Flashbacks

[Desiderius Price]

Moving the discussion on flashbacks with @Wilde_Guess here.

[Desiderius Price]

1 hour ago, Wilde_Guess said:

Hi, @Desiderius Price

The three chapter flashback is quite literally one of the main characters relating the events of a very traumatic day in front of most of the other main characters.  This scene had already been described from the viewpoint of a different character.  But different people have different perspectives.   Here’s a “quick” sample…

“I made my way back to the punch bowl for cups six, seven, and eight.  I was starting on number nine when an older girl that looked like the electric piano player’s older sister grabbed my wrist and made me pour the punch on the ground. 

“She told me ‘Go.  Away.  Now.  Twerp.’

“I didn’t realize then just how drunk I was starting to get.  I knew I wanted to say something to get her just angry enough to follow me away from the punchbowl so I could lose her in the crowd and come back for just one or two more.  What I actually told her was ‘Great boobies, honey pie!  My lower intestine is full of spam, eggs, spam, sausage, go fuck your mother on a merry-go-round, and scram!’

“The look of shock on her face told me, even as drunk as I was starting to realize that I was, that she would enjoy breaking my nose so much more than she ever enjoyed Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  So, I twisted my wrist out of her grasp before she recovered and walked away at almost a run.

“She stopped following me just a few yards later, but I wisely kept going.  I could see my busted and bloodied nose in her eyes, and I wanted it to stay there, even if I did deserve it for my rude introduction to her.  I grabbed another Italian Beef along the way and almost inhaled it.  I looked at the punchbowl, and didn’t see her, or anyone else guarding it.

 

The biggest pain with those chapters is getting the stacked quotation marks in the right places—and I’m still finding ones I missed.

Thanks.

In my original story, I didn’t quote, so less apparent.  And it covered the backstory to the main characters.  However, went really fast and skimped greatly.  Thus it became *way* better to spin it off into separate stories.  As I was in fact doing several “flashbacks” to a lot of the characters, I realized spinning them off, make each character’s (or small group) backstory a separate story would do the whole thing justice.  However, you’re right, doesn’t always work out that way.

Now, you *could* still do the above as a separate backstory, in full.  So, when the character needs to talk about themselves, you can cut it down to the essentials, or the like.

Alternatively, a take I use in my potter fanfic, I basically start off… (small excerpt)

Quote

….

“Behold!” Voldemort exclaimed, “The Elixir of Immortality!”

---

Two years earlier…

(and the story)

Or, in one of my holiday oneshots, I did it as a flashback, the MC discussing a sin of his past to another.  So for that, it’s dialogue back and forth as that other person asks questions.

[Wilde_Guess]

Hello, again.

In my story, I’m putting the flashbacks where they are because that is when the lead protagonist learns of them.  The flashback sequence I sampled leads directly into a confrontation between two of the secondary protagonists, and a very major change in their relationship.

The second flashback goes back twenty-four years earlier, but also informs the lead protagonist that an off-screen villain, while generally villainous enough, wasn’t actually their villain, but just a villain.  It also reveals that this character was much more closely related to the lead protagonist than they thought. The flashback also gives the lead protagonist new insight into his own relationships, and how those relationships were affected by events that took place nine years before he was born. One of the secondary protagonists actually tells this person, “You’re not my dad, but you might not be a total asshole, either.”  

This starts off in “witnessing a conversation,” and transitions to change of first-person voice, with an occasional break to the main “story-time” of 1982.  Behind the internal fourth wall, the year is 2032, and many of the named characters have died of either natural causes, or “otherwise.”  The lead protagonist is writing the story for the print and online addition of a major magazine. recounting the months leading up to, and at least for a while shortly after the first of several musical groups the lead protagonist’s younger brother and he started first achieved fame and wealth; denying false scandals, but admitting to much more embarrassing real scandal, which had mostly been kept quiet.

Thanks.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Wilde_Guess
retype cut-off lines.

[Desiderius Price]

Once you said “three chapters of flashbacks”… sounded like a backstory spin-off was a good idea.  And might still be... even if only to help with writing the flashback scenes.  (Also means you don’t need a complete story in the flashbacks either… the reader can go off and enjoy those backstories too.)  However, the flashback format can be good when you’ve got a character reflecting on their emotional state at the time, and the implications to the present – which I did for that holiday story. 

Not saying do “X” or do “Y’, simply food for thought.

[Wilde_Guess]

Hello again, @Desiderius Price

11 hours ago, Desiderius Price said:

Once you said “three chapters of flashbacks”… sounded like a backstory spin-off was a good idea.  And might still be... even if only to help with writing the flashback scenes.  (Also means you don’t need a complete story in the flashbacks either… the reader can go off and enjoy those backstories too.)  However, the flashback format can be good when you’ve got a character reflecting on their emotional state at the time, and the implications to the present – which I did for that holiday story. 

