Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain

Author:Dwight Swain
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Reference, Writing
ISBN: 0806111917
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1965-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

(1) Flashback.

Flashback is someone remembering in the present what happened in the past.

There’s one key point to remember where flashback is concerned: Don’t open with it!

In the early stages of a story, you see, interest often is a fragile and tenuous thing. Though your reader is in search of entertainment, he’s by no means sure that he’ll find precisely what he wants in your particular story.

Bore him with flashback, past history, even briefly, and likely as not he’ll turn to someone else’s yarn.

Once his interest is aroused, however, it’s entirely possible that he’ll ache to acquire the self-same data he’d have spurned a page or two or three before.

So, do try to open on a striking, self-explanatory scene. Hold the flashback for later, after the end of the beginning (a subject with which we’ll deal shortly), when the story question is established and Reader firmly hooked. If a girl’s going to slap a boy’s face, and he in his turn then will knock her down, let me see the bit first, before you explain the background of their quarrel. Believe me, the delay will make me an infinitely better Iistener!

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