Flashing the Reader: Flashbacks and Other Perilous Transitions by John Robert Marlow

TRICKY TRANSITIONS

Few works of fiction relate events in a continuous flow, from start to finish. Sometimes the story moves back in time (as with flashbacks); more often it jumps forward, sparing the reader the dull details of ordinary life. Frequently, the transition will take the reader from one location (and set of characters) to another, lending a godlike perspective unavailable to the characters themselves. Each of these transitions has its place—and each is fraught with peril.

Transitions are probably the single biggest source of confusion in unpublished manuscripts—many of which are otherwise of decent, even outstanding quality. Confusion stops the read, interrupts the flow of the story, and pulls the reader out of the world you’ve worked so hard to create. Worst of all, it gives the reader an excuse to put your book down and go do something else. And if the reader’s last impression was one of confusion—they may never pick it up again.

TIME-JUMPS AND PLACE-JUMPS

Time-jumps are just that: passages where the story jumps from one time to another—usually later—time. Very often, this is accompanied by a change in location. Typically, the author is switching from what’s going on with Character A at Location A to events taking place (again, usually at a later time) around Character B at Location B, and then going back to pick things up with Character A. Occasionally, the narrative will stay with Character A while jumping ahead (sometimes changing location, sometimes not). When handled poorly, any of these can be confusing—sometimes wildly so.

Problems arise when the reader is not crystal clear on time or place or characters present in the scene. This is one of those situations where everything is clear in the author’s head—but perhaps not quite so clear on the page. As with typos, we as authors tend to fill in the blanks: because we know how it’s supposed to read, that’s the way we see it—even though that’s not what’s actually on the page. The moment someone else picks it up—someone not intimately familiar with the story, and so unable to fill in the blanks—confusion reigns.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve been reading an otherwise competently- (occasionally brilliantly-) written manuscript, only to find myself grinding to a dead halt at a transition point—confused about time, place, character, or some combination of the foregoing.

When you jump ahead (or back) in time, say so immediately: “Later,” “That night,” “The next morning,” “Three weeks earlier,” and similar phrases make good, solid, confusion-busting openings for the first sentence describing events in the new time. The same goes for location: openers like “Later at Sam’s house,” “That night at the concert,” “The next morning in the bedroom,” serve to clarify both time and place.

Another way to do this—when appropriate—is through the use of headings, or what Hollywood calls slug lines: “Moscow, Soviet Union / 1989″ for example, saves a lot of explaining. Such headings are most often used in prologues, which tend to take place in the past. If you do this, and the next chapter takes place somewhere (or somewhen) else, be sure to employ another heading there—”Cleveland, Ohio / The Present” for example. Don’t go overboard with this technique, though: I recall one military thriller manuscript that started each and every chapter with a four- to six-line heading stating city, country, specific locale, and time of day. Absent some extraordinarily good reason for doing this, such antics instantly mark you as an amateur.

More typically, you might use a heading or two in your opening chapters to establish your main locations, and then revert to more standard techniques, trusting the reader to remember (with the help of a few narrative reminders) what those locations are. For example: to explain time, place, and character at the start of a transition, something as simple as “Later at Sam’s house, I…,” “That night at the concert, Janice…,” or “The next morning in the bedroom, the twins…” will serve to start readers out on the right foot. The important thing is this: regardless of where the scene is headed, you want your readers to know exactly where, when, and with whom they’re starting off.

There are exceptions: Situations in which you’re deliberately concealing the when, where, or who from the reader; situations where the character himself is unsure of one or more of these elements and you want to get this confusion across to the reader. The Bourne Identity, for example, opens with a character who hasn’t a clue about any of these—including his own name. Even in such cases, however, care must be taken to avoid disorienting the reader to the point of confusion, which will stop the read. There’s a difference between uncertainty and confusion.

DREAMS, VISIONS, AND FLASHBACKS

These are transitions of another sort, but share many potential pitfalls with time- and place- jumps. Any time you go into a flashback, dream sequence, or vision of any kind (psychic, religious, hallucinatory), you are walking on thin ice above a sea of confusion; one false step, and things become unpleasant—sometimes incomprehensible—for the reader.

Here again, problems can arise when any one of three things becomes unclear: time, place, or identity. But now add a fourth variable: perspective. You may get away with being intentionally unclear or ambiguous on time, place, or (in some cases) identity—a psychic vision of the future isn’t likely to come with time, date, and place stamps—but when it comes to perspective, lack of clarity can be deadly.

I recall a particular fantasy novel manuscript in which three different characters had the ability to see through the eyes of various animals and insects. Each character would occasionally drop into an alternate perspective, which was described in some detail. Trouble was, there would often be no warning that this was about to happen: one moment Character A is standing in a field; the next we’re seeing through the eyes of an insect. At times, the point-of-view would bounce back and forth between human and critter. In some places, there were so many characters projecting into so many creatures that it was impossible to discern who was seeing what.

In other instances, a character would see into the future—but it quickly became unclear what was future-vision and what was present-day reality. The result was occasional—and total—confusion. Editors are paid to read a story regardless of flaws. Readers, on the other hand, will quickly abandon what cannot be understood—or is too difficult to decipher.

