Authors: Lisa Cron
Tell a friend to ask you, “What’s the secret of comedy?” and when she gets to the word “secret,” blurt out
“Timing!”
Sure makes the point, doesn’t it? Truth is, timing is the secret of just about everything, especially
subplots and their close kin, flashbacks. The question is this: once you’ve vetted their viability, how do you know when, exactly, to slide them in and out of the main storyline without accidentally transforming them into digressions? We already know that subplots (ditto flashbacks) sometimes give the reader a breather from the main storyline, often following a strong scene such as a major turning point, sudden revelation, or surprising twist. What we don’t know is how to gauge exactly whether the information in the subplot or flashback is relevant at that moment. So, since flashbacks can be entire subplots, let’s explore them as we discuss the art of timing.
Recently a student told me a writing instructor had made it very clear to him that one of the first rules of writing is never, ever use flashbacks. It reminded me of the time back in elementary school when our teacher told us the best way to stay healthy was to eat lots of red meat, preferably with potatoes. Oh, wait—does that count as a flashback?
Actually, there’s a grain of truth in the advice my student was given—advice I suspect was spurred by frustration. I told him I was sure the instructor had simply read one too many stories in which the narrative stops cold for no apparent reason so the writer can step forward and tell the reader something really important that, if we’re lucky, we’ll need to know later, and if not, that the writer thought was interesting and so threw in for the same reason a dog licks his you-know-whats: because he can. What’s worse, those flashbacks were probably full of pure exposition (telling rather than showing) that went on for page after page.
I told him that what the instructor probably meant was, never use a flashback
poorly
. And because that’s what most aspiring writers do, she probably figured she had her bases covered. Because poorly done, flashbacks completely derail a story.
There’s a footnote. I’d just told that story as a guest lecturer in a colleague’s class when, with a throaty laugh, she said, “Uh, that instructor was me.” Talk about an adrenaline spike! Lucky for me, she quickly added, “And yep, that’s exactly what I meant.” She went on to lament the irreparable harm an ill-advised flashback can do to an otherwise engaging story. She’s absolutely right.
A poorly timed flashback is like some guy incessantly tapping your shoulder in a movie theater just after the protagonist has lost everything. You have no desire to look away from the screen, knowing that the second you do, the spell will be broken. That’s why the guy better be telling you something you need to know right that very minute—like, the theater is on fire, or you’ve just inherited a million dollars.
The trouble with flashbacks and subplots is they yank us out of the story we’re reading and shove us into something we’re not quite sure of. It reminds me of Laurie’s speech to Steve at the end of
American Graffiti
. He’s about to leave for college, and she doesn’t want him to go. “You know,” she says, “it doesn’t make sense to leave home to look for a home, to give up a life to find a new life, to say goodbye to friends you love just to find new friends.”
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Indeed.
That’s precisely what a misplaced flashback feels like. Saying goodbye to a story you love just to find a new one. Which, let’s face it, you may not love as much, if at all. This is exactly what happens when, knowing that at
some
point we’re going to need to know that Pam (mother of Samantha, the protagonist) was raised by wolves, the writer decides that now is as good a time as any to plunk in a flashback of six-year-old Pam stalking prey with the pack. So he randomly inserts it between a scene in which Samantha finally decides to run for mayor and the one where she gives her very first campaign speech. The reader, who was really wrapped up in Samantha’s decision to throw her hat into the ring, is initially confused.
Who’s Pam, and why is she on all fours with a bunch of wolves?
At first we try to find the link between the two stories. Is Samantha going to run on an environmentalist platform? Is this a dream maybe?
But the further we venture into the woods with Pam, the more we realize we have a choice to make. We can either forget about Samantha and throw our allegiance behind this new story or leaf through the book until we find Samantha again, skipping over all this wolf nonsense. It feels like we’re standing on a frozen lake, and the ice beneath us has cracked neatly in two and is beginning to drift apart. We know we can only straddle both sides for so long before we have to leap onto one or the other—or fall into the water and freeze to death. And since, ironically, the flashback is the one moving forward, that’s usually the ice floe we take refuge on.
So off we go with the wolves. And chances are it will get pretty good. Who needs Samantha, anyway? Running with the wolves is much more fun than listening to a newbie’s rambling political discourse. But just when our allegiance shifts to Pam, the author deposits us in some stuffy high school auditorium where Samantha is nervously taking the stage. Except now it’s Pam we miss. Not to mention that we’re still trying to figure out what the foray into the woods has to do with anything, anyway. It doesn’t matter if
later on
we find out that Pam is Samantha’s mom, because right now, at this moment, we’re lost—which means that we very well might not get to later.
But do we really need a long flashback to tell us this? Couldn’t a few well-placed snippets of backstory do the trick? Very possibly. And hey, what’s the difference between backstory and flashbacks anyway?
This is a question that often comes up, and the answer is yes, they are. Same material, different uses. Backstory is just that—everything that happened before the story began—and as such it is the raw material from which all flashbacks are drawn. So what’s the difference between a flashback and weaving in backstory? It’s simple. A flashback, being an actual scene complete with dialogue and action, stops the main
storyline; weaving in backstory doesn’t. Backstory is, in fact, part of the present.
Neatly woven in, backstory is a mere snippet, a fragment of memory, or even an attitude born of something that happened in the past and runs through the protagonist’s mind as he experiences, and evaluates, what is happening to him in the present.
