Hiya Fellow Writer!

If you think that a flashback is something you remember, you're probably using flashbacks in the wrong way. What is the right way? Keep reading to find out.

Flashbacks in books are different than in movies​

A flashback in a book is not like a scene in a movie when all of a sudden there's a shot of the character remembering something, and then we get into the flashback.

Flashbacks don't work this way in memoir. For memoir writers, a flashback is a story from your past that is somehow relevant to the main storyline.​

In other words, your narrator doesn’t have to pause to remember the past. You don’t have to write things like, “In that moment, I flashed back to being eight years old” or “I suddenly remembered when my mother punished me for arriving late to school.” 

What you want to do instead is basically tell your reader, “Hey, there’s this related story from a while back that seems relevant to mention here.” So how do you do that?

In order to get into a flashback, you need to do two things. 

1. Something has to happen in your main storyline. 
2. You need to make a point related to what just happened, a point that is relevant to the flashback. 

Does that sound confusing? It shouldn't by the time you finish reading this email.

How to create a flashback in your own memoir

To help you better understand how to use flashbacks, let’s look at an example from Wild by Cheryl Strayed. 

First of all, I want you to spot the flashback in this text. At what point does the text  veer away from the main storyline and get into the story from the past?

The doctor shook his head sadly and pressed on. He had a job to do. They could try to ease the pain in her back with the radiation, he offered. Radiation might reduce the size of the tumors that were growing along the entire length of her spine. 

I did not cry. I only breathed. Horribly. Intentionally. And then forgot to breathe. I’d fainted once — furious, age three, holding my breath because I didn't want to get out of the bathtub, too young to remember it myself. What did you do? What did you do? I'd asked my mother all through my childhood, making her tell me the story again and again. Amazed and delighted by my own impetuous will. She’d held out her hands and watched me turn blue, my mother had always told me. She’d waited me out until my head fell into her palms and I took a breath and came back to life.

Breathe.

“Can I ride my horse?” My mother asked the real doctor. She sat with her hands folded tightly together and her ankles hooked one to the other.”

So, did you spot the flashback? It appears in the second paragraph starting with “I’d fainted once.”

Now let's break down what Strayed is actually doing here. Your first step is make something happen in your main storyline. So what is it that happens in this text? 

“When I get more bad news from the doctor I forget to breathe.” 

An event can be as simple as that. Something happens. Strayed forgets to breathe.

So what’s the point she makes related to that event to get us into the flashback? 

“Once I held my breath for so long, I fainted.” 

Another way to think of this: Your flashback is making the same point as what is happening in your scene.

Be sure to make your point at the beginning of your flashback, not the end. That way, your flashback will be relevant in your reader’s mind and they won't ask, “Why is the author telling me this?” 


Hope this helps make your good writing better!

How do you include other people’s stories in your memoir? Maybe you want to write about how your parents met, or maybe you want to let me know what your grandparents endured during World War II.

Telling other people's stories in memoir is possible, but if you do it in the wrong way, you run the risk of losing your reader. Why? Subjective writing – putting us inside your narrator’s head – is the key to transporting your reader. However, you can’t put us inside someone else’s head.

If I’ve lost you, watch this intro to subjective writing.

So how do you accomplish this? First, let me show you how Tara Westover achieves this in her memoir, Educated.

“I don't know when the man in that photograph became the man I know as my father.  Perhaps there was no single moment. Dad married when he was twenty-one, had his first son, my brother Tony, at twenty-two. When he was twenty-four, Dad asked Mother if they could hire an herbalist to midwife my brother Shawn. She agreed. Was that the first hint, or was it just Gean being Gene, eccentric and unconventional, trying to shock his disapproving in-laws? After all, when Tyler was born twenty months later, the birth took place in a hospital. When Dad was twenty-seven, Luke was born, at home, delivered by a midwife. Dad decided not to file for a birth certificate, a decision he repeated with Audrey, Richard and me. A few years later, around the time he turned thirty, Dad pulled my brothers out of school. I don't remember it, because it was before I was born, but I wonder if perhaps that was a turning point. In the four years that followed, Dad got rid of the telephone and chose not to renew his license to drive. He stopped registering and ensuring the family car. Then he began to hoard food.

