Anna Staniszewski

Last week I wrote about using short and long flashbacks in novel writing. Today I wanted to say a few words about the use of flashbacks in short stories. While many of the usual rules apply, short stories are a slightly different animal. Here are a few general guidelines:

1. Try to avoid long flashbacks. In Blood on the Forehead, Marion Dane Bauer advises not using flashbacks at all in short stories. I would modify this a bit to say that your best bet is to avoid using long flashbacks. Since the story is already brief, taking us out of it to bring us into another time/place can be very confusing. I was recently reading a short story by a veteran writer who used an extended flashback and it confused me to the point where I had to go back and reread the entire story. Be kind to your readers – keep the story as chronological as you can.

2. Use very short flashbacks. If you must put in info about the past, do so in the form of short flashbacks. Try to keep them to a sentence or two maximum. Think of it as peppering in tidbits about the past instead of actually taking us out of the story to show us something that happened before. When done well, this technique can be so subtle that the references to the past don’t actually register as flashbacks.

3. If possible, avoid flashbacks all together. This seems to be a general rule of flashbacks, no matter what kind of story you’re writing. In short stories I think this is especially true. Because short stories are so focused, adding in anything that might pull the reader out of the story is a gamble.

And that brings us to the end of my musings on flashbacks!

Clearly I enjoy considering various craft elements, so if there’s one you’d like me to cover in a future post, please let me know in the comments. Happy writing!