Regardless of whether you love them or loathe them, flashbacks are a great tool to use when writing your novel. Among other things, they allow you to get info to your readers that can be relatable, quick, and merge well with the story you’re telling, and help to solidify character actions.

While that might sound like some heavy lifting for a writing element that is sometimes only a single line, flashbacks can be that powerful, and here are some dos and don’ts for using them to their best advantage.

Flashbacks work when they’re triggered in the right way. If your character’s flashback comes out of thin air because you just want the info of the flashback in a particular part of the story, you’re doing yourself, your characters, and your readers a disservice.

To get it right, use something in the current moment of your character’s life as a trigger. For example, let’s say you need your readers to know that your MC was in a terrible car accident. One day, when working at their office job, they flash back to that moment. For the reader, this may seem odd since the character isn’t doing anything but tapping away on their keyboard. But what if they’re in the office kitchen, someone drops a glass, and the sound of the shattering shards triggers the flashback?

That distinct noise takes the MC back to the moment the windshield of their car broke, shards raining down on them. Now it’s not so odd for them to think of that moment during their mundane office job.

Triggers help the flashbacks ring true for the character and reader, so work them in using the five senses or a past memory sparked by a present moment to keep the flashback relevant to the story and to make it feel natural.

The fastest way to fail with a flashback is to use it to info-dump your character’s entire history.

Flashback info-dumps do nothing but slow the pace and frustrate readers. Like all good character info/history, anything a flashback brings to the story should be drip-fed.

Let that history come out in well-placed, small flashbacks that impart the info in bits and pieces at the right moment. That way, the reader can gather the picture over time, not be hit with it all at once.

If you info-dump everything during a flashback, it can make the right info too hard to remember.

As another example, say your flashback needs to establish that the MC is allergic to honey because it will be relevant in the final chapter. To build the character, you also want readers to know the MC loved visiting farmers’ markets because they went to them as a kid with their father on visitation weekends during a messy divorce.

Any of these details: the honey allergen, the farmer’s market love, the farmer’s market visits, visitation rights, and the messy divorce can be drip-fed throughout the story in different flashbacks. A sentence here and there and a paragraph in a different chapter will do it. Where it gets messy is when all of it is info-dumped at the same time.

Suddenly, the most important nugget of information—the honey allergen—is lost in a flashback info-dump. The childhood memories and the messy divorce may be what readers remember, making a later allergic reaction to honey something that comes out of nowhere for anyone who missed the mention in the flashback.

To avoid the important part of a flashback getting lost in details, use one flashback to highlight the info you need remembered, and drip-feed everything else in other chapters.

Just like giving flashbacks only when necessary, keeping them as puzzle pieces is a great way to up reader interest.

Instead of readers rolling their eyes that yet another flashback is happening, make your flashbacks so intriguing that they’re clues the reader will want to collect until everything comes together.

They should create mystery and add tension, not just explain why your character likes bikes because you like bikes and wanted to show off your knowledge.

Puzzle-piece flashbacks can give your readers a satisfying finish when each flashback slots into place to give them the overall picture by the last page.

Flashbacks are supposed to add mystery and give “Ah, huh!” moments to the main story, not distract from it.

If you find your flashbacks are bigger than the main story, or are something that takes the reader on a boring side-quest, as half of chapter six is spent revealing your MC once raced go-carts and it has nothing to do with anything else in the book, remove that flashback.

Remember, flashbacks should hint at an event in the past to give a present event more weight, not take the reader on a multi-page journey that keeps them in the past instead of current events.

While you can get away with a longer flashback if it’s super relevant to the plot, flashbacks work best when kept short. A simple line in chapter five or a paragraph in chapter eleven that relates, shows reasons, or builds on your character or their history with others is all a flashback needs to do, and you don’t need multiple chapters to do that.

While a flashback is great for revealing a character’s past and letting a reader know who they are and why they are the way they are in the present, a flashback can also be the spark to a bigger fire.

Using brief flashbacks to show a truth or a partial truth that changes things when fully revealed in the main plot can keep your readers turning pages. These tiny flashback breadcrumbs can also change where readers thought the story was going, so spark away!

When using these dos and don’ts to shape your flashbacks, you’re adding an element to your story that will encourage readers to seek what happens next, while also creating a character that feels real as each flashback gives insight into their personality, past, and motivation.

It’s a win-win, and one that can be established with a rightly placed flashback.

— K.M. Allan

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