This last part sounds like my father, but it is not the father my older brothers remember. Dad had just turned forty when the Feds laid Siege to the Weavers, an event that confirmed his worst fears. After that, he was at war, even if the war was only in his head. Perhaps that is why Tony looks at that photo and sees his father, and I see a stranger.”

What is Tara Westover doing there? Well, she can’t channel her father’s thoughts, so she gives us her thoughts about her father.​

Look at how much subjective writing she manages to include, how many times she uses the word “I”, even though this is about her dad.

"I don't know when the man in that photograph became the man I know as my father."

"I don't remember it, because it was before I was born, but I wonder if perhaps that was a turning point." ​​​​​​

"Perhaps that is why Tony looks at that photo and sees his father, and I see a stranger."

In other words, we are inside Westover’s head even when she’s telling us her father’s story. In short, she makes this about her – in a good way!

Here is my first tip for writing your family members’ stories:

Put us inside your head.

Let me give you another excerpt that includes subjective writing in a completely different way. This is from the memoir Heartsounds: The Story of Love and Loss by Martha Weinman Lear. 

“He awoke at 7:00 a.m. with pain in his chest. The sort of pain that might cause panic if one were not a doctor, as he was, and did not know, as he knew, that it was heartburn. He went into the kitchen to get some Coke, whose secret syrups often relieve heartburn. The refrigerator door seemed heavy, and he noted that he was having trouble unscrewing the bottle cap. Finally, he rinsed it off. Cursing the defective cap, he poured some liquid. Took a sip. The pain did not go away. Another sip. Still no relief. Now he grew more attentive. He stood motionless, observing symptoms. His breath was coming hard. He felt faint. He was sweating, though the August morning was still cool. He put fingers to his pulse. It was rapid and weak. A powerful burning sensation was beginning to spread through his chest, radiating upward into his throat, into his arm. No, but the pain was growing worse now. It was crushing. Crushing, just as it is always described, and worse even than the pain, was the sensation of losing all power. A terrifying seepage of strength. He could feel the entire degenerative process accelerating. He was growing fainter, faster. The pulse was growing weaker. Faster. He was sweating much more profusely now. A heavy clammy sweat. He felt that the life juices were draining from his body. He felt that he was about to die.”

Here the author helps us feel what her husband actually went through. So how did she know all of those things? The truth is, she probably took some creative license here and assumed what her husband thought and felt. The final result is writing that works to transport her reader. Instead of telling us what her husband went through, it feels like we are there with him. 

This leads me to tip number two:

Put us inside your characters’ heads.


Hope this info works to make your prose more interesting and emotionally affecting. Wishing you happy writing!

Most people think their memoir will be more interesting if they include lots and lots of things happening. They think that keeping the action moving is the key to a successful plot.

The reality is that too many events in rapid succession will usually bore your reader.  I know this is counterintuitive, so let me give you an example of writing that has tons of stuff happening.

“That summer I moved to North Carolina. Nick came into the picture soon after that. When we were married, I promised at this time I would make it work. Three months later, I learned I was pregnant. Jonah came into our lives that year on Christmas Day. By the time he started preschool, I was starting to feel the first warning signs of depression. I went to a therapist, and three years later, I finally started to feel some relief.”

So many of the student assignments I get read like this. So what is the problem with this kind of writing? 

You're telling me lots of stuff that happened. But I’m not living through any of these events with you. If you quickly rush through a number of events, you will lose your reader. 

THE FIX​

The solution is to take one or two of these events, and really develop them fully for your reader. For the sake of example, I'm going to pick the sentence, “Three months later I learned I was pregnant.”

