Flashbacks in 1st Person

[Ihe]

Suppose your MC has a past you want to reveal in a twist. How would this work in 1st POV? If the narrator is the MC himself, and he is a reliable narrator, can you really withhold important information from his own past without the readers feeling cheated?

My main problem is flashbacks in this POV. Can they work at all?

 

[tinkerdan]

Doing a flashback takes a few tricks that I think have been discussed before. Depending on the tense and POV that you are writing most of the narrative you should try to pick a way of framing the flashback so the reader knows they are going in to one and when they come out they are certain that it's finished and they are back to the story. (The POV and tense might then be up for grabs(do it in the way you think best) or you may opt to return to the tense you are using and a POV appropriate to the flashback.)

If you intend on making the twist be something that finishes the story you might be taking a chance that readers will want to kick you. If you do it well they might be forgiving. It's a rather tender sore spot for some readers and it might depend on how important to the story that information is. If the whole story hinges on the twist as a vital part then I'd be upset if it was thrown in at the end. It's probably the next worst thing to Deus ex Machina. If all that your story is as far as plot is that one point then you should make it a really short story.
On the other hand if there is a full plot and the twist just adds some extra spice in the mix then it might be acceptable; but I would try to work some sort of hints along the way.

What I mean is (taking a bit from something I recently read) if the character's sex is never mentioned but you let the reader assume a lot of things and there are hints about weight and being out of shape and such throughout as they are being pursued by someone and you finally get to the end where the protagonist overcomes the antagonist and then they say something like.
"They should have known a mother will do anything to protect her unborn child."
As long the knowledge that she's a woman and she's pregnant is not essential to the whole plot which might be Man vs Alien on Alien's home world or some such, then you might get a pass on it.

But if the whole point is that she's a woman and she's pregnant and it turns the whole story on it's head; well, some readers might want yours on a pike.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'd ask myself how necessary the twist is. Could it be reworked so as not to be a twist?

I say this not because I have anything against twists, really, but that often twists make all preceding text irrelevant. Instead of negating our past assumptions, a twist should enhance them. Or give context.

Imagine you've made a great effort writing your story; characterisation is great, plot, suspense etc, then you find all this is preamble to a punchline. It'd do your work a disservice.

pH

 

[HareBrain]

Suppose your MC has a past you want to reveal in a twist. How would this work in 1st POV? If the narrator is the MC himself, and he is a reliable narrator, can you really withhold important information from his own past without the readers feeling cheated?

If you really are going to position the narrator as reliable (but is that important?), then I think the only way to do it is to make sure the subject of the revelation doesn't become relevant to his thoughts at any previous point in the story. If you don't do this, then the narrator automatically becomes unreliable, even if only in hindsight. A good example of this is Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory. The ending revelation annoyed me hugely when I first read it (though I thought the book was otherwise brilliant, at the time) -- I couldn't believe that the narrator, knowing from the start of telling the story what we do at the end, would have told it without it intruding on his account in any way. Which means we're no longer hearing someone's "thoughts", but a story they have created for another's consumption, and thus as unreliable as any third-person narrator's tale. (But that might just have been me.)

Regarding flashbacks, though, the first-person mode has an advantage in that you don't really need to set up a flashback, nor frame it as carefully as you would in a third-person story. The whole story is someone's reminiscence, and they can jump about as they see fit, go off on tangents etc. The only restriction is that it should be interesting.

 

[Dan Jones]

A good example of this is Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory. The ending revelation annoyed me hugely when I first read it (though I thought the book was otherwise brilliant, at the time) --

This is the exact book I thought of after reading Ihe's post. I actually thought the twist ending worked, and wasn't annoyed by it. Maybe that just means I'm a more forgiving reader than you, but it also might mean that the twist ending can work. However, in TWF the narrator isn't exactly what you'd call a stable individual, and unreliability in hindsight is quite a reasonable trait to pin on the narrator.

The fact that it annoyed HB but impressed me might simply mean that you'll end up making your book quite divisive - but as we both thought of TWF, at least it remains memorable (and brilliant, as HB says)

 

[Ihe]

Good points everyone. Indeed it will be hard to not have that twist/revelation affect the MC's thoughts in a retroactive manner without cheating the reader. Ill need plenty of foreshadowing and to move up the revelation to earlier in the story I think. Might be polarizing either way though.

 

[crystal haven]

Just another suggestion. Is the book in one POV? I mostly write in 1st person; I actually have two - both first person. It means you can jump into a different character to avoid spilling out thoughts to the reader. Use distractions so the character won't be thinking of these things at the time you are in their POV.

 

[HareBrain]

The ending revelation annoyed me hugely when I first read it

I realise now my own narrative was somewhat unreliable. In fact the revelation struck me as brilliant when I read it. It only began to annoy me a couple of days later.

However, in TWF the narrator isn't exactly what you'd call a stable individual, and unreliability in hindsight is quite a reasonable trait to pin on the narrator.

But that raises the question of why he's being unreliable, and with whom. Is he being unreliable with himself? Or with the reader? And if the reader, who does he think the reader is? Who is he telling his story to? That's always the implicit question with first-person narratives, and it might interest some readers and not others. I'm afraid I'm often bugged by it (even with stories I enjoy and find immersive).