Not saying do “X” or do “Y’, simply food for thought.

An alternate title for this thread, could be:  “Why you should never write a story without an outline.”

A “super-short” summary of the story itself would be “six boys and four girls from semi-dysfunctional homes get together and form a band.”

The first flashback sequence is two and a half chapters, and a total of 28,261 words.  By length alone, it could be a free-standing story.  However, it “fleshes out” the third brother, and tells you a lot about him, including why the boy now has three middle names.  It also tells the other characters about the boy,  The boy telling the story when he does is both an act of giving trust, and an attempt to talk through his emotions and help himself accept and “move on” from that day.  Less obviously, that trust is returned by the house literally coming to a stand-still to listen, including gathering all the other main protagonists to listen.

The boy had been living in an abusive home that was getting worse.  Despite not knowing any of the real reasons, the boy is aware enough of his state that he actually created a “normal” alter-ego as a tool in his mind to try to isolate the actual abuse from simply being in a non-affluent home with poorly educated parents and little social standing.

The youngest of the six boys describes his perspectives and feelings while reliving the 28 hours of his life that preceded his becoming the youngest of the three Dvorak brothers who are the center of the story.  The almost twelve year old boy starts his day with a beating, being raped (again,) and having to convince his almost nine year old brother to appear to willingly participate with his father in raping him to avoid becoming a tied down and beaten victim.

The youngest future Dvorak wanders off into a nearby forest preserve and thinks about suicide (again.)  He concludes that as worthless and unlivable as his life is, he can not die by his own hand or allow himself to be killed because the people he really loves would be harmed exponentially more than any relief he might gain by dying.  He leaves the forest preserve feeling well and truly trapped by life.

He returns home to be brought along with his mother and “father,” who we eventually learn is no relation of his at all, to a wedding reception for the younger son of their landlord.  This is not being done as a treat, though.  Part of the abuse his parents inflict on him is saying to anyone who will listen that the boy is too poorly behaved and “slow” to be left with caretakers, and they have to take him along to “keep him in line.”

At the wedding reception, he comments on the people he sees and encounters.  His future oldest brother is the “girl-haired boy,” and the middle brother, the “red-haired boy” is the target of his envy.  At the moment he’s describing, he’s forced to wear prescription contact lenses to change his eye color, he is forced to dye his red hair brown, and he is forced to shave all the hair on his body below his head since it can’t really be dyed.  He drinks what he thinks is a generous quantity of “adult punch” so he can get drunk and “forget” things for a while.  The punch he drank, if it wasn’t removed from his body when it was, was enough to kill him outright from alcohol poisoning.  That is also not counting that he would have been locked in the trunk of his parent’s car after the “spanking” he ultimately gets.

As the early evening rolls on, the boy finds more and more to get jealous about with the “red-haired boy,” yet while also viewing his own life he actually allows his jealousy to die.  The middle brother is the last one to catch him drinking his “Nectar of Lethe,” and that’s the actual phrase the kid uses.

The middle brother overhears his father being asked by the current parents of the youngest one for the use of their basement to “spank” the youngest one.  The middle brother corners the father into giving him the exact same punishment at the exact same time without the young kid being aware that the older one was only being punished in solidarity  to “reach” the youngest boy, since he thinks the youngest kid is definitely self-destructive and probably suicidal.  The younger kid hears this, and it’s the younger kid’s awareness of what the older kid is trying to do that actually “reaches” him.

The older and middle brother were trained by their father as Emergency Medical Technicians.  The middle brother is the one to get the younger one to vomit up the very potent punch before the kid absorbs a lethal amount, and does it without using syrup of Ipecac, which would leave the youngest kid unable to keep down any quantity of food or other nourishment for the rest of the night.  The youngest kid also goes into an actual flashback based on an incident the kid witnessed the year before, where the two older brothers and the father were stabilizing a heart attack victim in the parking lot of a grocery store, including CPR, IVs, defibrillator use, shouted instructions back and forth, and everything.  The boy’s stress, fear, and slight to moderate alcohol buzz fueled imagination conflated his own lifeless body into the mix even while he is receiving different help in reality.

With the alcohol purged from the young kid’s body, before he actually had enough time to really absorb that much, the spanking is set up.  And the middle kid throws enough extra bizarre shit into the mix that any sane real-life parents would have said, “Fuck it, just put the brats in a corner for an hour and call it job-done.”  The youngest kid’s parents insist on the spanking itself to happen, which lasts for about fifteen minutes.  The mother’s husband is an oxygen thief who receives sexual gratification.  The mother herself realizes that she has become a monster.

