OMG PERFECT TIMING, I LITERALLY and I mean LITERALLY just started writing a fanfic that includes quite a lot of flashbacks so this is truly perfect timing omg
I just read "Memorial" by Bryan Washington and it's amazing. It has a straight timeline from two perspectives, both have several flashbacks. But it makes so much sense, bc they are timed perfectly. I really recommend that book!
One series that does this masterfully is Dark. That feeling of putting plot pieces together and going OHHHH when something clicks. It’s great when the flashback/time hop doubles as a bit of a plot twist too.
When it comes to non-linear plot, my go to is easily "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, one of the funniest AND most tragic books ever written due to the way it plays with the characters' utter lack of context for each other's problems. Honorable mention to Mark Danielewski's "House of Leaves".
Heller's second novel *Something Happened* is layered with past events in the hero's life. I still have to read *House of Leaves* but I recommend *The Gallery* by John Horne Burns for its sense of time past, the only WWII novel women readers seem to like as much as men. Wonderful. Set largely in Naples.
Your first example reminds me of Lilith and Eda in season one of The Owl House. Your second example reminds me of myself. I often feel bad for being unable to help others and had a similar experience with an injured butterfly as a kid.
It's almost physically impossible for me to write a flashback. Not even once in the three books I've written have I used one. It's one of those things I was told at an early stage was "bad writing", because "the past is in the past" etc. With your tips and tricks though, maybe one day it will come naturally! It's a nice feeling when you're evolving and you get to unlearn the rules from your newbie-stage. Thanks!
So important. My interpretation of this advice is how telling a quality story is like mechanical engineering. My FAVORITE non-linear book is Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Been working on an important fantasy story and was struggling with where to put my flashback scene and as i was listening to you the puzzle pieces fit in together. Your advice always helps.
What about when it comes to suspense? When should you hold back on showing flashbacks that answer big questions readers may have for the sake of some suspense? Sometimes, I feel like using a flashback that directly affects a scene is spoon feeding the reader the answers. It's just too on the nose. But I also hate to place them wrong and disrupt the flow of the book as well. It's definitely something I have been struggling with lately.
My favorite non-linear book is probably Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Though I like the sequel better overall, that one isn't non-linear). The characters' stories comprise the majority of the first book, while they travel together in the front story. That all builds to the final act of a vast drama which is found in the sequel.
Dude, Hyperion! My favorite series of all time. That first one follows the structure of the Canterbury Tales, making it wildly unique in structure and linearity and the way it goes about its character and world building.
@@TimothyNiederriter Yes!! I’ve never read anything like those books. Incomparably epic, yet intimate with character and emotion. And I know the second two aren’t as highly regarded, but I loved them-I cried through the entire last 50 pages or so
@@codylakin288 I've only read the first two books, mostly because the second finished so beautifully. The Fall of Hyperion is probably my favorite novel.
Great video Shaelin who doesn't love a good flashback. Really liked the part about adding flashbacks to add emotion. I'm doing that in one of my projects and I've heard many people say that if it's not moving the story forward or contributing to the plot drop them. Thanks for reassuring me this is o.k.
My favorite nonlinear stories are probably Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler. I liked how both of them alternate between past and present storylines with each chapter as I find it is a great way to build suspense within each storyline and provide context for the events of the present. In Ancillary Justice, the flashback chapters parcel out an explanation for the protagonist's present situation as well as her motivations and show the antagonist's character and abilities, all while providing an engaging storyline. The present storyline then depends on the flashback chapters to give context to the protagonist's final confrontation with the antagonist at the book's climax. Clay's Ark does essentially the same thing by telling a second story line with chapters set in the past, albeit they are not flashbacks from the main character's memory. Again, the past chapters in Clay's Ark show the reader all the ways an alien pathogen transforms its hosts and their society, which becomes important at the end of the story arc set in the present. I think this method of storytelling is great for if a single storyline could not easily show all the necessary information to put the third act in context.
I'm not sure if this is a non-linear book but in "Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk," Kathleen Rooney impressed me with her casual back and forth between a very short fictive present and a lifetime of flashback. Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf is pretty masterful too.
Going off the previous video’s point about rules & skilled application of StoryCraft, Please forward readers & writers in doubt about flashbacks to Red Mars. I still haven’t enjoyed Viscous 😳😱😬😮😲. But I will in time, then flashback to these days when I was blissfully ignorant of a well loved, well read story in one of my favorite genres (superpowered beings).
