Flashback

A flashback is a scene set earlier than the story's present, dropped into the forward narrative to dramatise something that has already happened.

Sol Stein's Stein on Writing passes on the shortest advice anyone has given on the subject: asked how best to handle flashbacks, the master's reply was Don't. Ideally, all fiction seems to be happening now.

That is a starting position rather than a ban, and the exceptions are specific.

When a flashback earns its place

A flashback earns its place when it illuminates the present story in a way nothing in the present could, meaning the reader learns something there that changes what the current scene means. Flashbacks used purely for character backstory stall the book instead, because backstory is information and the reader wanted a scene.

A quick test: cut the flashback and read the scene after it. If that scene means exactly the same thing, the flashback was an info dump in costume.

How to enter and end a flashback in prose

The usual method is a change of tense. In a story told in the past tense, slip into the past perfect (had) for a sentence or two, then settle into the simple past so the scene can breathe. To come out, reverse it: a line of past perfect, or a sensory hook back into the present.

She had been nine the summer the river flooded. Her father had carried her out on his shoulders. The water came up to his chest, and he sang the whole way so she would not hear him breathing.

The kettle clicked off. Mara was forty-one, and the kitchen was dry.

Why it works: two sentences of had signal the move back, the simple past lets the memory play as a scene, and one concrete present-day sound pulls the reader out.

Short memories do not need that machinery. Keep them inside interiority and write them in fragments, since that is how recall actually arrives: in flashes of image rather than continuous footage, triggered by a sense, the way memory is triggered in life.

Flashbacks in a screenplay

On the page, a script marks the way in and the way out, every single time: the heading says it is a flashback (and when), and END FLASHBACK or a heading marked as the present brings us back. The slugline entry shows the formats with worked examples. The only thing worse than an unnecessary flashback is a reader who cannot tell they have left it.

Common mistakes

• A flashback in the first chapter. The reader has no present yet to be interrupted. Earn their interest in now before showing them then.
• No clear exit. The reader is still in 1998 when the story has moved back to the present. Mark the return as clearly as the way in.
• A weak first line. A flashback is a second opening, and it competes with the story it interrupted. Make its first sentence arresting.
• Past perfect all the way through. A page of had is exhausting to read. Two sentences in, then let it go.

Frequently asked questions

How do you end a flashback?

In prose, bring the character back through the senses, a sound or a touch in the present, and return to the story's main tense. In a screenplay, close it explicitly with END FLASHBACK or a new scene heading marked as the present, so the reader always knows which time they are in.

What is the difference between a flashback and backstory?

Backstory is everything that happened before the story began. A flashback is one piece of it staged as a full scene, with action and dialogue. Most backstory never needs a flashback; a line or two of memory is usually enough.