Help With Flashback Scenes

Question

Thanks to everyone here for taking the time to give me advice.

After carefully considering your input, I've decided to write the simplest of my ideas as a screenplay, and to see how it goes. Much of the writing I do now is legal writing, which mandates unemotional, formulaic, and often archaic construction. I thought at first that my writing experience would help me to creatively express my ideas, but after a dozen pages of drafting, I wonder now if it is not instead a hindrance. Oh, well.. C'est la guerre. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.

I'm at a point where my story needs a series of flashbacks. My protagonist needs to remember three related critical events from his past, all necessary for exposition and suspense. He's on a trip, and I want him to observe things on the way that trigger these memories before he arrives.
My first question is, what is the best way to format a flashback? Does anyone know of any particularly well written spec scripts (I would imagine that shooting scripts differ from spec scripts greatly in handling flashback formats)?
Secondly, are there any neat ways of handling a series of flashbacks, content-wise?
Thanks again for your advice.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Thanks to everyone here for taking the time to give me advice. After carefully considering your input, I've decided to ... flashback formats)? Secondly, are there any neat ways of handling a series of flashbacks, content-wise? Thanks again for your advice.[/nq]
Check out Memento.
Most beginning writers think they have to write flashbacks to show motivation, etc.
Usually they blow it.
A flashback is only good if by showing it, the story is moved forward. If something occurs in the present that provides information the person didn't have in the past, and you can show your protagonist (for example) piecing together the information, then that moves the story forward. More often than not, flashbacks by beginners are written because they're lost in the mentality of the story they're trying to write.

Skip
http://www.skippress.com
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I'm at a point where my story needs a series of flashbacks. My protagonist needs to remember three related critical ... on a trip, and I want him to observe things on the way that trigger these memories before he arrives.[/nq]
Recognize that you're entering waters which swamp many a newbie's script.

"Flashbacks" are the most obvious tool for displaying exposition, and therefore the most overused.
The problem with them is that they're inherently undramatic. They look backwards, whereas dramatic writing is all about looking forwards, anticipation.
(Obviously, they can be used well. "Casablanca" has a memory flashback that breaks all the "rules" and works great. "Memento," which Skip mentions, is a script for which the work "flashbacks" seems inappropriate - it's a non-linear story.)
So I would strongly, strongly encourage you to find a way to tell your story without them, and see what you end up with. Stopping the story for your character have memories will slow down it's momentum, and it can actually reduce the audience's empathy with the character (since you're calling attention to things he knows that they don't, and it's a very "filmic" device which may be at a difference level of abstraction from the rest of the film).
-Ron

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[nq:1]My first question is, what is the best way to format a flashback? Does[/nq]
Here's an example from Silence of the Lambs 2nd draft (available online). I would read various scripts and see which method I like, but I am a newbie so perhaps my advice is incorrect. (There seem to be more camera directions than recommended in a spec script)

EXT. THE HOSPITAL - PARKING LOT - DAY
The grim gothic pile of the asylum looms overhead as Clarice rushes out the front doors. She is badly shaken, almost stumb- ling, as she rubs at her face. She looks around for, and fi- nally, with some relief, spots -
HER CAR
an old Pinto, parked nearby. This image begins to BLUR...

CLOSE ON
her face, fighting tears, as the CAMERA begins to WHIRL AROUND her, almost dizzily. She is seeing, in her mind's eye -

IN FLASHBACK
A screen door banging open, on a wooden porch, and a 10-year old girl - the young Clarice - rushing outside, down the front steps, and running joyfully across her front yard to -

MOVING ANGLE - THE GIRL'S POV -
A car - late 60's vintage - parked in the dirt road. A MAN, Clarice's father, is just climbing out. He's tall, handsome, and has a marshal's badge pinned on his dark suit. He grins, seeing her, and spreads his arms wide as
THE YOUNG CLARICE
rushes into them, and he sweeps her up in a hug, spinning her around, the CAMERA SPINNING with them, and capturing both their laughing faces, before we abruptly return to -

THE ADULT CLARICE
alone in the parking lot, sagging against her car. Her face is buried in her arms, she shoulders shaking. SOUND UPCUT - a steady, rapid series of GUNSHOTS, as we
INT. FBI ACADEMY FIRING RANGE - DAY
(snip)
Martin

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]My first question is, what is the best way to format a flashback? Does[/nq]
[nq:1]Here's an example from Silence of the Lambs 2nd draft (available online). I would read various scripts and see which ... SOUND UPCUT - a steady, rapid series of GUNSHOTS, as we INT. FBI ACADEMY FIRING RANGE - DAY (snip) Martin[/nq]
Question is, who wrote that script you excerpted from? You didn't provide a URL. Ted Tally had other things produced before doing that job and he was probably used to writing angles and POVs that some readers think beginning writers shouldn't do. (Not that I agree with what snotty trust fund baby readers disdain, but I'm just saying.)

It's an excellent example and very clean but it would probably be good for the original poster to find other examples of more recently produced scripts because the "going standard" can change like the wind in this town.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thanks to everyone here for taking the time to give me advice. After carefully considering your input, I've decided to ... on a trip, and I want him to observe things on the way that trigger these memories before he arrives.[/nq]
Okay the real question is you say that your protagonist needs to remember these things.
Is that literally true? Does he have amnesia, a la Jason Bourne, or are these "critical events" from his past incidents that are actually available to his recollection, as many things from our past are available to ours, which he simply hasn't thought about in many years.
Or are these things that are really immediately available to his memory like the death of a friend or a relative but which he needs to recall, really, for no reason other than that we, the audience, need to be clued in on all of this stuff from his past because it's going to figure in the present-day story.