Events in the past impact the present: J.B. Priestley used this to great effect in *Time and the Conways* (play) and *Bright Day* (novel). Flashbacks fascinated me as a child watching movies such as *The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit* (1956) from the novel by Sloan Wilson. Saint Augustine said of time, *If no one asks me, I know what it is.* Time is an exciting experience for the novelist but fraught with peril. I recommend Anthony Powell's sequence of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time. Read at least the first, *A Question of Upbringing*.
Someone said that the difference between the young and old is that the old have an awareness of time, and what time does to you. One of the strange things about old age is that 50 years ago really is closer than yesterday: both thrilling and sad at the same time. *Time will say nothing but I told you so,* as W.H. Auden said in a poem. In *September 1, 1939* (online) Auden looks back on the 1930s, 'the low dishonest decade' which saw the rise of Hitler. Ian Sansom has written a book devoted to that one poem: *W.H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem*.
alright, cutting out that exposition dump at the start for good - i should read much more, but a book i remember implementing flashbacks is sparrow by scot gardner. the book alternates between two timelines, first the protagonist in the present and every second chapter the protagonist before the events of the inciting incident. while the alternating timelines and flashbacks did have causality maintained throughout the book (and you do start feeling for the titular character), about halfway through it starts feeling like one half of a story told with flashbacks supplementing the other half, with conflicts not really escalating over the book so much as some in the past flashbacks and a bit in the present timeline... i think sparrow would be a better read just reading it chronologically in this case to get a better understanding, rather than having flashback chapters alternating with the fictive present
@@wonderlust1308 Ishiguro's themes run all the way through his novels yet each book is quite different. You might want to start with his early work *A Pale View of Hills* + *Artist in the Floating World* both set in Japan. I have just finished *Klara and the Sun* (Artificial Intelligence) and *The Buried Giant* (pre-medieval England after King Arthur). Read *Remains of the Day* and then watch the faithful film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins. Again read *Never Let Me Go* and then watch the film of the novel. You will begin to see the themes in all Ishiguro's body of work.
So the main „hack“ is: make it matter for the main story rather immediately? Ok. The same, I assume, applies to Forward Flashes. The only nonlinear book I remember is Hohlbein‘s „Druidentor“, and that… was traumatizing.
I made, for example, a poem the protagonist wrote and describes what he felt in the past and what happened to him because flashbacks are hard to make rigth (is like you are putting information the easiest way possible and that feels not worty of a profesional autor, U know?). I personally would try to avoid flashbacks unless is your only choice for making the story work...
Definitely novels! I have an education in screenplay, but don't do much screenwriting and have never done much outside of classes. I'm hoping to do more in the future but my heart is for sure with fiction!
I opened one of my short stories 30 years into the future and dissolved dissolved the scene back into the past-the real beginning of the story. The woman, tried and found guilty of witchcraft for no other reason than she being mega intuitive and intelligent beyond her poor lifestyle and humble education, is about to hang. She closes her eyes and visualizes her early life as a child, all the happy moments as well as the bad. The dissolve leads to a scream and the woman, as a child, wakes fitfully after a dreadful nightmare. No spoilers I'm afraid.
If you will permit me another comment, Miss Shaelin ? We can't talk Flashback without talking the unforgettable Mordecai Richler and his memory babe novel *Joshua Then and Now* (1980). After Morley Callaghan and Hugh MacLennan, Richler was my big wake-up to Canadian Lit and Jewish Canadian unschooled humour. TH-cam: *The Return of Mordecai Richler (1980) - the fifth estate.* *A Tour of Mordecai Richler's Montreal.* Read and devour *The Apprentice of Duddy Kravitz* and *Saint Urbain's Horseman* which I read and reread so long ago in Glasgow, Scotland. As Peter De Vries wrote about movies, *Every time I see a Flashback, I want to run right out and demand my Cash Back.* As good as Richler.
I have flashback in my books. I think it should only be used like you said if it's necessary. Do you think it can be over used or misused? I think sometimes it's only used to cut the passage of time.
I'm sorry, I just want to run a comb through your hair. I love what your saying about flashbacks, but A is your with short-hair and C is you with long-hair and F is the comb. Maybe I am not capable of focusing. Sorry.
