Flashbacks!

[pythonesque]

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Do you often have flashbacks in your stories?

I rarely do. I noticed this when talking to my friend. I want to start putting them in more often, instead of having to start my novel earlier than I care to just to include those stories. I'm not sure why I'm so wary of flashbacks. Just not my style?

How do you include flashbacks? Do you italicize that section, create a new chapter, ...?
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[Lyvidian]

I'm actually working on my first story where I implement flashbacks. :0 I’m thinking about doing it the way Anne Rice does in Interview with the Vampire, where Louis is basically just telling his story to the journalist… Doing it that way, though, you really need to pay attention to the quotations.

EDIT: LoL! Just realized my answer doesn't help at all. I have one of my MMCs talking about his past at a few parts, and for some reason I thought about that. But there is a flashback I'm thinking of putting in the story. I'm probably going to just have it all in italics.  

[Xiao Xianyu]

I'm a flashback-a-holic. In fact, I probably shouldn't use them as often as I do. I like to explore my characters, and nothing helps explain to me what made them who they are better than flashbacks. But I sometimes forget that my audience won't necessarily be quite as interested as I am.

I usually offset it by making a new scene. Just with something said previously to let you know you're entering a flashback. And something written to let you know you're back at present. Sort of like this:


(End of Previous Scene)Try as she might, she couldn't help but recall that day...


It had been springtime. (Continue flashback)


(After Flashback)She opened her eyes, pushing the memories away. Now wasn't the time to dwell on it.  

[Feline Anachronism]

I'm working with flashbacks for the first time, as well. Right now, I'm using page breaks, but that may change during the edit.  

[VenusRain]

I only use flashbacks in short snippets for my written stuff, and even then only for one character so far, so I can imply what happened in one of the timeskips without actually writing an entire scene. Because the stuff I'm avoiding tends to be unpleasant to actually write out.

They're formatted kind of strangely; I'd need a decent-quality one on this computer before I could show you.

For more visual media, I'm not sure yet. So far it's been identical, but there's a comic I want to get down that has a fairly extensive flashback because it was either that or massive TL;DR. Mmm, textwalls in a comic. Lots of fun. neutral  

[pythonesque]

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I think flashbacks can be hard. Like, the transitions in and out of them. They are for me at least.

I know a lot of people use the "and then ______ couldn't help thinking about ______" INSERT FLASHBACK "______ blinked back into reality" sort of thing. But, it always seems too jumpy when I do it.
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