If you look at something like "Hearts in Atlantis" you have the present tense story in which a death has brought the adult character back to his home town and there are various props a letter, a baseball glove, etc., which key his recollection back to the events of the past.
And that works reasonably well.
But there's a reason for that, and that is that the present-tense story and the events of the past are intermingled.

If you are just using flashbacks for exposition, then all of that stuff is, in story terms, dead. That's because scenes in works of drama have to be advancing the trajectory of the protagonist. At the end of each scene he has to be, in some sense, further along on his quest to achieve his goal. He may be better off, worse off, have been moved toward his goal, sent on the wrong path, given some critical piece of information or misinformation. Anything, but left in the same place.
If you have a flashback, and all it does is give *us* information (that is, tell us something that the protagonist already knows), then the protagonist, in a story sense, is in exactly the same place at the end of such a scene, as he was at the beginning.
But sometimes events from the past are very much entangled in the present-tense story. Something that you are doing now can be complicated by something that happened a long time ago, or something that you are doing now can be helped by something that you remember from a long time ago.
In that case, a flashback a memory is more than simply exposition, because then, at the end of the flashback, the story has been advanced. Something from the past, a memory, has come forward to advance or complicate the present-day story.
That is the challenge of dealing effectively with flashbacks to make them serve a purpose, other than simply an expository one, in the present day story.
[nq:1]My first question is, what is the best way to format a flashback? Does anyone know of any particularly well written spec scripts (I would imagine that shooting scripts differ from spec scripts greatly in handling flashback formats)?[/nq]
Simplest is best.
EXT. BOB'S BARN - NIGHT - FLASHBACK
And then, in the next slug line, put - BACK TO PRESENT
[nq:1]Secondly, are there any neat ways of handling a series of flashbacks, content-wise?[/nq]
Best way if you can avoid using them by finding a way to convey the information that they contain in some other fashion, by revealing the information in the course of a present-tense scene, it's almost always better.
Sometimes you can't. If that's the case, you really want to try to keep flashbacks to a minimum. A few images, a few words. It's okay in fact it is generally better if everything isn't spelled out in the flashbacks but rather presented as a bit of a mystery which isn't ultimately made clear until some present-day confrontation which makes it all clear and allows the audience to go, "Ah hah so that's what that all meant. Now I get it."
Think, for instance, of the obscure flashbacks that run through "Once Upon A Time in the West" the discordant harmonica music and the blurred image and the references to the harmonica that aren't made clear until the finale when we finally understand why Charles Bronson has been pursuing Henry Fonda throughout the whole movie.

NMS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I'm at a point where my story needs a series ... on the way that trigger these memories before he arrives.[/nq]
[nq:1]Recognize that you're entering waters which swamp many a newbie's script. "Flashbacks" are the most obvious tool for displaying exposition, ... great. "Memento," which Skip mentions, is a script for which the work "flashbacks" seems inappropriate - it's a non-linear story.)[/nq]
IIRC, the main character, Lenny, did suffer from flashbacks (both literally and figuratively, through his use of photography as a current memory enhancer) albeit not in chronological order. Great film; worth watching; won best org. screenplay. Best use of flashbacks since THE SOPRANOS.
[nq:1]So I would strongly, strongly encourage you to find a way to tell your story without them, and see what you end up with.[/nq]
If this is your first screenplay, why make it more complicated than necessary?
Not One of Them.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thanks to everyone here for taking the time to give me advice. After carefully considering your input, I've decided to write the simplest of my ideas as a screenplay, and to see how it goes.[/nq]
Oh, and, btw, Paul, it really takes ***** for a bankruptcy attorney to come asking for free advice from a group of "starving" writers. Great advertising.
Not One of Them

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]It's an excellent example and very clean but it would probably be good for the original poster to find other examples of more recently produced scripts because the "going standard" can change like the wind in this town.[/nq]
I would worry about it.
This falls into the category of "formatting minutiae" which it's easy to spend far, far too much time obsessing over.
Personally, I don't write shots that often. I thin it adds less than most writers (including Tally, quite frankly) seem to think it adds.

But NOBODY is going to **** a spec for brief sections like this. It's clean and readable.
Nobody's going to fret if you don't format a flashback the exact way that they think it should be done, either. A far, far bigger concern is that the flashback be appropriate, and not a crutch for writing around more subtle forms of exposition.
-Ron

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thanks again for your advice.[/nq]
I would liked to have chimed in with advice, but it looks like those who know have already given all the information you need.

I do have a story, in my head, where a couple flashbacks may be necessary because they would be directly related to the climax (and the story's theme). The longest flashback, however, was going to be at the very beginning. A character standing, looking over a pond, then remembering something from his childhood. I'll handle that one by simply reversing the order. I'll show the scene from the childhood, then the character standing, looking over the pond. If I can write that single scene well enough, I may not need any actual flashbacks. I'm not sure yet how it'll go but, as others have said, flashbacks are almost always overused by newbies and most of the time they are not needed.
Good luck. You might want to post a sample snippet not necessarily what you're writing but something like what you're writing and ask for critique and comments. You can learn a lot about the techniques of writing screenplays by doing that. (At least it has helped me a lot.)

Good luck.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

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[nq:2]Thanks again for your advice.[/nq]
[nq:1]I would liked to have chimed in with advice, but it looks like those who know have already given all the information you need.[/nq]
Man, you're stupid.
Next up: RonB rants about school systems, attorneys, and how the rich get richer.
Not One of Them

Help With Flashback Scenes

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