Quick Q: Flashbacks/Italics

[allmywires]

How do you format them? Is it distracting to read too long paragraphs in italics? Any other ways of obviously differentiating them from the main text?

 

[Mouse]

Yes, have them in italics. Mine are and unless a publisher (ha!) says otherwise, they're staying like that.

I just read a whole chapter in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which was in italics. My eyes didn't fall out or anything.

If this is for Hunted, leave as is with the dates on.

 

[Ursa major]

Ian Sales's novella/novelette/short story, Adrift on the Sea of Rains, uses italics (and wider left and right margins), to indicate passages from the past, which are interleaved with passages from the story's present. (More than 50% is set in the present, but there's a lot more from the past than is usual in a story with flashbacks.) This seems to work quite well in my printed copy.

Usually, though, flashbacks are not put in italics, but merely introduced by dropping into a "more past" tense (e.g. from present to past, or from past to pluperfect**) as an introduction to the flashback, then returning to the normal narrative tense for the rest of the flashback, before a quick visit to the past/pluperfect on exiting the flashback.

The main indication that one is in the flashback (or has returned to the main narrative) is the content of the words, which should let the reader know what's happening (unless you're keeping this mysterious for other purposes).

 

[allmywires]

If this is for Hunted, leave as is with the dates on.

How did you know....

Usually, though, flashbacks are not put in italics, but merely introduced by dropping into a "more past" tense (e.g. from present to past, or from past to pluperfect**) as an introduction to the flashback, then returning to the normal narrative tense for the rest of the flashback, before a quick visit to the past/pluperfect on exiting the flashback.

The main indication that one is in the flashback (or has returned to the main narrative) is the content of the words, which should let the reader know what's happening (unless you're keeping this mysterious for other purposes).

See, I did that, I put dates in and everything, and people still have said it's too confusing (not all people, probably about 50/50, before Mouse jumps back in... ). I just wondered if it was necessary to italicise to make it really, really clear that THIS IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT (I don't really want to come across shouty though...)

 

[The Judge]

I think a lot might depend on how long the flashback is (the received wisdom is you don't put too much in italics, though I'm with Mouse, it isn't something that worries me unduly) and how long ago it's flashing back to, plus what it happening in the here and now of the story both before and after the flashback.

I've not got a lot of "old" flashbacks in my fantasy -- a couple of childhood memories which are flagged with something like "memory stirred" and the memory itself told in past tense, the same as the narrative. I do, though, have someone reflecting on the events of the previous days/hours to bring the reader up to date -- eg I'll show a fight, but the post-fight stuff (tidying up, counting the dead, binding wounds etc) is bundled together in narrative an hour or so later. Those I do as Ursa describes -- start with pluperfect for a bit, then ordinary past. I don't always slip another pluperfect in at the end, provided I make it clear we're back in the original locale.

But this is where the flashback is actually embedded in the present day story. If yours are in separate scenes/chapters, as the date heading seems to suggest, then it might be worth using italics since the pluperfect/past divide won't be as obvious.