There is a good song lyric here, and I rather think Shaelin could write it if you don't, Mike. For some reason I am thinking of a very old song, *Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?* Louis Jordan (TH-cam). I like how you go from A to C to F skipping B & D & E. Why can't narratives do that too? I am reading an old Penguin paperback edition of Laurence Sterne's *A Sentimental Journey* (first published 1768). There is a perceptive Intro by Al Alvarez, a great English literary critic who played poker in Las Vegas. Alvarez said Sterne had an indifference to writing rules; this tricky Irish novelist went from A to C to F, creating his own form from scratch. Someone said Sterne (1713-1768) would have been an original novelist but he was too influenced by James Joyce (1882-1941). James Joyce would have laughed at that joke.
*Interview/ Al Alvarez/ Granta Magazine* online. 22 March 2013. *Al Alvarez: in praise of a literary cowboy/ Poetry/ The Guardian* online. 28 September 2019.
OMG PERFECT TIMING, I LITERALLY and I mean LITERALLY just started writing a fanfic that includes quite a lot of flashbacks so this is truly perfect timing omg
I was literally on a Shaelin binge
I just read "Memorial" by Bryan Washington and it's amazing. It has a straight timeline from two perspectives, both have several flashbacks. But it makes so much sense, bc they are timed perfectly. I really recommend that book!
Oooh I will check it out! Thank you for the suggestion!
One series that does this masterfully is Dark. That feeling of putting plot pieces together and going OHHHH when something clicks. It’s great when the flashback/time hop doubles as a bit of a plot twist too.
Omg I am working on my novel right now and having this exact problem - thank you for this!!
I love the way flashbacks are used and are awfully important in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Right when I needed this omg
When it comes to non-linear plot, my go to is easily "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, one of the funniest AND most tragic books ever written due to the way it plays with the characters' utter lack of context for each other's problems.
Honorable mention to Mark Danielewski's "House of Leaves".
Heller's second novel *Something Happened* is layered with past events in the hero's life.
I still have to read *House of Leaves* but I recommend *The Gallery* by John Horne Burns for its sense of time past, the only WWII novel women readers seem to like as much as men. Wonderful. Set largely in Naples.
Your first example reminds me of Lilith and Eda in season one of The Owl House.
Your second example reminds me of myself. I often feel bad for being unable to help others and had a similar experience with an injured butterfly as a kid.
It's almost physically impossible for me to write a flashback. Not even once in the three books I've written have I used one. It's one of those things I was told at an early stage was "bad writing", because "the past is in the past" etc. With your tips and tricks though, maybe one day it will come naturally! It's a nice feeling when you're evolving and you get to unlearn the rules from your newbie-stage. Thanks!
Shaelins’ awesome 👍👍!!!
So important. My interpretation of this advice is how telling a quality story is like mechanical engineering. My FAVORITE non-linear book is Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
My favourite non-linear books are by Mark Lawrence with his "Broken Empire" and "The Red Queen's War" series
Been working on an important fantasy story and was struggling with where to put my flashback scene and as i was listening to you the puzzle pieces fit in together. Your advice always helps.
What about when it comes to suspense? When should you hold back on showing flashbacks that answer big questions readers may have for the sake of some suspense? Sometimes, I feel like using a flashback that directly affects a scene is spoon feeding the reader the answers. It's just too on the nose. But I also hate to place them wrong and disrupt the flow of the book as well. It's definitely something I have been struggling with lately.
I’m so stoked to watch this one
My favorite non-linear book is probably Hyperion by Dan Simmons (Though I like the sequel better overall, that one isn't non-linear). The characters' stories comprise the majority of the first book, while they travel together in the front story. That all builds to the final act of a vast drama which is found in the sequel.
Read online: *What is Non-Linear Narrative and How Do You Write One?*
Jason Hellerman. No Film School.
Dude, Hyperion! My favorite series of all time. That first one follows the structure of the Canterbury Tales, making it wildly unique in structure and linearity and the way it goes about its character and world building.
@@codylakin288 hell yeah! It's a triumph
@@TimothyNiederriter Yes!! I’ve never read anything like those books. Incomparably epic, yet intimate with character and emotion. And I know the second two aren’t as highly regarded, but I loved them-I cried through the entire last 50 pages or so
@@codylakin288 I've only read the first two books, mostly because the second finished so beautifully. The Fall of Hyperion is probably my favorite novel.
