PDA

View Full Version : Alright boys and girls, need a bit of advice.



Shinsou Vaan Osiris
08-20-15, 07:01 AM
Those of you who know me will know that I never really ask for writing advice, on the basis that I am generally independant and have faith in what I do. This time though i'm wondering if some of the forum's writers could help me out with something.

I'm planning on doing a bit of a flashback / vision / out of body experience in my thread the Gnarled Roots of Osiris, but it's going to happen whilst other things are happening around me.

I'm genuinely stuck as to how to approach this. I know there isn't a "right answer", so to speak, but if my character "whited out" and everything around him seemed to just stop, would that seem ridiculous?

He is lying face down on the floor, bleeding, and then everything around him is going to stop. Then he will recieve a vision of someone from his past, but it's more like a voice in his head, maybe his subconscious talking to him. Then everything fades back in to current time.

Is this a good way of approaching it or does anyone have a better way of approaching this?

Thanks in advance.

Alydia Ettermire
08-20-15, 07:32 AM
Professional writers will tell you that flashbacks are easy to abuse and rarely well done. But if it's more like a voice in his head, you could do it like this:

One to two sentence flashback

Paragraph of action.

Paragraph of flashback .

More action.

Wrap up flashback.

Get the hell up. Better be a roaring comeback, because flashbacks need to build to something if you're going to use them. They also need to be brief, so make every single word count.