Here is a perfect example from Walter Mosley’s novel
Fear Itself
. The novel takes place in Watts in the 1950s, and in this snippet, protagonist Paris Minton is thinking about why he seems willing to continually put his life on the line for his friend, Fearless Jones:
Anyone who knew me and didn’t know Fearless would have been surprised that I would have put myself in such a potentially dangerous situation. To the world in general I was a law-abiding worrywart. I shied away from drugs and crap games, stolen merchandise and any scheme that might in any way be construed as unlawful. I never bragged (except about my sexual endowment), and the only time I ever acted tough was to shout at caged animals.
But when it came to Fearless I was often forced to become somebody else. For a long time I thought it was because he had once saved my life in a dark alley in San Francisco. And that certainty did have a big effect on my feelings toward him. But in recent months I have come to realize that something about Fearless compelled me to be different. Partly it was because I felt a deep certainty that no harm could come to me when I was in his presence. I mean, Theodore Timmerman should have killed me on that street, but Fearless stopped him even though it was impossible. But it was more than just a feeling of security. Fearless actually had the ability to make me feel as if I were more of a man when I was in his company. My mind didn’t change, and in my heart I was still a coward, but even though I was quaking I stood my ground more times than not when Fearless called on me.
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Rendered in stark simplicity that makes it all the more compelling, the passage illuminates Paris’s point of view, giving us insight into how he sees the world, what he values, and most important, why. And in so doing, it also gives us several salient details about his past, without once stopping the story.
A flashback does the same thing but presses the story’s pause button to do it, demanding the reader’s full and complete attention. Which means it better have a clear reason for doing so at that very moment, lest it become another of those poorly placed, ill-thought-out flashbacks that drove my colleague to the conclusion that it’s better to ban them altogether than put them in the hands of those who would use them only to shoot their stories in the foot.
The good news is, there’s a nifty set of clear cause-and-effect rules that govern the seamless flitting back and forth between a flashback or subplot and the main storyline:
• The only reason to go into a flashback is that, without the information it provides, what happens next won’t make sense. Thus there is a specific need—or cause—that triggers the flashback.
• This cause needs to be clear, so we know, from the second the flashback begins, why we’re going into it. We must have a pretty good sense of why we need this information
now
. And as the flashback unfolds, we always need to sense how it relates to the story that’s been put on hold.• When the flashback ends, the information it provided must immediately—and necessarily—affect how we see the story
from that point on. The flashback needs to have given us information without which what’s about to happen wouldn’t have quite made sense. This isn’t to say it can’t also have given us information whose significance we won’t learn until later—but it can’t be only that.
It happens all the time. You’ve carefully plotted out your protagonist Stephanie’s gauntlet of challenge, and she’s doing quite well indeed, until suddenly she discovers that in order to uncover the
real
truth about Uncle Cedric, she has to hide in that teeny tiny broom closet under the stairs for who knows how long, which is fine, until you remember that you gave her claustrophobia back in
chapter 2
to explain why she couldn’t take her niece Becky on the ill-fated submarine ride at Disneyland. Now what? If you ignore the fact that she has claustrophobia and let her spend the evening crouched in that stuffy closet anyway, your readers instantly spot it, and this being the digital age, waste no time in shooting you a snide email telling you so. But if you go back and let her take Becky on the damn ride, it will change everything that’s happened since. So what do you do? This is where a little foreshadowing comes in very handy.
At some point between the aborted submarine ride and when she has to head into the closet, Steph might reflect on her need to overcome her fear of small spaces. And so each time she trudges up the thirty flights of stairs to her office she thinks,
Geez, if only that elevator wasn’t so small
. That way, when at last she has to squeeze in amid the brooms, mops, and dust rags, instead of its being a groaner, it’s another of those well-established hurdles that we’re rooting she’ll make it over.
Don’t underestimate the damage even a short-lived logic glitch can inflict. For instance, let’s say we know that Rhonda loves Todd with all her heart. It’s their anniversary, and she’s on her way to the market to buy ingredients for the romantic dinner she’s planning to make him, when she catches a glimpse of Todd kissing a mysterious stranger. But instead of fireworks, or waterworks, Rhonda doesn’t give it a second thought. However, the reader does. Because suddenly Rhonda is acting completely out of character. We’re dying to call the author and ask him what the hell is going on.
Were we to do just that, chances are he’d chuckle and tell us not to worry. Rhonda has a perfectly good (albeit currently unfathomable) reason for it, which he’d point out is right there in the very next paragraph, if only we’d had the patience to read another measly line or two.
So, who’s right, the writer or the reader?
The reader, every time. Here’s why: as far as the reader is concerned, the second Rhonda sees Todd smooching someone else and
doesn’t
react, the story comes to a screeching halt. Suddenly it doesn’t make sense, catapulting the reader out of the story and into her conscious mind. The result? She pauses, right then and there, and thinks about it. She wonders whether she’s missed something along the way. Was Todd the one who had occasional bouts of amnesia, maybe? And although that pause may last only a nanosecond, it stops the story’s momentum cold. That’s why, even if the answer is in the very next sentence, it won’t do a thing to remedy the problem. How could it?
Because it’s already happened
.
Don’t let it.
The flip side is that there’s absolutely nothing your protagonist can’t do—be it fly, walk through walls, or recite the dictionary backward—provided you’ve foreshadowed this unusual talent long before it
becomes the only way out of a sticky situation. So if you’re going to shatter, bend, or reinterpret any of the laws of the universe—established laws we take for granted—you need to give us fair warning. This is especially crucial when you’re dabbling in science fiction, fantasy, or magical realism. While you’re utterly free to turn your characters loose in a world completely of your own creation, this gives you the added responsibility of not only establishing the rules of logic by which that world operates, but also of rigorously sticking to them. That way, when you foreshadow a change, the reader will have a good idea what it’s a change
from
.