Your Thoughts on Writing Flashback Scenes

[DanDraper]

Personally, I've done it with a sentence before the paragraph that starts the flashback, and usually in all caps.

For example "ONE YEAR EARLIER". And I suppose if I ever did a flashback within a flashback I would do something like "ONE YEAR BEFORE THAT."

But I think it all depends on how you want to show it. Everyone has their own way they like to do it.

As long as you show something that actually shows that its a flashback for the readers to see, they would be happy as long as they know how the story is supposed to proceed.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Thanks again to everyone who responded. I have a better idea about handling flashbacks now.

 

[gordo12]

I don't like reading long passages in italics, so I don't use them.

I saw somewhere that the italics don't come through on the smart phones anyway. And with something like 70-80% of the readers using them...

I do use italics in any author notes.

We all have our own styles, but I don't understand why you would differentiate a flashback in a first person story. Why wouldn't you simply transition the narrative through the narrator saying "I remember when..." or having them begin to describe the events in the flashback to another character?



for me, a demarkation is just an interruption. I'd let the narrator tell their story.

Exactly.