Advanced Brilliant Writing: Make Your Plots Wider and Your Characters Deeper (Go! Write Something Brilliant) (9 page)

And Boone didn’t look at her.

She tried to find defense—wasn’t prom night the perfect night? And it wasn’t like it was a first for the country club, or even, probably, this green. Still as she climbed on beside Ernie and they raced back to the clubhouse, she felt like a tramp.

And then she got it.

Smoke spiraled off one end of the country club. Near the restaurant. Where she’d taken the cigarette from Boone.

Thick and black, the smoke chewed up the night sky, devouring their prom.

She glanced at Boone. He’d gone pale.

Buckam stopped the cart and got out, and PJ expected him to address Boone. Instead he grabbed PJ by the arm and hauled her over to the chief of police, who gave her a look that cleared the final passion-fog from her brain.

“Here’s our little arsonist,” Buckam said as smoke teared her eyes.

She looked over her shoulder and caught Boone’s eyes.
What?
But Boone was the one with the cigarette—

He turned away, his hands in his pockets.

The smoke could still make her tear, fill her lungs with acrid pitch. She coughed.

Coughed again, her chest closing upon itself. Coughed again, so violently it woke her.

She sat up in bed, still feeling the bruise of her cough.

Smoke.

A thin veneer crept into the room in the early morning light, but because of her vast experience she recognized it in a second. And, as if in confirmation, the fire alarm went off, numbing nearly all thoughts save one.

“Davy!”

I could have written it as pure Backstory narrative:

PJ’s prom night had been a fiasco. Not only had she discovered her boyfriend saying lewd things about her to his football buddies, but later, as she’d sank into his arms on the tenth tee of the country club, they’d been discovered by his father. Worse, she was later blamed for burning down the country club.

Although that is all accurate information, it doesn’t deliver the impact we need to understand the significance of the event. This one event causes PJ to leave town and not return for ten years. It also builds the tension between PJ and Boone when she does return because Boone let her take the blame for the fire (although she was innocent). Finally, it’s a key element in PJ’s emotional journey because she discovers truths about this event that alter how she sees herself.

In this case, creating a Flashback is the only way to deliver the impact of the event.

However, here is a scene that shows us a piece of PJ’s Backstory, in narrative form.

PJ had just turned eight the first time she left home. She remembered the crisp air redolent with decaying loam, pumpkins with saggy eyes peering out from doorsteps, and cornstalks hung from front porches, tied with baling twine. Auburn leaves crunched under her feet, and a slight northern wind bullied the cowboy hat she’d pulled over her jacket hood as she hustled down the road, kicking stones before her with red galoshes. She balanced a stick over her shoulder, and a handkerchief tied to the end held a soggy peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich and a few stolen peanut butter cookies. Enough to get her through the night, during which a wagon train headed west would find her and collect her for their journey to Oregon and the Little House on the Prairie. And should they happen to run into any renegade outlaws, she knew just how to handle them—with her six gun cap shooter tied to her leg.

PJ traced her first escape route as she drove toward her mother’s home, remembering how big the hill had seemed, how cold and ominous the pond, dotted with shiny oak leaves. She’d reached the railroad tracks crossing Chapel Hills when her father pulled up in his ’85 Jaguar, a sleek green lizard, rolled down the window, and stuck his elbow out. He looked regal with his thick black hair, those rich green eyes, a grey worsted wool suit against a black tie. “It’s gonna get cold, PJ,” he said. “And your mother has stew on.”

PJ still made a face, even in her memories.

He had laughed. “All good cowgirls eat stew.”

PJ remembered the way she crawled into the car, sliding on the sleek leather seats, smelling his cologne. He wouldn’t be home long—probably had a meeting to attend, somewhere—yet for that moment, he’d been her champion.

She still missed him most in the fall. “Your cowgirl finally left town, Daddy.”

Why didn’t I create a Flashback for this? Because although it gave resonance to PJ’s feelings about her father and her innate wanderlust, it isn’t necessary to build the current plot, or even PJ’s emotional journey. It’s simply a piece of Backstory.

How do we decide when to use a Flashback or just insert Backstory?

A Flashback should only be used when the scene or event that happened in the past is both
complex
in nature—meaning, it has many facets to it that relate to the character’s emotional journey—as well and
relevant
to the storytime plot or emotional journey of the character.

Let’s create a two-part Flashback litmus test to help us understand when to use a Flashback and when to use Backstory.

It is Complex?

A Backstory layer is usually rather simple—one event that influenced the character and moved them forward or taught them a lesson. It can usually be explained with one or two sentences, and the reader legitimately understands the impact of the event.

A Flashback, however, is a significant event that so influenced or changed the character that it affects the storytime’s current plot and the character’s emotional journey. Because of this, a Flashback has many facets.

For example, in PJ’s Flashback, we understand Boone’s significance, we understand her feelings about the country club, fire, the teachers who found her, and we are there, feeling her shame as the entire town watches her get arrested. There are so many facets to this horrible event that affect her life, she’d have a difficult time summing it up.

And we use this difficulty as the
Complexity Litmus Test
to determine when to use Backstory or Flashback. We simply ask our character: Describe the pivotal event in your past.

Scene 1:
PJ says: I was kissing my boyfriend on the golf course, in my prom dress, and well, we’d been going out for a long time, so I thought this would be the night, but he wrecked it by telling all his buddies, but of course, I forgave him anyway, and while we were in the middle of . . . you know, his father of all people drove up and found us, along with two other teachers from the school—one who happens to be the dead guy I’m trying to solve the murder of—and while they were unhappy to see Boone and I in a love pretzel, they were really after me, because they’d heard that I’d set fire to the country club because I’d been smoking . . . which I hadn’t been . . . and that’s another long story . . .