The mother decides to cooperate with the Dvorak father in getting her husband arrested, and removing her oldest boy from her custody  She also tells the boy that he was the product of a rape that her husband cooperated in, as in selling her, holding her down for the rapist, and beating her.  The youngest boy and middle boy independently get together and ask the father to adopt the youngest one.  The youngest one spends one last night in the apartment, is given a fifteen minute beating the next morning, which is videotaped by the police, and is “kicked out” of the apartment wearing only a “onsie” pajama bottom that had belonged to his three year old sister and fit about as well as you’d imagine.  The father picks him up, along with the police.  Pictures are taken, evidence is collected, and the father has the kid dress in underwear and normal pajamas and leave there with him, ultimately to show up several chapters previously.

The second “flashback” is still in progress, at 45,972 words and growing.  It reveals the beginning of the relationship between the father of the three boys, and the “former off-screen villain,”  “Father and villain” are actually full siblings, and the only full sibling each other had.  The flashback describes their meeting at the ages of 14 for the “villain” and 12 for the father, and spending the summer at the father’s barely better than a shack house in a small town in rural northern Illinois.  That flashback could also be a free-standing story.  However, it has to be in the main story to explain why a former bootlegger gangster kingpin, who is first introduced in handcuffs and manacles, is unlocked, given fresh clothes, and basically the run of the house after the teen protagonists haven’t even known the man for an hour. 

The flashbacks themselves aren’t a problem so much.  My bigger problem is portraying a group of real yet also incredibly intelligent, talented, and creative people without having a flock of Mary-Sues and Gary-Stu's.  They face challenges equal to their talents, and have to struggle to overcome those challenges. They can also screw up, make mistakes, sometimes be unreasonable, and argue over what ultimately turn out to be pointless issues.  They also try to learn from their mistakes, grow and individuals, become better family members and where the relationships exist lovers, and advance their professional lives.

For a story that started off as a “one-shot” parody and bird-flipping to “erotic spanking stories,” it has indeed become a monster.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Wilde_Guess
added word count for second flashback sequence

[Desiderius Price]

TBH, that sounds like a *LOT* to digest in a single narrative.  I had a similar issue with mine.

Essentially, my *main* story is about the group of people escaping the planet (this one).  What I had started to do was to try to write the backstory (as mega-flashbacks) to each ofthe characters of the group (over a hundred characters on this voyage).  This is where confusion would reign.  I’d talk about a particular person  in the past tense (ie dead), but in the next chapter, that person would be alive given the flashback nature.  (Even had a review that stated this issue… they were confused.)  Thus, I split the stories off, and it was a GREAT decision even though I’ve yet to make any progress that main story.

For instance, Alaska Trekkers was the first spin off, focused on two.  To be fair, it almost reads like two stories by itself, the very strong “inciting incident” that sets up the conditions for the second part, the evolving social conditions which effectively pushed the two characters into joining the main quest.  It’s now a 206kword story.  From this story, I was able to create a halloween oneshot (The Phone) and a holiday oneshot (The Phone, Part II).

Then, I was working on the backstory to the main protagonist of the main story, simply the evolving childhood of him and his friends, turning it into an episodic serialization.  However, I realized I needed a swimming instructor for him, which led to Jefferey.

YES, it’s a rabbit hole filled with plot bunnies.  However, TBH, it’s quite fun and lets me explore aspects of this society the main group of people are fleeing, and why these characters are being persecuted, pressured into taking what could almost be described as a suicide pact (not their intent, because they’ll turn it into a chance to survive/thrive).

Overall, I think this does better justice to each character.  In the main story, might have some mention to their backstory, but I won’t have to go into three chapters of detail.  (And it does create some interesting cross-overs between the backstories too.)

My suggestion is that you do the same, peeling the flashbacks & backstory off into separate tales.  Lets you focus each one onto a specific character.  If a reader on the main story is curious about character X, they know where they can turn for the detailed backstory.

BTW – the above is a suggestion, nothing more.  Advice to avoid having a million word monster intimidating the reader away.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Desiderius Price

[Wilde_Guess]

Admittedly, there is quite a lot to digest in the story.  There are also many places where interesting spin-offs and back stories could become free-standing stories in their own right.  From here on, I’ll just use the character names for clarity.  David JMD Dvorak, the youngest of the three Dvorak brothers, was a published best-selling author, and the reader of my main story actually reads excerpts from his (withheld from publication by his wife and children) autobiography where Danny Dvorak (the main narrator) decides that David told the story better.  John Dvorak, the father, spent four years in fighting during the Vietnam war as a Special Forces Medic, and for a short time a Team Leader, before losing the lower part of his left leg in a battle that saw him awarded the Medal of Honor, and being sent back to the United States.  He was completing physical therapy and trying to stay in the Army and go back to Vietnam when he encountered the mother of the older two Dvorak boys, and in the space of about twenty months becomes the single parent father of two new-born boys.  She was and continued to be a very successful Adult model until her death, and she and John did write each other frequently. 

