A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Flashbacks That Work

Time-Disruptive techniques depend greatly on the author’s intuition. Flashback is the more structured of them all.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Like all Time-Disruptive techniques, flashback is vastly intuitive. The way we organise it and use it in the story depends a great deal on our personal style, the way we build the story, the way we reveal themes. In short, on our narrative voice. And nobody can teach us how to do it. We have to discover it by ourselves through test and trial.

Unlike most of the other Time-Disruptive techniques, which only offer a definition and a set of best practices, flashback also offers a blueprint. It is still only guidance, but indeed there’s a way to plan it out that is largely acknowledged by most authors.

Flashbacks: A Few Tips on Making Them Truly Useful

Here is a step-by-step guide on how I go about it.

Step 1: decide if you really need a flashback

Let’s admit it, flashback is a device we authors incline toward by default. It shows…