The trick here is to maintain clarity when it comes to perspective or point-of-view: if we’re seeing a vision of the future (or the past or some distant place, for that matter), we need to know that. We also need to know where that vision ends and present-day reality resumes. If we’re being dropped into a sudden flashback, we need to know that, too—as well as when we return to the present. And so on. As a general rule, you can get as wild as you like with the visions etc. (the film Batman Begins employs seamlessly-executed flashbacks within flashbacks: do not try this at home), so long as the reader knows where they begin and end.

Dreams often break this pattern; here, the reader may find himself in the dream, and realize it was a dream only when the character suddenly wakes. If you’re very careful, you can do this with visions, flashbacks, etc., so long as the technique is appropriate to the situation—when, for example, the vision etc. first appears to be a part of everyday reality. In most cases, this technique will not be appropriate, because the sudden shift from reality to vision etc. will confuse or disorient the reader.

Here too, there are exceptions: situations in which the character himself is disoriented and you’re trying to get this across to the reader; situations where you’re intentionally blurring the line between reality and vision etc., because (for example) that line is no longer clear to the character in question. Either can be a tricky proposition, and both are easily fumbled. Proceed with caution.

SKIPPERS

The skip-ahead or “skipper” occurs when the story is clearly leading up to a specific event—but instead of showing that event, the author skips past it, picks up later and continues with the story. Often, the event will later be referred to as having taken place, even though we never saw it. The event itself is almost always an important one. (In one of the manuscripts I edited, the entire story led inevitably toward a large battle—that never happened because the unpublished author was “saving it” for the sequel.) The problem here is that when you build toward an event, you also build the reader’s expectation that he or she will witness this event taking place. By failing to show it, you disappoint or frustrate the reader by creating an expectation which you then fail to meet. It’s also confusing: why build toward something—and then not show it?

When you build toward an event, fulfill the reader’s expectations by showing it. Do not skip past it and pick up afterward. You’re not shooting a movie here; your production costs are the same whether you’re writing a car crash or the destruction of civilization.

PERSPECTIVE EXCEPTIONS

There are exceptions to showing events as they happen, and most of these involve perspective, and/or situations where there’s some compelling reason not to show the event in chronological order. Such exceptions are rare. One example would be a story in which the character who experiences the event lies to another character about what took place, and you need to keep the reader in the dark as well; in this situation, showing the event as it happens would make it impossible to tell the story in this way because the reader will not be misled by the lie. It’s even possible to depict the past event in an entirely false manner—again because the character is lying.

The film Courage Under Fire, for example, presents multiple versions of the same event, each related by a different character with a personal stake in the outcome of a military investigation. The Usual Suspects (skip this sentence if you’ve not seen the movie) depicts an entirely fictional storyline from start to finish—again because a character is lying. Both Identity and High Tension (more spoilers coming) depict fictional storylines because the main characters are delusional. In the Bad Blood episode of The X-Files, viewers are treated to different versions of the same event as actually perceived by two different characters, neither of whom is really lying.

DIALOGUE IN TRANSITIONS

Opening a transitional scene with dialogue probably triples your chances of confusing the reader. The problem in this case is invariably the same: the speaker is not immediately identified—and the longer that situation continues, the greater the confusion. I’ve seen entire paragraphs of dialogue preceding any speaker attribution. Sometimes the lengthy dialogue will push the attribution onto the next page. The issue here is that long blocks of dialogue deprive the reader of the vital information mentioned above: where, when, and who.

The solution is simple: if you open the transition with dialogue, immediately identify the speaker. Not at the end of a paragraph, and not after two or three lines. Right away. If the first spoken line is more than a few words, ID the speaker in the middle of the sentence: “If I’m not mistaken,” Bob whispered, “there’s a hungry tiger crouching several yards to your left.”

CONCLUSION

Any time you find yourself writing a transition, ask the following the questions: Is this transition necessary? Is it absolutely clear where and when we are in the story, and which characters are present? If you’re opening with dialogue, is the speaker’s identity immediately clear? And, after all of that: is there any possible way that any of these details could be misread or misinterpreted? When you can say yes to the first three and no to the last, you’re ready to roll—and not before.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved

Opening with a Bang May Be Shooting Yourself in the Foot by John Robert Marlow

HEROES IN PERIL

Many authors feel compelled to open their stories with a scene involving their hero in action and/or high drama. This is particularly true of those writing in the action/adventure and science fiction genres. But unless you know what to avoid here, this is almost always a mistake—and it can be a fatal one.

There are several films I like to cite as examples of this principle at work. Speed 2 is the first. We open with a SWAT cop on a motorcycle, pursuing a step van up a steep and twisting road. During the chase, the van’s rear doors pop open, and large boxes fall onto the road, threatening to crash the cop, who swerves this way and that to avoid the tumbling boxes. It’s meant to be exciting, but it’s not, and here’s why: we’ve never seen this guy before, we don’t know who he is, and—because of that—we don’t care what happens to him.

