Managing time: assignment and summary

Hi all

The assignment this week is to write a flashback that will fit into your novel, using the flashback tools we discussed. They are:

1. Set the scene
2. Establish the flashback with a past perfect tense (‘had’). You can go straight into the flashback without using a phrase such as ‘Her mind drifted back to...’ You may wish to use some sort of a trigger that reminds the character of the past, however.
3. Discard ‘had’
4. Use action and dialogue in the flashback
5. Get back into the present, possibly using a trigger from the present to rouse the character from a reverie

Eg...

[scene setting:]

            Ray sat on the bank of the canal, fishing. He had his umbrella, rod, bait bucket and net. The canal gently tugged at the float.

[new para – into the flashback. Use ‘had’ once and then discard it:]

            Ray had not been surprised when the thin man came into the shop. The thin man didn’t waste any time. He pulled out a shining eight inch knife.

            ‘Give me your money, he said.

            A flight of swans landed and Ray pulled his rod in slightly, much as a train commuter pulls in his feet when another passenger comes down the carriage.

Here’s a brief summary of what we discussed last time:

Manage the flow of time

A novel begins at the beginning, meanders through the middle, and concludes with the end. Or does it? There’s more than one way to manage time in a novel. Novels can skip back and forth through time, and often do.

One popular technique that plays with time-dislocation is to hook the reader with an action scene and then explain the background. Chapter One, for example, might begin with a car-bomb explosion, and Chapter Two explain the backstory of the families caught up in it.

The World According to Garp by John Irving opens with the information that the author’s mother was once arrested for stabbing a man in a cinema. There follows several pages of backstory before we find out exactly why she stabbed the man. This is a similar device, which, on this occasion, is used to generate suspense.

Flashback is probably the most common device used in novels for shifting time-frame. Many novels, especially first-person novels, are told as memoirs, and memoirs lend themselves naturally to a two-stream approach: the events that are happening now as the narrator tells the story, and the events that happened then in the story itself. In Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham, the narrator goes back to a number of different scenes – to his childhood, to his young manhood and to his recent adulthood – while also narrating scenes that happened in the very recent past – the ‘yesterday’ of the novel. What we get is a sense of two plots happening at once, each with their own narrative suspense. Flashbacks are often criticized for detracting attention from the main plot and thus defusing tension, but, if handled carefully, they can also be suspenseful, since they may withhold information that arrives in the next flashback.

Flashbacks, however, should be proper scenes and not just the provision of information necessary to the plot – sometimes called ‘information dumps.’ Use action and dialogue in your flashbacks if at all possible. That way they will gain immediacy.

How about if the plot is too frenetic? You can slow the pace by interposing a scene of reflection between scenes of action. I’ve always found that it’s a good idea to write a novel through at the pace it seems to demand, and then, at the revision stage, read it for narrative pace. If I can see moments that would benefit from a less frenetic scene, I introduce one. That way the novel gains contrast. On the other hand, if the plot is too slow, I blue-pencil the transitional scenes (coach journeys, pointless dialogue, etc) and cut to the chase.

See you on Thursday,

Gary