![]() ![]() Again, any sensory detail that wakes them up, so-to-speak. The phone or doorbell might ring, or maybe the dog barks. Another character might ask if they’re okay, or might say, “Look out!” because they’re about to walk into a pole. Otherwise, something in the present needs to bring them back to the present. It could be that they come up against a part of the memory that’s too sad or upsetting to think about, so they pull themselves out. Finally, you want something to trigger the end of the flashback, too. Sand is the trigger, so sand is the imagery that opens the flashback. If the character steps in sand and that brings back the beach day, you want to start the flashback with them walking in the sand, touching the sand, brushing sand off of them, etc. For example, if someone has a flashback about a great day at the beach, the trigger would need to relate to the beach or something that happened while they were at the beach.Īlso, you want the trigger to actually pull the character into the flashback. ![]() This trigger must relate to the memory in a way that brings it on. A trigger can be anything from something sensory (a sound, a smell, a taste, a sight, something tactile) or it could even be something someone says. ![]() Regardless of which type you use, you always want to transition into and out of the flashback using triggers. Transitioning Into and Out of the Flashback Since this type of “flashback” takes the whole narrative with it, the “now” and “then” portions of the story are usually separated into their own scenes or chapters.Ī great example of a dual timeline/nonlinear flashback narrative would be the movie/book Fried Green Tomatoes: It’s important not to include this kind of flashback until you’ve done the necessary research on both the trauma itself and this type of flashback.ĭual Timeline/Nonlinear Flashbacks is a narrative device where the story’s entire narrative jumps back in time, either to illustrate a related/parallel story that happened before the current events of the story, or sometimes just to show various moments that occurred at points prior to the current timeline. Psychological Flashbacks are illustrations of the real world psychological phenomenon where a person is temporarily overwhelmed by traumatic memories that are so vivid, they mistakenly believe they are experiencing the trauma all over again. In fact, in a “vivid memory” flashback, you probably want the dialogue to account for less than a third of the text. ![]() Just as with any scene, you don’t want to overdo it with the dialogue, though. Vivid memory flashbacks are more coherent than snippets and play out like a scene or partial scene. Vivid Memories qualify as “flashbacks” because they take the character (and reader) out of the current moment and put them physically back into the past moment, as though it’s playing out in real time. Snippets may include spoken words, but rarely anything longer than a sentence or phrase. On the page, this probably won’t go longer than a paragraph or two. Snippets are quick but vivid flashes of images that relate to a memory. However, it also depends on the type of flashback you’re writing. You can absolutely include dialogue in a flashback, and it’s actually done quite often. Asked by Anonymous Flashback with Dialogue ![]()
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