Flashing back and forth

Sometimes, the constraints of linear storytelling can be a real difficulty. We might consider a story to be, at its core, a series of connected events that happen one after the other, but we don't necessarily tell it that way. Sometimes we need to go back in time partway through a story to provide context or reveal hidden details at a point where that information becomes relevant; other times, we may wish to build tension—or resolve it—by providing a glimpse of the future.

The flashback is a technique as old as storytelling itself; it appears in ancient Hindu texts and The Arabian Nights. You're probably familiar with it already: it's a scene from the past which is brought into the present time of the narrative. There are many reasons why you may want to include a flashback in your story, and a lot of them are about controlling the flow of information. One good use case is when you want to reveal an important element of a character's backstory that took place before the start of the narrative, which helps your readers or audience to better understand the character. You might also use it to reveal a plot point that was previously concealed, such as the murderer's confession in a mystery or the method of a heist. In these situations, a flashback can help convey necessary information through "showing" instead of a block of exposition or explanation that might get clunky pretty quickly.

Flashbacks can also be a core part of a story's structure. They are often used as a framing device, where a present time is established to be after the bulk of the story takes place and the main narrative is then told as something that has already happened (a sort of "how did we get here" approach). This framing is used in a number of classic novels like Frankenstein, and is quite popular in film as well, such as in the cases of Citizen Kane or Double Indemnity. The benefits of flashback as a framing device are varied and specific to each story that uses it: it might be a way of anchoring a fantastic tale to the real world, or it could make it easier to navigate a story that takes place over decades, or it may provide a sense of inevitability and the opportunity for interesting retrospective narration.

Another structural use of flashback is to view the same events through different perspectives. The most famous example of this is the Akira Kurosawa film Rashomon, in which multiple witnesses retell, in turn, their experiences of a crime for the benefit of a court trial. Even though the same general events occur in everyone's versions, the way that these events play out and, critically, their motivations are completely contradictory. Another well-known text that uses flashbacks structurally is the Thornton Wilder novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which is centred on the fatal collapse of the titular bridge and tells the stories of the victims of the disaster and what brought them to the spot. In both of these examples, flashback is essential to understanding the core event and how it affects different characters.

Somewhat less common than the flashback is the flashforward, which is when a scene from the future is inserted into the narrative. This technique must be distinguished from an epilogue, which is placed after the narrative and not within it, and from foreshadowing, which hints at things to come but does not explicitly show them. Flashforwards are rare in novels, and are mostly associated with more experimental or postmodern texts. The best place to find them is in television, where a scene or image from the end of a season or story arc is inserted at the beginning as a bit of a teaser of what's coming. (You may have seen this a lot in shows like Breaking Bad or How to Get Away With Murder.) Using flashforwards in this way is an effective method of building tension and a sense of inevitability, much like a flashback framing device.

When used for single isolated scenes, it's clear when a flashback or flashforward is in play. Things can get a bit foggy, though, with more significant time-jumping. For one thing, you can't really say for sure whether the narrative is flashing back or forward unless you have clearly established a present time. Two or three concurrent timelines split evenly are difficult enough, but if you start mixing things up more than that, can a "present" even really exist? If the story is only loosely connected to chronology, as in the case of the film Pulp Fiction, it's much more useful to think of the whole thing being a non-linear narrative, rather than a linear narrative with occasional flashes into the past or future.

Being able to manipulate time and information is a very useful skill in storytelling. It can help you reveal information effectively at key moments, contextualise your story, explore different perspectives, and adjust tension. Consider some good examples of flashbacks and flashforwards that you've seen. How do they contibute to the narrative, and how might you use them to improve your own work?

Good luck, and happy writing!