Okay, I think you know the answer to that one.

Scene 2:
PJ says: When I was ten, I tried to run away from home. I didn’t get very far before my father found me, pulled up in his fancy car, and persuaded me to go home. He understood my wandering heart better than anyone else.

Easy.

See, Scene One, the country club fire is complicated and affects the plot of the story on many levels. Scene Two is simply added character texturing.

So, the Complexity Litmus Test confirms the need for a Flashback to reveal all the facets of the event.

Is it Relevant to the Storytime Plot?

The Flashback must bring something forward from the event that is integral to the storytime plot. It could be a motivation, a plot element, a character lie—something that matters in the current plot. It also must have an emotional element to it that requires the character to think about it, or confront it during the journey of the story. Thus, to be a Flashback, it must past the
Relevance Litmus Test.

Again, let’s examine the two scenes. In the first scene, we meet a number of people who matter to the current plotline—Boone, of course, and his father. But also Ernie, who is found deceased a few days into the story. Also, since PJ is still harboring hurt over the event, and since Boone is still trying to get into her good graces, their past contributes to their current conflict. Finally, PJ’s issues of shame still affect her today, and her emotional dark moment in the book relates directly back to that event on prom night.

In the second scene, between PJ and her father, the moment where PJ is remembering her father passes as soon as she drives up to her house. Yes, it’s a sweet memory, but there is no intrigue about the event and since her father is deceased, he brings no conflict to the present. It’s not a moment that needs to be relived, or even remembered, if we were tight on word count.

Thus, scene one passes the Relevance Litmus Test.

Now that we know if we should use a Flashback or simply Backstory, let’s establish some
Flashback Rules
on how to use a Flashback.

Rule #1. Thou shalt not use more than three Flashbacks in a book
. And, if possible, thou shalt keep them to
one
major Flashback per book.

Why? Because if you have too many Flashbacks, it dilutes the story, and it gets confusing. The reader needs to focus on one pivotal event that shapes the plot or emotional journey today. If the event is too large, and you need to break it up into two or even three events, then insert them in pieces throughout the story. You may also have two events that lead up to the third, major event. Or three examples of the same kind of event.

For example, in
The Fugitive
, we see three major flashbacks of the story—the first is when Dr. Kimble is describing to the police what happened. The second is when the trial takes place and we see Dr. Kimble’s wife calling for help, and thus, why he is convicted. The third is when he chases down the one arm man in his home. All three of these are portions of the same scene, but they work together to reveal more information each time. The few snippets he has of being with his wife are Backstory elements, not true flashbacks.

The exception to this rule would be if you are writing a dual story, where there is a dual plot, one in the past, one in the present. Rachel Hauck’s
The Sweet By and By
is a dual plot story and concise but vivid Flashbacks make up a subplot within the main plot. Books like
The Time Traveler’s Wife
and
The Outlander
are actually stories with two plotlines.

Rule #2. Thou shalt use clean construction to move the reader in and out of a Flashback.

First, let’s start with the understanding that we will
not
make the Flashback in different typestyle. I know the temptation is to set it apart from the regular story. I have done that in situations where the Flashback is, for example, actually a piece of correspondence, or even a dream, but it can be very jarring for the reader.

Instead, here are a couple techniques for entering and exiting a Flashback seamlessly:

Going into the Flashback, you first want to alert your reader to the fact that it is not happening in the storytime present. Give the reader some hint that you are travelling through the mind of the character to a different time.

He remembered the moment like it might be yesterday.

Her words brought him right back to that moment when . . .

He stared at her, but saw through her, into the past, right when . . .

He blinked, and then he landed right there, in the past . . .

Or, as in the excerpt above, which is a dream/Flashback—
She knew it was a dream, knew that she couldn’t change a thing. PJ settled into it . . . etc.

Once you’re in the Flashback, you use one or two “hads,” putting the scene into a past perfect grammatical construction, making sure your reader is soundly into the Flashback, and then continue on simple past.

She hadn’t been much of a drinker, even then, but when Trudi slipped her a taste of the liquid she’d poured into a medicine bottle in her purse, well, she hadn’t been able to eat strawberries since without thinking of schnapps. She laughed too loud, even in her dream, danced hard, flirted well, and by midnight, Boone pulled her tight and offered an invitation that, even in her mood-heightened state, made her blush.

She’d agreed to meet him on the fourth tee, and he disappeared.
“Boone? Boone?”
She heard her voice, wondered if she spoke aloud, but then found herself at the pond, high heels swinging from her fingers.

The scene continues on in simple past tense until we reach the end:
The smoke could still make her tear, fill her lungs with acrid pitch. She coughed.

The use of could brings out of the past with the conditional past. I could have also used the past perfect construction –
“The smoke had made her tear, then, and it tasted as real now as it filled her lungs with acrid pitch. She coughed.”

Then, bring your reader out of the Flashback, and settle them firmly back into the present, with the standard simple past construction.

She sat up in bed, still feeling the bruise of her cough.

Smoke.

A thin veneer crept into the room in the early morning light, but because of her vast experience she recognized it in a second. And, as if in confirmation, the fire alarm went off, numbing nearly all thoughts save one.

Note, too that I give some nod to the fact that she had been in a Flashback: still feeling the bruise of her cough. It’s a way to make us realize that the scene we just witnessed was real, although in the past.

The use of proper technique when entering the Flashback, melding it seamlessly into the prose, will allow your reader to move in and out of it without feeling jarred.