On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [61]
One of these flashback episodes is introduced when the heroine, shortly after encountering the hero for the first time in several years, is alone in her bedroom:
There was a shadow on the lawn of the sorority house. A dog? A trick of the moonlight, perhaps? Or a prowler, stalking the house? One of the sororities up the street
had reported a peeping Tom, a couple of weeks ago.
Cassidy watched the shadow for long minutes, until she was certain that no human being could have stayed still for so long.
Then, with a sigh, she turned away from the window. Don't be a fool, she told herself. You know perfectly well there's nothing out there. But you'd rather face the bogeyman in the dark than your own memories, tonight.
The flashback begins, using past perfect tense (had been, had had) to indicate a time long past, then sliding into past tense (was, said) as summary gives way to action:
Reid had been as good as his word that night; it had been almost midnight when her work was done, and he had still been sitting patiently in the booth, drinking coffee, idly turning the pages of the morning's newspaper. She had had a couple of hours to think it over, and so when she came back to the booth for the last time she was considerably calmer. Perhaps Kent's family had a right to know what she had decided. In any case, it seemed, it was no longer her choice whether to tell them; the man in that booth was a force to be reckoned with.
"I've clocked out," she said. "I'm finished for the night."
The body of the flashback is in real-time narrative and past tense, allowing the readers to watch the characters interact:
"You might as well tell me what you want, Cassidy."
She thought bitterly, You'll never believe it—but why not tell you? "A good home for my baby," she said. "That's all. So I'm giving him up for adoption, and you can just run along and not worry about it any more," She started to slide out of the booth.
He said, impassively, "That makes things much easier."
Cassidy stopped. "What on earth do you mean?"
He didn't answer. "When is the baby due?"
"Why do you care?" But she couldn't hold out against that cool stare. "The middle of December."
"December," he repeated thoughtfully. "Have you talked to an agency yet?"
As the flashback draws to a conclusion a few pages later, I shift to past perfect tense to indicate to the readers that the flashback is ending:
She swore to herself that she would take his help only as long as she must, that she would regard it as a loan, and that someday she would pay every penny back, because to do anything else was to put a price tag on her baby.
She did it, too, as far as she was able. Last May, she had finally finished at the university, and on the first day of June, when the annual check was deposited, she closed the account. She took every remaining cent of Reid Cavanaugh's money to Chicago with her when she went to a news reporters' convention, and she bought the first of
that series of money orders. And every month thereafter she would send a little more, until she had paid back the part of his money she had spent.
Then I return the readers to the present-day story by using word clues and references to the scene as it was before the flashback started. This clearly tells the readers that they're back to the main story, and back in the present:
The moon was high now, in the wee hours of the morning, and the shadow out on the lawn of the sorority house stayed solidly in place.
What Flashbacks Can't Do for Your Story
Flashbacks should be used only if the past action illustrates the motivation for the main conflict and if it is necessary for the readers to see that action actually occurring in order to understand the present-day story.
Before you commit to using flashbacks, keep in mind that they seldom move a story forward. In fact, they slow the action of the