How to Evaluate Stories by Laurie Hutzler

Author:Laurie Hutzler [Hutzler, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Laurie H. Hutzler
Published: 2012-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

The audience’s imagination is much richer and bolder than any flashback.

A better choice is to let the actor’s face and body language in the present convey what happened in the past.

A great example of the past made present is the “My daughter, my sister” scene in Chinatown. The reveal has maximum impact made with a minimum amount of words during an intense moment of conflict between Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) over a young woman Mulwray has been hiding.

Another great example is the backstory about the lambs Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) tells in The Silence of the Lambs. The close-up on Starling’s face in telling the story is much more effective than seeing the actual scene she is describing unfold in a flashback.

In a novel, flashbacks slow down, and even stop, the action in a story. The information received in the flashback must be relevant and critical to the present and contribute to the character’s emotional journey in the here-and-now.

For example, in the National Book Award-winning novel, The Tiger’s Wife, the flashbacks to Natalia’s grandfather’s early life show how myth, legend and superstition help individuals in the present cope with the cruelties of the endless Balkan war and ongoing bitter cultural and ethnic divides.

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