How do you incorporate memories in fiction?
Like real people, the past influenced your character's decisions. So how to you share those moments with readers and not make it seem like a big info dump?
In the Nature vs. Nurture argument, I am balanced on the two sides. I’ve always thought genetics are what made me super creative. After all, my ancestors created egg containers for carrying eggs. They perfected canning jars and storage containers for food. They imagined a successful business during the Great Depression, when the world’s finances were hitting bottom. My ancestors were the Ball Brothers.
But I am also the product of an alcoholic parent and divorce. Some characters in my past were more prominent, causing me to make decisions about how I behave. Others influenced how I raised my children. And the repetitive chant of my internal dialogue is usually my grandmother talking or my mom’s voice. So my past greatly influenced the me I am now. Like you, I have some memories that stand out more brightly than others. Like they happened yesterday. While others fade under the wallpaper unless someone peels the corner back.
Our fictional characters should be the same. They have their backstory and their wounds. And at times during the telling, we want them to remember.
But how do you do that without interrupting the story and making a big pile of distraction?
In Best Kept Secrets, my two primary characters are Detective Morgan Jewell, and an accountant named Caryn Klein. Morgan struggles with a past she can’t remember, while Caryn (pronounced car-in) knows her estranged brother caused her to behave the way she does. She does not have healthy relationships, but I didn’t want to come out and tell you that directly. I wanted to show you why.
A murder at the beginning of the book triggers bits and pieces of Morgan’s memory to come loose. Throughout the book, she is haunted by her past. Days before she was about to move into college dorms with her best friend, Fay Ramsey, Fay disappeared. Throughout the book, Morgan tries to summon those ghosts, but remembers very little of that time. The closer she gets to the killer, the more her memory reveals.
In this thriller, I added flashbacks in the form of whole chapters. Because both women were affected by their histories, the past events fit the narrative.
Fast foreword to what I’m writing now.
FOREWARNED is the story of a teen aged girl who doesn’t want to face her truth. But she can’t escape the fact that she’s got psychic abilities. Because she’s so young, her past hasn’t really been created yet. So in this book, her memories come in the form of internal dialogue. Because of her age, and because this book isn’t rally about how the past meets the present, I included very few memories, and only those specific to the story.
So I’m curious. How do you incorporate flashbacks, aka memories, so they don’t interrupt the storytelling?
Usually, something happens in my novels that triggers a memory, which is similar to your first book. It can be a traumatic memory that explains a character's actions or a sweet one, which creates empathy. I find weaving them into the storyline works better than simply dumping them.
I'm working on a short story right now, a widowed, 70-year-old man, a close townhouse neighbor to a 20-something photo journalist major. Neither talk much, so what pertinent memories that surface come out only in bits and pieces, adding to intrigue, not overly-burdening a fast-pace story line.