UNRAVELLING THE NARRATIVE OF TIME - Do you need The Doctor?

Flashback, and foreshadowing, play with narrative time. 

A good flashback:

• weaves complex themes into the plot
• creates sympathy for the worst of characters (Professor Snape)
• confirms why we were right to despise them (Voldemort)

Flashbacks in flashback have more cyclonic action than a Dyson – no reader want to be sucked into one of those.

Convenient flashbacks, the ones enabling you to include the non-dynamic scene you pictured as your opening - the one any literary agents’ eye would glaze over - should be avoided. Every flashback must contain essential information or it will slow down the action but contain nothing that propels the readers’ understanding forward.

There are ways to avoid the flashback technique:

1. Dialogue
2. Narration
3. Dropping in details

Inference is a powerful tool: with a word or a look, a lot can be implied. Sometimes you have to trust your reader to do the thinking. Engage their empathy and intuition. Supply just enough information, at the right moment, to balance the needs of the plot and your characterisation.

Do you have a favourite writing technique? 

Flashback or foreshadowing? 

I avoid the first and am addicted to the second. 

My advice for my favourite technique is to watch out for being too subtle or the  foreshadowing will be smudged over in the reading. ;)


On a serious note:


How can this be the twenty-first century when Steven Neary can be treated with such appalling insensitivity, cruelty and permanency? 


Steven Neary has effectively been imprisoned for being autistic This cannot be allowed. 


http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/the-orwellian-present-%E2%80%93-never-mind-the-future/


Please read this account of his treatment. Spare a few minutes. Do more than CRY. 
Sign and see if, together, we can make a difference. Robbers, thieves and those who have killed through reckless driving have served less time.