John helped “erase” the body of his mother’s husband, after almost being raped by him.  That would certainly qualify for a free-standing story.  It’s also first alluded to in Chapter two, so it isn’t mere window dressing.  He also literally immolated a car full of gang members in self-defense, without any law enforcement becoming any the wiser, when he wasn’t quite fourteen years old.  In the main story, I’ll try to describe enough of that in under a thousand words.  By itself, it could easily go over ten thousand and if I include the reactions that the incident caused, could go even higher.

The reader of my main story might actually “see” and read carbon copies of John’s letters to Catherine Dvorak, and read her replies, even if it’s little snippets such as “’I still can’t come back for even a visit.  Just give the guardhouse lawyer a buzz-cut and a spanking and call it a day.’ ‘but he swore an oath.’ ‘oaths are made to be broken. He was eight.  He’s nine and a half now, and looks silly.’ ‘He’ll be ten next month.  And if his mother won’t cut his hair, I think he looks trustworthy. And why would I spank him, anyway?  He isn’t refusing to get a haircut. He visits a stylist to nip the split ends.  He’s only insisting that you cut it short again. You could fly into O’Hare, cut his hair off in a bathroom, and fly right back out without leaving the airport.’ ‘Nice try, John.  I’m not ready even for that.  Just chop his hair, spank him, and be done with it.  You could find a reason.’ ‘And that worked so well for you, Catherine.’”

Even though he’s actually writing from fifty years past 1982, Danny is trying to tell the reader what he learned as a fourteen year old as he learned and experienced it, and he certainly wasn’t being kept in the dark.  But he didn’t learn the intimate details of John’s first few trysts with Betty (nee Cook) Dvorak, other than her daughter telling him that “Mom wasn’t expecting me home, so she didn’t do anything about the sheets.”  He didn’t actually want to, either.  He did learn, along with everybody else in the household, that John and Betty had to get married, only minutes after helping Betty’s daughter lose her virginity to her future husband; his youngest brother.  And while he laughs about it with one of his friends later that afternoon, he and Michael only ever address or think about Betty as “Mom” from then on.

So, part of the editing fight is to not wander off too far into the weeds, yet still give the reader at least the same information Danny had, and at the times when Danny had that information.  Going straight to “Rico Floyd married his rape victim and had more kids” without all the different details that would put things into their actual circumstances and perspectives would be nuts.  I just need to find the right balance to put into the story without forcing the reader to hop out of the main story at Chapter 39 or so and read an extra 47,000 words of the detailed anger and recrimination turning into genuine interest and desperate sex and then into something non-toxic that might actually last, or putting all 47,000 words into the main story in one fell swoop.  Danny (and the reader) need to know in at least some detail why John has allowed Rick back into his life almost like he’d never left, even while spurning both of his older half brothers, including refusing to attend the funeral of the one, and barely talking to the other one before that one died of AIDS.

In your one-hundred-plus main character main story, having spin-offs is probably the only way.  In my group of only ten, it is a serious challenge to keep all the plot bunnies running down the same track without becoming killer rabbits.  And that’s on top of giving the characters their proper voices, keeping them believable, and keeping the whole damn thing readable and interesting.  So, finding the balance between not enough and too much is a challenge.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Wilde_Guess
inserted missed word and missed letter

[Desiderius Price]

14 hours ago, Wilde_Guess said:

In your one-hundred-plus main character main story, having spin-offs is probably the only way.  In my group of only ten, it is a serious challenge to keep all the plot bunnies running down the same track without becoming killer rabbits.  And that’s on top of giving the characters their proper voices, keeping them believable, and keeping the whole damn thing readable and interesting.  So, finding the balance between not enough and too much is a challenge.

Definitely *NOT* 100+ main characters in a single story – that’d be INSANE!     Group is hundreds, but I’m not detailing them all.  You’ll have the main characters, and lesser characters with names.  Backstories allow me focus on some lesser characters, turning them into main characters for their backstory, and delve into the social regime they’re fleeing. 

14 hours ago, Wilde_Guess said:

Admittedly, there is quite a lot to digest in the story.  There are also many places where interesting spin-offs and back stories could become free-standing stories in their own right.

That’s my underlying point, I think you’re on a path to totally confuse the reader.  (It’s your story, of course.)