When you say “scene F” do you mean F for Flashback or F for respect
Great video Shaelin who doesn't love a good flashback. Really liked the part about adding flashbacks to add emotion. I'm doing that in one of my projects and I've heard many people say that if it's not moving the story forward or contributing to the plot drop them. Thanks for reassuring me this is o.k.
Thank you for explaining this so clearly :) This is great!
This is a very reminiscent of the great sage Snoop Dogg, who is quoted as saying, 'You got to always go back in time, if you want to move forward'.
My favorite nonlinear stories are probably Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and Clay's Ark by Octavia E. Butler. I liked how both of them alternate between past and present storylines with each chapter as I find it is a great way to build suspense within each storyline and provide context for the events of the present. In Ancillary Justice, the flashback chapters parcel out an explanation for the protagonist's present situation as well as her motivations and show the antagonist's character and abilities, all while providing an engaging storyline. The present storyline then depends on the flashback chapters to give context to the protagonist's final confrontation with the antagonist at the book's climax. Clay's Ark does essentially the same thing by telling a second story line with chapters set in the past, albeit they are not flashbacks from the main character's memory. Again, the past chapters in Clay's Ark show the reader all the ways an alien pathogen transforms its hosts and their society, which becomes important at the end of the story arc set in the present. I think this method of storytelling is great for if a single storyline could not easily show all the necessary information to put the third act in context.
A very good video discribing when to use flashbacks. Loved this video
Thanks so much.
just what i needed
I'm not sure if this is a non-linear book but in "Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk," Kathleen Rooney impressed me with her casual back and forth between a very short fictive present and a lifetime of flashback. Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf is pretty masterful too.
This was what I've been looking for. Nice earrings by the way shaelim
Going off the previous video’s point about rules & skilled application of StoryCraft, Please forward readers & writers in doubt about flashbacks to Red Mars. I still haven’t enjoyed Viscous 😳😱😬😮😲. But I will in time, then flashback to these days when I was blissfully ignorant of a well loved, well read story in one of my favorite genres (superpowered beings).
Events in the past impact the present: J.B. Priestley used this to great effect in *Time and the Conways* (play) and *Bright Day* (novel).
Flashbacks fascinated me as a child watching movies such as *The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit* (1956) from the novel by Sloan Wilson.
Saint Augustine said of time, *If no one asks me, I know what it is.* Time is an exciting experience for the novelist but fraught with peril.
I recommend Anthony Powell's sequence of novels, A Dance to the Music of Time. Read at least the first, *A Question of Upbringing*.
Someone said that the difference between the young and old is that the old have an awareness of time, and what time does to you.
One of the strange things about old age is that 50 years ago really is closer than yesterday: both thrilling and sad at the same time.
*Time will say nothing but I told you so,* as W.H. Auden said in a poem.
In *September 1, 1939* (online) Auden looks back on the 1930s, 'the low dishonest decade' which saw the rise of Hitler.
Ian Sansom has written a book devoted to that one poem: *W.H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem*.
alright, cutting out that exposition dump at the start for good -
i should read much more, but a book i remember implementing flashbacks is sparrow by scot gardner. the book alternates between two timelines, first the protagonist in the present and every second chapter the protagonist before the events of the inciting incident. while the alternating timelines and flashbacks did have causality maintained throughout the book (and you do start feeling for the titular character), about halfway through it starts feeling like one half of a story told with flashbacks supplementing the other half, with conflicts not really escalating over the book so much as some in the past flashbacks and a bit in the present timeline... i think sparrow would be a better read just reading it chronologically in this case to get a better understanding, rather than having flashback chapters alternating with the fictive present
VICIOUS by V.E. Schwab is a brilliant novel. If you've never read anything by her, check it out. It's a great gateway to her voice and style.
I just want you to hit 100k so you can get your well deserved plaque.
Loved this quick hack-style video!
omg im early today! idk if this counts but this is how you lose the time war is my favourite book that plays with time :D love ur videos
I just read This is How You Lose the Time War! So original!
I love "Never Let Me Go" and "The God of Small Things"! The non-linear structure really deepens the melancholy and I'm a sucker for melancholy
who is the author?
@@wonderlust1308 Never Let Me Go: Kazuo Ishiguro. The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy.
