Mood:
lyricalTopic: General
"... The good doctor got to his feet and stretched. He retrieved the envelope addressed to Bydo Labs and crammed it in his pocket, but then he stopped. He opened the top and wedged that playing card [Queen of Hearts] into the fold, grinning all the while. He motioned to the live video feed with his head:
“That spectacular little piece of tail is really just a card in our deck, anyway. Let her wear her suit with pride! Anyway, Wraith: as for your Committee and all, I’m sure that when all’s said and done there’ll be more than enough credit to go around.”
Wraith was still staring down at the video feed. The nurse-phantoms, steam rising out the sides of their ugly rebreather masks like hot stink pouring out a wild hog’s snout, were busy holding down the young girl pinned to their operating table like a butterfly. Presently the girl’s entire body went to spasms. A silver knife— more accurately a spear— flittered about against the child’s writhing back as the doctor went to work on her.
Doctor? Tch! Butcher, more like…
A mop of hair flailed about, silver streaks dancing a manic chorea and a head turned around. Teeth— perfect, white and salivating with terror— yawned around a black chasm of a mouth, the tongue inside writhing like a snake. Above that a button-nose ran snot and two delicate eyes lay cemented shut, bleeding mighty rivers of water between them, the tears flying in beads from her wriggling head like a melancholy tempest.
Wraith sighed:
“Credit? Yes, there’ll be enough of that, I think. That and blame…”
“What?” Roont turned around.
The subcommander shook his head and sat up in his chair:
“A name, Roont; a name. I think I have a name for our squadron, if you’re still interested…” ..."
From page 10 of TYPERS Chapter "If one Wake at Midnight..."
Whaddya think of flashbacks, huh?
I myself am somewhat divided about their efficacy, and Lord do all the proper book-writin' elites have their opinions. More often than not it's a general mantra: flashbacks are lazy writing, cheap and- on top of it all- break your reader out of the action just so you can f**k with the flow of time and give away important plot details you should have more carefully crafted into your narrative flow.
I agree with all those sentiments... to a point...
That snippet from the next chapter of TYPERS is part of the start of the chapter: an in medias res drop into the past without provocation or explanation (that's how I like to do flashbacks, anyway). So, while I agree in principle with the flashback-hating sentiments all around us I do still think they have their place. Here's why:
Third-person limited point of view... for a given part of a given chapter (for me, specifically, during one of the roman numeral breaks) the narrator is inside a character's noggin and experiencing and commenting on what's going through that person's head. Now, organic flow of thought and conversation being what it is, humans tend to look to the past quite often (that is, the actual character is musing on his or her history; the narrator goes along for the ride). 99.9 percent of the time it's sufficient for the narrator to make a throwaway comment about such musings ("...he remembered the day they first met; she was eating a fig newton..."). Thus the reader is informed about a point's significance and the plot still advances in the here-and-now.
So... what about that .01 percent?
Well, actually, to dredge up some info from a previous post: it's about knowing when to 'show versus tell'...
...don't worry: no more rants about that again...
Basically that flasback up there segues into a present-time meeting between Wraith and Chenine (ie: the girl he's watching endure medical torture). Anyway: she's gonna say... something... in this meeting that prompts Wraith to nearly kill her, unbeknownst to the girl (ie: a 'twitching-trigger-finger-at-the-back-of-the-head' scenario) and he doesn't, even though logically he should.
Why not? Well, if I didn't include the flashback I'd literally have to include this kind of paragraph:
"... Wraith felt his actions were justified 'cause he was really, really mad at his daddy (Senior General of the Allied Commanders, blah, blah, blah...) and Wraith wanted to get back at him, but he also felt a little sad about how he was treating his squadron members, who he was technically supposed to be protecting ..."
Doesn't quite seem as strong somehow, does it?
I honestly don't think it's a question of if flashbacks are appropriate- they can be- but rather when they should be used. Admittedly I use them way too often, probably, and while I usually stick to opening chapters with them (not 'interrupting' the flow of a chapter, in other words) these things should probably only be done a few times in a book, if that. I've only done it once in ROE (my other book) so far, and I don't anticipate another one.
The fact that I do it so often in TYPERS might be a problem, I don't know. Or it might be a product of so much head-jumping: I've got to always be mindful to link people's motives to actions, and sometimes the only way to do that is to follow their trains of thought back to the past.
And, of course, the most important thing to remember is to do it quickly and then get back to the future... running through a flashback at 88 miles per hour is nothing, but that 1.21 giggawatts of electricity can be a real bitch, at times...
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