Let me show you how I rewrote this entire paragraph around that single idea:

“Learning I was pregnant brought up mixed feelings for me. On one hand, I was thrilled to have a mini version of Nick growing inside of me. I hoped that this baby would be exactly like him, empathetic and kind and always there with a hug when I was having a bad day. On the other hand, I was worried that the baby might get too many of the bad genes, such as my mother's mental illness. How much of Nick would my baby inherit? And how much would come from me?” 

This paragraph is about the same length as the original version, but less is happening. Don't you find it more interesting? Don't you feel like you're living through this with the narrator and that you understand what it's like when she gets pregnant? 
In the first version, I covered lots of events, and many writers think that's better because so much is happening. But the opposite is really true. 

If I can give you just one tip to slow your writing down, it is this: 

Make a single point per paragraph. 

Start your paragraph with a topic sentence and spend the rest of your paragraph expanding on that idea. If you do this, your book will usually be moving along at the right speed.

This one tip will do wonders to really overhaul your prose. 


Wishing you happy writing!

Writing dialogue – either you love it or hate it.  No matter how you feel about it, I wanted to give you a super quick hack to make your scenes with dialogue read better.

What's this trick? Get rid of the attributions.

Dialogue attributions are things like “he said,” “she said,” “I remarked,” “the man explained.” Using a lot of attributions bogs your text down. 

Let me first give you an example of what not to do. 

“Are you going to order the extra spicy?” I asked. 
“I'm thinking about it,” Milton said.
“Last time it gave you acid reflux,” I added.
“Yeah, but I hadn't eaten all day,” he explained. 
“I just don't want to hear you complain about how much your stomach is hurting you,” I remarked. 

I asked. Milton said. I added. He explained.  I find reading all of those attributions a bit annoying. 

However, simply getting rid of them isn’t the answer either. How will your reader know who is saying what? Below are three fixes that allow you to remove most of all of your attributions that still let your reader understand who is speaking.

TIP NUMBER ONE: Only put in attributions in the first line of dialogue for each character.

In the dialogue below, I really only need the attributions once. After that, it’s easy to figure out who is speaking.

“Are you going to order the extra spicy?” I asked. 
“I'm thinking about it.” Milton said.
“Last time it gave you acid reflux.”
“Yeah, but I hadn't eaten all day.”

TIP NUMBER TWO: Use the character’s name in the line of dialogue. If there are only two characters in your scene, it immediately becomes obvious who is speaking.

“Are you going to order the extra spicy, Milton?” 
“I'm thinking about it, Marge.” 
“Last time it gave you acid reflux”.
“Yeah, but I hadn't eaten all day.”

TIP NUMBER THREE: My favorite way of getting rid of attributions is to replace them with an insight about the character or yourself.

Let's take this first line of dialogue:

“Are you going to order the extra spicy?” I asked.

Now replace “I asked” with something like “I tried to make my questions sound casual, not like I was nagging. Milton hated it when I started telling him what to do.”

It's very obvious who’s speaking because the line of dialogue is followed by a sentence that starts with the word “I,” so I am the one speaking. 

Here is an example of how to do this with the second line of dialogue:

BEFORE: “I'm thinking about it,” Milton said.

AFTER: “I’m thinking about it.” Milton looked at the menu more intently now, but I could tell he was just pretending. He already knew what he planned on ordering.

It's obvious who’s speaking. We know it's Milton because I followed the line of dialogue with a sentence about what the character is doing at that moment. So now, not only is it clear who is speaking, we are now getting information that serves to make the scene richer.


Hope this helps! Wishing you happy writing.

When I hear the phrase “Show, Don’t Tell,” I honestly want to scream. I’ve seen more people get their books off track by following this advice than any other.

To know how misguided this advice is, all you have to do is open up any award-winning novel or memoir. What will you find in there? A whole lot of telling.