Despite the fact that this was a sequel to one of the biggest hits of all time, Speed 2’s worldwide gross was a bit over half of what the first film made ($164 million vs. $350 million). Factor in the budgets (Speed cost about $28 million; Speed 2 more like $110 million) and that’s a very serious discrepancy.

Contrast this with Titanic, a one-shot with no sequel potential. The film is over three hours long and set on the water, at a time when either one of these alone was considered certain death at the box office. The budget was somewhere north of $200 million (no one will admit the actual cost), the movie is of all things a period piece, and you pretty much know going in that everybody dies. The studios—it took two working together to finance the film—were in a panic before the 1997 release, and the movie was widely expected to tank.

Instead, it vaporized all previous records, hauling in well over $1.8 billion (and more like $6 billion with video sales included) and spinning off the best selling soundtrack in film history (a soundtrack which, incidentally, almost no record label wanted). Titanic also swept no fewer than eleven Academy Awards—tying a record set in 1959.

Now let’s take a look at how Titanic begins. Writer/director/producer/editor James Cameron uses the opening scenes to introduce us to the main characters. We get to know and like them quite a bit. Though there is a good deal of romantic tension, it’s a full hour and forty minutes before the ship hits the iceberg and places our hero and heroine in mortal danger. That’s about as far from opening with a bang as it’s possible to get. Yet by the time that danger comes, we think of Jack and Rose as friends—and we care very much what happens to them.

The two styles of opening are like night and day. It’s the difference between reading about a complete stranger involved in a car wreck—and learning that a close friend or family member was in the same accident. The first has minimal if any impact because you have no “connection” to the stranger; you’re not emotionally invested, so he becomes a statistic. The second can be devastating because you are deeply connected and emotionally involved. When it comes to your characters, you want an emotional investment on the part of your readers—and for most writers, that takes time to establish.

Which is not to say it can’t be done: Cameron himself opens True Lies with hero Harry Tasker torching through underwater bars and sneaking past armed guards with dobermans. And while this may not be opening with a “bang,” exactly, it is placing a protagonist we know nothing about in immediate jeopardy—which is the whole problem when “opening with a bang.” So what makes this different?

THE SUSPENSE OPENER

In those few brief moments it takes Harry to sneak in, we get to know a bit about him. First of all, he’s both daring (to even attempt getting into this place) and smart (taking a route few would expect). Slipping from the icy water, he peels off his dry suit to reveal—improbably but believably—a tuxedo; this is a spy with style. Next, he slaps on a bit of cologne; clearly a man with a knack for detail. Dropping a communication device in his ear, he checks it by saying, “Honey I’m home.” Already we have a daring, smart, stylish spy—with a sense of humor to boot.

After sneaking past the guards and their dogs, he enters an imposing mansion through the service door (a stealthy spy)—only to be noticed by the chef as he passes through the kitchen. Instead of waiting for the chef to ask him what he’s doing there, he starts complaining about the gourmet food as if he owns the place—in French, no less (a multilingual spy who’s quick on his feet).

Emerging into a grand room filled with important people, he snags a glass of wine from a waiter, greets several guests as if he knows them, leaves his used glass in a guest’s hand and makes his way upstairs, where he accesses encrypted files on a secure computer (making him technically adept).

When noticed in an upstairs hallway, he bluffs his way out of it by asking the security man–in perfect Arabic–where the bathroom is (cool under pressure; knows at least three languages). Returning to the party, he ducks suspicious security men (an elusive spy) and does a hot tango (a sexy spy) with the girlfriend of the billionaire who does own the place (how gutsy can he be?). This man fears nothing, and sees no reason why he shouldn’t take time to tango—even when he knows the jig is almost up.

Inside of ten minutes, we feel we know this guy—and we like him. A lot. Then the real action begins—by which time we care what happens to Harry Tasker. In Iron Man, Tony Stark is set up even faster—but he action is also very brief, and we then jump back 36 hours and spend more time getting to know him better before we pick up with the action line.

THE BAD GUY ACTION OPENER

Often, a film or novel will “open with a bang” involving the villain rather than the hero. In fact, most successful “bang” openers do this. Cameron’s Terminator opening is a classic: we see the cyborg from the future appear in our time and attack three punks with astonishing force. Why does this work?

The reason is simple: our sympathies aren’t supposed to be with the bad guy. Because of this, the reader/audience focus shifts from wondering “Who the hell is this guy that I should care what happens to him?” to “Oh my God what’s this horrible person going to do next?” and maybe even “Someone’s got to stop this guy—who’s that going to be?” And that’s much easier to accomplish without some prior groundwork.

Then we move on to our hero (in this case, heroine), and spend some time getting to know and like her. After that, her life is placed in jeopardy.

CONCLUSION

Opening with a bang may be shooting yourself in the foot—or head. Avoid placing your hero in peril before your reader or audience has a chance to “connect.” In fiction as in life, danger—even death—mean less when they happen to strangers.

Author John Robert Marlow is available for professional editing, development, and consultation. If you’d like help taking your work to the next level, contact John here.

JRM

copyright © by John Robert Marlow
all rights reserved