Why Flashbacks can be so effective

Structure is integral to any story. The story is essentially about delivering information to the audience in a compelling way. Many stories are told in a linear fashion. There’s nothing wrong with this approach at all – it simply depends on the type of story you are trying to tell. Often, if there’s a large amount of characters or if simplicity with regards to the plot is the main aim, the story will only be told in this way to not confuse the audience. Many action films, for instance, are told in this fashion because delivering spectacle is one of their aims. While the story can, of course, still be compelling, keeping the story as simple as possible (a character has to get from A to B) means the narrative can be better focused on delivering the high-octane action that audiences thrive on.

This, however, is not always the best approach, as I’m going to demonstrate. You’ll hear in many workshops or discussion threads the phrase: the hero’s journey. It’s essentially the character arc that has been designed for the protagonist. One way to grip the audience into the journeys of your characters, and to immerse them to a greater level, is through flashbacks or flashforwards. This instantly places your narrative on more complex ground and comes with risks – if it’s not firmly established at some point when an event is taking place, it can take the audience out of the experience and simply confuse them. I have two excellent examples below of how a more complex narrative results in enriching the story and drawing the audience in.

The first is an excellent HBO show I’m currently catching up on: Westworld. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, as I’m only focusing on one very specific aspect. During season 2, a character called Bernard is struggling to remember events that have taken place. It becomes abundantly clear that these scenes are taking place in the “future” narrative which instantly builds tension. The destruction and rubble surrounding the character, as he attempts to establish what has been lost, only heightens the audience’s sense of dread. In these scenes, we are Bernard wondering to ourselves: what could’ve possibly happened here? If done correctly, a flashforward (which is essentially what these scenes are) helps build tension extremely well – think of how often thrillers use this technique to add to the sense of mystery. Not only that, but, as the season continues, Bernard slowly begins trying to piece together what happened; memories come to him as he enters certain rooms, or touches certain objects. This is often how memories flood back to ourselves. Not only are the memories designed to tease the audience regarding what’s actually happened but they place us in Bernard’s shoes; making us sympathise with him as he struggles to come to terms with what he may’ve done.

Another example of this is actually from a book I’m currently reading: Acid for the Children by the bassist Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers. The autobiography is a coming-of-age story that covers his childhood and early adulthood growing up in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. It’s a fascinating read anyway but one thing that stood out to me, that truly made it unique, was how the book was clearly interested in detaching itself from a linear narrative. At many occasions, Flea actually flashforwards to explain why a particular scene is important or to provide more detail regarding why a specific person is important to him. It grips because, at its most effective, it adds layers to the previous scene. There are several times when he writes a lovely scene between himself and another only for the writing to change to italics to confirm the unfortunate way in which the other person died and how much he misses them. It creates a lived-in space; Flea is using the passage of time and the perspective with which he is writing the book to strengthen the stories within it. It’s an excellent tool and it only engrosses the reader further.

Linear narratives will always have their place, but there is something fundamentally human about flashforwards and flashbacks regarding how they link to someone’s memory. The technique personifies how we exist, learn and think as a species. How many times have you picked up something or gone to a place only for it to remind you of something incidental, that you haven’t thought of in years? As we are gripped with how techniques like this are used, we also identify with what it says about us – it immerses us because the faulty or brutal aspects of memory is something that we can all relate to and experience on a daily basis. It not only gives the writer a greater sense of freedom regarding how they want to tell the story, but the technique highlights that we are all passengers in time, living within its confines and forever remembering or forgetting the battles we’ve already faced.

 

The Importance of Character Studies

“I don’t like stories where nothing happens in them.”

This is a complaint you often get with works that are considered to be character studies, and I really want to analyse what this means. Everyone is entitled to their own particular tastes, their own passions, likes and dislikes, and I often find that some people seem to simply dislike character studies. While I personally find the view baffling, I really want to break down why this is and to provide a sufficient counterpoint, to essentially defend their significance in the storytelling landscape.

Firstly, let’s analyse what is meant when people say that “nothing happens.” What they essentially mean is that they find the plot tedious or boring or, to be frank, there simply isn’t much plot within the story’s framework. Character studies are, by their own nature, largely based around the innerworkings of the character – the character’s progression or degradation. Here’s the thing that I find strange, though: character is plot and plot is character. You simply cannot have one without the other – it doesn’t make sense. Characters drive the plot by the simple fact that they exist and plot is simply the character’s story. So, I find the complaint that “nothing happens” bizarre because, by the definition of there being a story and characters, there has to be a plot so things do, technically, have to happen.

Maybe I’m being a little facetious. Obviously, when people are critical in this way, they don’t really mean that nothing happens – they mean that nothing of interest happens for them. I can actually understand that viewpoint more largely because it comes down to a matter of taste. Personally, I’m not a huge David Lynch fan because I find his films oddly jarring; too strangely detached from how most stories are told to be considered compelling. They, undoubtedly, look great and I appreciate Lynch’s skill as a visual director, but often his stories leave me cold. Now, my complaint wouldn’t be that “nothing happens” – it would simply be that what was presented didn’t grip me. People who complain about character studies are clearly saying this, but why? In the same way that I find Lynch’s approach to storytelling a little isolating, why do some just not engage with character studies the way they would with other types of stories?

