Young Writers Society

I'm working on a romance/historical fiction/character study novel, and the way I had originally planned it, a good third or so consists of flashbacks, which detail the two narrators' backstories. The way I have it set up now, the chapter headings list the narrator's name (my two main characters alternate) and the date. I've been writing two chapters in the present, followed by one flashback chapter, and so on. However, I'm a little worried that I need to make the flashbacks more obvious than that. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

--Aquila

Hmmm... How vital are the flashbacks? I find that flashbacks make me forget what's going on in the story, and sometimes I wonder why the character is having a flashback when he's being shot at, or the Big Bad is about to destroy the world's supply of bunnies, or he is about to get crushed by an eighteen wheeler.

They can be very effective, but it might be better to weave in the background information some other way if you can. If the flashbacks are important, and they are a big part of your stories idea, by all means, use them, I'm just suggesting alternatives.

A good way to make the flashbacks more obvious would be to give a date underneath the chapter's heading. Also, depending on how far back the flashback happened, you can give context clues, like instead of someone having a cellphone, the MC had to reach them on their pager, or car phone. That tells the reader that this happened before the main story.

Hope I helped!

Rather than rely on flashbacks, why not consider telling the story in a non-linear fashion? It sounds like you're already writing the story semi-nonlinearly.

Here's a short example.

Played right, it can really add a lot of depth and dimension to various events and relationships. It can also be a lot of fun for the reader to figure out which scene happened when.

I second the non-liniar idea. I'm currently beta reading a non-linar novel at present, and the results are turning out very interesting.

One slight caution is making sure the information presented in any segment of the story can stand on its own— while we might not know how the characters got there, we should be able to see how they are working in the present.

Some tips for that:
-Know how they were in the past, before the start of the story
-Keep a short list of key points in character relationships, and how it influenced/changed relationships
-Generally keep track of cause and effect (Ie- know how events that haven't been revealed yet impact what you're writing now)

OK, thanks for the advice!