My NaNoWriMo Experience: A Flashback on Flashbacks
By: Ateret Haselkorn
Tags: NaNoWriMo, Writing, Writing Tips

In October 2014 I was browsing through San Francisco’s Dog Eared Books and stumbled upon No Plot? No Problem! by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty. One month later I was bent over my computer, writing out a 50,000-word novel about a wounded Veteran on a healing trek through a fantastical landscape.

Image Source: Unsplash

Sounds magical? It wasn’t. As Chris and other luminaries promised, the “magic” came in the revision. One of the first pieces of feedback I got in my writer’s group was how difficult it was to navigate through all the flashbacks my main character experienced. I’d started writing one series of events and then flipped back to battle scenes, to his life before enlisting, to his relationship with other characters in the book. Readers were “pulled out” of the story.

Dead set on meeting the 50,000-word goal, I’d motored forward during NaNoWriMo and developed my character, his history, and the plot by putting one word after another. And that’s fine. Remember, writing warriors, to attain 50,000 words you can write all the backstory you want, however you want. Flip the reader forward and backward, it doesn’t matter, because there’s always revision.

Remember, writing warriors, to attain 50,000 words you can write all the backstory you want, however you want, because there’s always revision.

During revision, I got to make careful decisions around exposition. For example: Would this tank-fight scene be best presented in a prologue? Could this love story be a dialogue between two people reminiscing about the time they met at the neighborhood pool?

I also decided that flashbacks were great for a quick comparison of present and past. When the Veteran heard a car backfire, he didn’t have to remember the entire account of how he saved his buddy’s life during the war. It was better if the car backfiring reminded him of it briefly and then he snapped back to the present — a world where loud noises meant he was in a crowded parking lot, not in battle. The flashback showed a man who felt lost in a world where the signals he sensed no longer corresponded to the environment around him. It was not the place to tell the entire backstory.

If you are interested in a complete and public example of this idea, check out a short story I published about early motherhood. In the piece, a new mom meets her (intentionally) childless friend for lunch. I used the opportunity to compare their lives with flashbacks throughout. Here is a brief excerpt from the main character’s point-of-view after hearing about her friend’s nearly spontaneous trip to Fiji:

“I thought back to the last trip that I’d taken, which was the walk through our San Francisco neighborhood to reach the restaurant forty-five minutes earlier. I’d started planning the day before — packing the diaper bag, preparing my water bottle, even pinning the straps of the stroller seat back so I could just put Henry straight in as soon as he’d fallen asleep.”

To summarize:

· Do what you need to do to reach 50,000 words

· When you revise, take the time to consider how to present backstory

· Flashbacks are useful for brief comparison of events and circumstances