 

In order to really answer this, it’s firstly important to state that I think there will be some character studies that are liked by every single person. It simply isn’t possible for someone to hate every single one – I genuinely believe that. This is partly due to subject matter, tone, characterisation, plot; this can all affect people in different ways and create significance to one and indifference to another. However, I have a theory regarding why a lot of character studies are dismissed by some. They are internal stories. They can be as much about the psychology of the character as anything else, and some can find that ponderous. Some characters in these stories actually have little to no impact on the world around them because they aren’t central to it – the protagonist is at the centre, and the other characters are simply there to drive the protagonist’s journey. Take, for example, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The other characters are, of course, significant, but they are largely there to serve Holden Caulfield’s journey. I think it’s an excellent book, but I’ve heard many complain that simply nothing happens.

It is laboured and lazy to say that, of course. When I critique something, as we all do, I never use that phrase because I don’t think it’s fair to the storyteller. There is always something going on; you just simply might not connect with it. Holden’s story is one that centres around him coming-of-age, attempting to find his place – the story drifts along with him, providing the same level of slow burn apathy and alienation that Holden himself feels for the world around him. Stories like this are important because they beautifully describe the internal changes that we can experience in our lives. Sure, these stories might not be as outwardly “thrilling” or “shocking” as others, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have a place. The reason The Catcher in the Rye functions so well is because it’s constantly focused on what it needs to be; a depiction of a character attempting to make their way in the world. Sure, I find action and horror stories, stories that maybe have more elements that are deemed to be “cool” in them, to still be entertaining, but character studies need to exist as a point of counter-programming. Hell, I’m aware that saying that isn’t even fair because, of course, you could have an action or horror story that is also a character study!

Stories are a form of escapism. That is simply how they operate and maybe, for some, these stories don’t take them to a place that feels far enough away from their own concerns and worries. However, I’d argue that character studies connect us to a story in a way that other, less character-centric stories don’t. There is always a plot to every story, but, with the way that the journey in these stories are quieter, more internal, they provide greater insight into the character. If they are done well, they don’t leave me cold, they make me care. They can reaffirm our own belief into the journey’s we’re taking or simply make us feel less alone. For me, there will always be a place for them. Maybe some people simply feel like they don’t need to identify with a story that can, at times, feel so inherently personal to the character centred around it.

When Melodrama Works

The melodramatic essentially means that a piece of writing is sensational – it has elements of over exaggeration to hook the audience and arguably deals less with character than with plot.

Usually if someone were to describe something as ‘melodramatic’, it would be an insult. This is where the bad side of melodrama takes precedence – when used as an insult, it is more to do with when the action of a character seems out of place in relation to what has been written before. The act in question then sticks out like a sore thumb; the insult comes from the fact that there has been little to no building up to the said action, the melodrama in this instance comes from the unexpected nature of it which, if done poorly, can completely undo character development and the building of plot in favour of unnecessary shock value.

Here is the interesting thing, though: Melodrama is not always bad. The term melodrama is so intertwined with it being used as an insult that some people forget that melodrama can work superbly well so long as it is written with conviction. Look no further than novels like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, or television shows like Luther and Hannibal to see that the difference between these pieces and bad melodrama comes from the melodrama fitting the fiction like a glove. In Luther, for example, the melodrama works because it is not just the serial killers that are grotesquely over the top – it is everything: the detective, the crimes, the plot twists. The same goes for the excellent Hannibal; once again, the killings are extremely exaggerated but in having characters react to these acts with disgust, or delivering character development which adds an element of the theatrical and melodrama, the horrific acts do not detach the audience, but entices them, because every aspect of the drama becomes part of the fantastical. There is no act which sticks out like a sore thumb because every aspect of good writing still remains within the pieces of work: interesting character development, edge of your seat plots, and gripping dialogue. All this means is that these elements are filtered through the lens of melodrama, as opposed to trying to force characters to do unrealistic things in a world where the act simply does not fit within it.

To show you what I mean, let’s do a bit of a mash-up: let’s take another popular American television show like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and mix it with Hannibal. Very quickly, you realise that it couldn’t work because CSI is a crime procedural dealing with crimes that are more based in the world we live in. If the crimes that took place in Hannibal were to happen within the world of CSI, it would seem strangely out of place because the world of CSI was not built to sell that level of grotesqueness or theatricality with any kind of conviction. The story telling, character development, everything really, would come to a halt to deal with the strange tonal shift. This example shows what good melodrama is: similar to Shakespeare’s tragedies, if you base the world you create on the theatrical, on the dark and gritty, then you can sell melodrama. The insult of something being melodramatic is only used when the writer fails to ground their work within a world they need to create in order to sell it with conviction to the audience.