In fact, telling information in your book is often richer and more emotionally affecting than showing. Let me give you a very short sample from the memoir Honestly, She Doesn't Live Here Anymore, written by Pamela Wick, a former student of mine. (This memoir comes out next year.) Here are just two paragraphs of good writing that do no showing: 


Though I remain calm on the exterior for the most part, inside I am a hurricane. I am turbulent and unsteady. At times when I am unable to remain calm on the exterior, my polite, agreeable persona gets invaded by physical manifestations of fear, and I have a panic attack. Right in the middle of my day. I break out in a sweat, my heart beats like a jazz drum, and thoughts of ‘what if people notice me’ race through my mind. I want to escape, but it’s impossible.


Now that Robin and I are divorcing, panic attacks are normal. I am fear-filled. It feels as though my sadness has morphed into a kind of despair. An emotional changing of the guard. I’ve never lived alone before. Will I meet someone else? Should I get a dog? With my fear, there remains, though, a residue of sorrow, so it gives it an extra dimension, as if plain old fear weren’t enough. 

In this sample, Pamela does lots of telling. And what is the end result? A chunk of emotionally affecting prose that is a pleasure to read.



I strongly suggest you start looking at the prose of literary novelists and memoirists. They are not following the advice “Show, don’t tell” the way it is explained in so many articles and blogs. Writing “experts” are so often giving suggestions that simply don’t hold up in the real world. They are repeating what they’ve heard without any question or analysis and are completely misinterpreting what “Show, don’t tell” really means.


Almost everyone takes this advice out of context and applies it to all aspects of writing, to the extent that this incredibly misunderstood tip is now applied to make otherwise good writing much worse.



In the event that you want to understand the very specific circumstance in which this advice holds true, it is this: “Don’t tell your events. Show them in the form of a scene.”



Here is a sample of text in which this advice should be applied because the writer is describing a lot of things happening:


I went out for a jog and near the lake, I ran into my ex, which stirred up a lot of old feelings. Two days later, he called me but it was a bad time because I was on a call with my boss. We met up three days later at a restaurant where he confessed that he was married. I was devastated and decided I’d block him from all my social media accounts. A week later, I ran into another friend from high school who told me that his mother died from lung cancer.


Did you get a sense of the story being rushed? You might have even felt like you were left out of what was going on. What was the writer doing there? Basically telling me a bunch of stuff that happened. 



Instead, whenever something happens in your book, you want your reader to live through the event fully. In other words, show your events. Create a scene whenever something is happening in your book. 



However, it’s fine to tell me your ideas or come right out and give me information. Take a look at this short text, taken from the forthcoming memoir What Would Philip Roth Do? by Matthew Check, another former student of mine, and feel how it affects you differently than the previous one:


When they are done fine-tuning the mapping of the human genome, I hope they take the time to look into the banjo gene — there has to be one. Who takes the time to play something over and over and over again that makes no sense initially and that sounds awful? There was an exhausting despair in playing the banjo in the beginning when my rolls would descend into failure (like a child attempting to ride his bike without training wheels who crashes into some bush only to create scrapes and abrasions). And yet, I kept dusting myself off and getting back to work because there were also moments (and in the beginning it really was momentary) when the index finger followed the thumb, which followed the middle finger, and vice versa, and forward and backward and in and out, and it would miraculously form into something rhythmic and sequential that was for me nothing short of spotting a unicorn. 


There is a rabbinic parable that rang true for me in moments like those. When we are born our souls are split in two and our life’s mission is to always find our other half: the beshert.  In the moments that I was able to play the roll patterns, I felt as if I had been cosmically reunited with something that I had been separated from at birth, and now that I had found it, I was never going to let it go. 

Here the author basically is telling us how much the banjo means to him. What many writing guides would suggest he do instead would be to get this information across by showing us this information, by describing the smile on his face after playing his first few notes, by having him race outside with a joyous leap in the wake of this early success. However, would that really be more effective than the telling that the writer is doing here? 


Don’t feel the need to show if telling will do a much better job of getting your point across. Oh, and never bring up this phrase in my presence unless you want to see me get riled up. 🤣




Happy writing!