Flashback

[Steve C]

I am writing a novel in 3rd person POV and want to insert a flashback.
It concerns someone in prison remembering the first sex he had with the love of his life. No one is listening to him it is only his thoughts.
Should I use 1st person for the flashback or stay with 3rd.?
It seems a bit odd writing it in 3rd as it is obviously a very personal memory but I have read that switching POVs can grate with readers.
Also, should I put the FB in italics? It is roughly 4 pages long and that too I have heard is a lot of italics.
Help Please

 

[CageSage]

I'd advise against using italics, and also against changing to first person. I'd probably also say that a flashback that long is a very long read - why is it so important to the story that it needs to be so much? You don't have to tell me, but if I were reading the story, I'd need to feel that the need was there, and not just as a distraction from a cell.
Flashbacks can kill momentum, so consider it as a venomous snake and keep it short and sharp and to the point of the need to know in the here and now.

That's what I think.

 

[SAMelia]

Yes, I think flashbacks can very quickly become ' the author telling himself the story' and they are invariably more interesting to the author than the reader. By all means write a the flashback, write it as long and detailed as you like, but also this is where it will be the easier to make the cut later, the flashbacks are the darlings that you should focus hard on when you start editing the narrative later on.
Also once you as the author have a handle on your character's back story, you may find a better place to introduce it via dialogue or action somewhere else.
So just be aware flashback are part of the process of creating a story, just because you write them as they occur to you, does not mean that a) they belong in the narrative, b) they belong in this part of the narrative, c) they could not be replaced by an action (visiting a tomb or the location where you had sex) or a bit of dialogue ('Didn't you have a thing with her?')

Admittedly if your character is in a prison, you must be short on narrative potential, and if I was you I would be thinking of dynamite, ropes or a plea bargain to get him/her out and back into the real world

 

[Jackson Banks]

Stay with third would be my guess.

 

[RK Wallis]

I agree with everyone else, a flashback can shoot you in the foot. But write it, then rest your MS at least a month, then you can make an unemotional call about what stays.

 

[Steve C]

Thanks, guys. The FB is important to the story but yes I may well cut it back later.
Having said that a bit of sex is unlikely to have the reader skipping pages.
Agree with the italics.
I know when I see them in a book I instinctively withdraw and skim the pages.
Gonna rewrite in 3rd POV then look at it side by side the 1st POV version.

 

[Jackson Banks]

If the previous chapter ends with a great question/statement etc and the flashback answers it and maybe provides something else ie a promise etc I think that is usually the best way. Like you said, you can always edit it later.

 

[Steve C]

I am struggling to decide tbh.
If the FB was someone telling another character about an experience he'd had then it would have to be in 1st person. 'I did this then she did that' sort of thing
In my case he is talking to himself (mumbling) some of the time and thinking some of the time. so saying "he" when talking about himself feels odd.

 

[KateESal]

Have you read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell?

Great use of flashback in that novel, and if anything, the FBs add to the building tension of the narrative.

Highly recommended.

 

[Steve C]

Have you read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell?

Great use of flashback in that novel, and if anything, the FBs add to the building tension of the narrative.

Highly recommended.

Thank you, I have bought it. My prison is like an insane asylum being in Morocco in the early seventies and in the chapter I talk of insanity and suicide leading up to the FB so your recommendation may well be perfect for me.

 

[KateESal]

Ah yes, an asylum...this could well fit the bill, then!

Mental health is definitely a theme in The Vanishing... and so is imprisonment, both in terms of a social construct and in an institution.

Both my husband and I loved it, I hope you enjoy it too!

 

[Robert M Derry]

If this is for a first draft, write it however you feel like it.

On a mere glance I imagine you'll cut it on the second pass, because it probably doesn't influence the main plot which means it's not essential, but this kind of stuff is useful to the writer and it can illuminate new avenues, which you wouldn't have anticipated in the initial planning.

 

[Steve C]

If this is for a first draft, write it however you feel like it.

On a mere glance I imagine you'll cut it on the second pass, because it probably doesn't influence the main plot which means it's not essential, but this kind of stuff is useful to the writer and it can illuminate new avenues, which you wouldn't have anticipated in the initial planning.

Actually it is nearer to final but one pass. I cut the scene from an earlier version so I could start the book at a later point. At about 65% through I want to put the scene in as a FB