crucial to the narrative payoff, and the emotional weight of the story and the themes behind it. It just wasn't immediate, like we see in The Half-Blood Prince, Avatar, or My Diary from the Edge of the World. And if it wasn't littered throughout the story, then it wouldn't have been nearly as effective if we showed these ideas after we found that out. And because he knew that there wasn't going to be immediate payoff, Ted Chiang employs a couple of techniques to keep the reader engaged. He writes these non-linear scenes in second-person present tense for the most part. You do this, you do that. And though it reads like a woman imagining the future, it feels off. Because not only would we usually read this kind of scene in past tense or future tense, but the woman suddenly imagines her daughter dying. Something that no hopeful mother would usually do. The reader immediately understands that there's something weird going on here. Chiang subtly introduces a question that he answers at the end. And if you're going to pepper backstory throughout the book, then this is a good model. Building a mystery around them keeps them interesting. Now, remember that quote we had from before about using flashbacks to change chronological order and maximize emotional impact? Yeah, Story of Your Life is a fantastic example of this for that reason. Bringing us to... It's difficult to talk about flashbacks without addressing the context in which they're often used. Traumatic experiences in the past. Now, this isn't the video to get into a metatextual analysis about the social complexities around that. I've actually made a video on writing mental illness. It is the best video I've ever made. It's linked up in the corner. And I really would appreciate you going to watch that if you are interested in that topic. But flashbacks are often used to show the origins of trauma. Particularly through repressed memories. And they are effective as full scenes for all the reasons that we've just discussed. They make clear how important this moment is and afford it the dramatic emotional weight that it probably deserves. But, a couple of things here. One, in terms of developing reader empathy for a character, trauma is just as much about how it affects them now as it is what happened in their past. That's something I see a lot of writers kind of miss. Discussing the traumatic flashbacks in her short story, Madeline, Amali Mota said, What I wanted to do was to really dive deep into the sensory effects of the story. So that you get a sense of what it would be like to have this really dislocating and terrifying thing happen to you. And when she's saying this, she's recognizing that flashbacks in the context of trauma aren't just a narrative device to look back on the past. They're a visceral, emotional, and psychological experience for someone. Looking at how a panic attack and a flashback might happen at the same time, describing the feeling of certain triggering things, like if a victim of abuse was grabbed by the wrist by another character. It might cause a flashback, but describing the actual feeling of being grabbed is really important to understanding the traumatic context here. And as I said before, in my book, I'm not even showing those traumatic events in flashback, because I want my story to be about how they deal with those things now, and the struggles around that. Secondly, memories are not necessarily accurate or concrete, and this is especially true for traumatic or repressed ones. And they don't usually come all flooding back at once in one grand narrative reveal. Now, that doesn't make it bad writing to have accurate flashbacks, or to have a lot of memories all come back at once. But you can use an unreliable narrator for effect. Just remember that people often have nebulous memories. Nebulous. Nebula. That reminds me. It was a grey summer day when I discovered Nebula, a video platform with creators like Just Write, Lessons From The Screenplay, Lindsay Ellis, and others. It was a land of milk and honey. There were no ads at all. Meaning it was built by and for creators. And this magical place, Nebula, I'm on there as well now. And I know how you can try it for free. Through CuriosityStream, the subscription service with thousands of documentaries, like the one that I was watching on that same grey summer day, about the seemingly fantastical tale of Hannibal's March on Rome, crossing mountains with war elephants to march against the greatest empire the world had ever seen. Normally, CuriosityStream is $2.99 a month. But if you go to www.curiositystream.com and use HelloFutureMe as your code at signup, you'll get both CuriosityStream and Nebula for free for a month. Go check it out down below. In summary, firstly, like worldbuilding, not all bank's story needs to be communicated. A good test is whether it is relevant to the narrative, helping develop tension and core theme. This is often through showing the reader the ghost relevant to a character arc. Secondly, flashbacks can be written as half scenes or full scenes. The more narrative importance, the dramatic emotional weight, insight into character a backstory moment has, the more detailed it should be. But the longer it is, the more likely it will slow pacing. Thirdly, flashbacks are often made more effective by generating intrigue and mystery around them before they are revealed. One way to avoid pacing issues is to use them to move the story forward by establishing new stakes, introducing a new problem, changing a character's position in the story, altering how the story works going forward. Fourthly, flashbacks can be used to manipulate story chronology for maximum emotional impact. This is often done by A, using a flashback to comment on the front scene immediately before or after it, and B, using one in a reactive scene following proactive scenes, either in the reaction, dilemma, or decision stages. Fifthly, filter words usually make flashbacks less immersive. These are words like remembered, felt, and recalled. What matters is indicating when it takes place. Sixthly, flashbacks don't need to comment on the front story scene if they're going to be wholly recontextualized by the end through a twist. They still assist in narrative payoff. However, developing a mystery across them will help keep them interesting till that point. And seventh, trauma. Flashbacks can be used to explore trauma, but the experience of trauma is often just as much about how it affects them now as it is what happened. Repressed memories are often unreliable, have gaps, or psychologically painful to recall. But that is all from me. Now, you'd expect that I'd be saying thank you for the money that we raised last week on the charity stream, but I'm filming this before then because I didn't want to screw myself over for work and have to try and pump this out. Videos that I work really hard on, uh, in, like, under a week after doing a 24-hour stream. I didn't think that was possible. But thank you for the money that we raised. We raised this amount. Yeah, really impressive. So go write, figure out if you want to use flashbacks, stay nerdy, and I'll see you in the future. ♪♪♪