@@johnhaggerty4396 Thank you!
@@wonderlust1308 Ishiguro's themes run all the way through his novels yet each book is quite different.
You might want to start with his early work *A Pale View of Hills* + *Artist in the Floating World* both set in Japan.
I have just finished *Klara and the Sun* (Artificial Intelligence) and *The Buried Giant* (pre-medieval England after King Arthur).
Read *Remains of the Day* and then watch the faithful film adaptation with Anthony Hopkins.
Again read *Never Let Me Go* and then watch the film of the novel. You will begin to see the themes in all Ishiguro's body of work.
Favorite nonlinear book: The Time Traveler's Wife.
So the main „hack“ is: make it matter for the main story rather immediately? Ok.
The same, I assume, applies to Forward Flashes.
The only nonlinear book I remember is Hohlbein‘s „Druidentor“, and that… was traumatizing.
This is very informative. Thank you!
Thank you for the tips! My favorite non-linear novel (and hands down my favorite novel ever) is A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza.
>”Nothing too sad”
>”the butterfly dies”
😖😖😖😖
I made, for example, a poem the protagonist wrote and describes what he felt in the past and what happened to him because flashbacks are hard to make rigth (is like you are putting information the easiest way possible and that feels not worty of a profesional autor, U know?).
I personally would try to avoid flashbacks unless is your only choice for making the story work...
Do you prefer writing screenplays or novels?
Definitely novels! I have an education in screenplay, but don't do much screenwriting and have never done much outside of classes. I'm hoping to do more in the future but my heart is for sure with fiction!
I opened one of my short stories 30 years into the future and dissolved dissolved the scene back into the past-the real beginning of the story. The woman, tried and found guilty of witchcraft for no other reason than she being mega intuitive and intelligent beyond her poor lifestyle and humble education, is about to hang. She closes her eyes and visualizes her early life as a child, all the happy moments as well as the bad. The dissolve leads to a scream and the woman, as a child, wakes fitfully after a dreadful nightmare. No spoilers I'm afraid.
If you will permit me another comment, Miss Shaelin ?
We can't talk Flashback without talking the unforgettable Mordecai Richler and his memory babe novel *Joshua Then and Now* (1980).
After Morley Callaghan and Hugh MacLennan, Richler was my big wake-up to Canadian Lit and Jewish Canadian unschooled humour.
TH-cam: *The Return of Mordecai Richler (1980) - the fifth estate.* *A Tour of Mordecai Richler's Montreal.*
Read and devour *The Apprentice of Duddy Kravitz* and *Saint Urbain's Horseman* which I read and reread so long ago in Glasgow, Scotland.
As Peter De Vries wrote about movies, *Every time I see a Flashback, I want to run right out and demand my Cash Back.* As good as Richler.
I have flashback in my books. I think it should only be used like you said if it's necessary. Do you think it can be over used or misused? I think sometimes it's only used to cut the passage of time.
I have trouble writing flashbacks most of the time I use Asterisks *. Can you recommend some books possibly YA fiction ones? Thank you.
I really enjoy nonlinear plots... Probably The Great Gatsby or The Odyssey for my favorite because I keep going back to them
I'm sorry, I just want to run a comb through your hair. I love what your saying about flashbacks, but A is your with short-hair and C is you with long-hair and F is the comb. Maybe I am not capable of focusing. Sorry.
um what
There is a good song lyric here, and I rather think Shaelin could write it if you don't, Mike.
For some reason I am thinking of a very old song, *Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?* Louis Jordan (TH-cam).
I like how you go from A to C to F skipping B & D & E. Why can't narratives do that too?
I am reading an old Penguin paperback edition of Laurence Sterne's *A Sentimental Journey* (first published 1768).
There is a perceptive Intro by Al Alvarez, a great English literary critic who played poker in Las Vegas.
Alvarez said Sterne had an indifference to writing rules; this tricky Irish novelist went from A to C to F, creating his own form from scratch.
Someone said Sterne (1713-1768) would have been an original novelist but he was too influenced by James Joyce (1882-1941).
James Joyce would have laughed at that joke.
*Interview/ Al Alvarez/ Granta Magazine* online. 22 March 2013.
*Al Alvarez: in praise of a literary cowboy/ Poetry/ The Guardian* online. 28 September 2019.