How to Write Flashbacks in a Tween Book

The first way to approach the continuation of a book is to move forward in time in a linear fashion. You go from A to B to C to D to E. No stopping, no doubling back. The plot moves in strict chronological order. But often it’s harder to tell a complete and textured story without shifting back and forth in time. Without the use of flashbacks, your story telling options are more limited.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Everything a writer needs, tools and imagination. Also a previously written scene.

1. A flashback is used when you want to shift from the present action of the story into the past. There are several reasons you might want to do this: to clue the reader in on a secret about the hero’s earlier life, to give some background information about a specific plot element or to give the reader some background information about the subplot.
2. In a total flashback, you could open the story with the section that takes place in the present. Then you would shift back to an earlier point in time. In the total flashback, you stay in the past, telling the back story of the hero until you work your way up to the present again.
3. The flashback has a long and venerable history as a story telling device. You can use it in one grand, full-circle sweep, as in the Total Flashback method above. Or you can write the story in a forward time line until you reach a moment where you need to fill in some detail from the past or add a particularly suspenseful or memorable scene. Then you slip into a mini-flashback before returning to the present-time story. This is called a zigzag flashback.
4. Take a scene you wrote and rewrite it again, experimenting with the 3 different ways to tell your story. Forward March, Total Flashback, Zigzag Method. Write 5 pages for each approach, enough so that you get a firm feel for the story and how you’re going to deal with the challenges your beginning presents.

Tips & Warnings

• Flashbacks have several advantages for the writer. They open the story to the past and allow you to include all sorts of information that would be absent in the strict chronological telling of a tale. You can add critical back-stories that lend texture and depth to your narrative. You can convey information about the character and his life that otherwise might be lost.
• Disadvantages of using the Total Flashback: It’s a more demanding technique to master. Unless this approach is executed with skill, the young reader, especially, could get confused about what is happening in the past and what is happening in the present.