I'm rewriting the fifth year Harry-Fleur fic, with the main conflict being Fleur/Umbridge and the underlying conflict of course, Harry/Umbridge and Harry/Voldemort.

The POV is Fleur, third person.

Currently, chapter one begins with a meeting of the Order. The problem is, in order to set up the year plausibly (and introduce other sub-themes), I'm utilizing three separate flashbacks.

1. Fleur as a three year old on the night she learns her father was killed by followers of Voldemort/Purebloods in the first war.

2. Fleur being thrown out of the Infirmary by Ron (he's protecting Harry - setting up a Ron who's changed for a reason that will be revealed as the story continues), then speaking with Harry, and finally, with Dumbledore the night Voldemort incarnates.

3. A discussion Fleur had with Madame Maxime, which presents the first half of the justification for a eighteen-year-old Fleur to teach at Hogwarts.

So my question is....

Utilize flashbacks, or organize chapter 1 as a prologue, with headers before each scene change (only in the prologue):

June 9, 1980 - blahblah, France.

A three year old. . . .
____________

June 24, 1995, Hogwarts Infirmary.

Fleur. . . .
______

July 28, 1995, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.

Madame Maxime and Fleur walked through. . . .
____

August 11, 1995, Black Mansion, a Meeting of the Order of the Phoenix.

The. . . .
________


I'm open to other suggestions as well. I have the first draft finished, and while I like the overall story line, I'm not happy with how it flows currently, but feel that doing it this way, may make the story flow even less.

 

Flashback scenes in general are really, really tacky, in my opinion.

Other, more viable methods of laying important and critical backstory are nightmares, even if the scenery inside of said nightmare is more fantastic than realistic (such as Fleur's father's face melting off, Indiana Jones style), subtle hints and nuggets of information inside of the narrative, etc - anything which helps the reader build up a general picture of what happened in the past, without having to go into the hum-and-drum of infodumping it.

A more limited example of this sort of technique is in Carmine's 'The Last Dance', where you see Harry having Ravenclaw items claimed as his - that clue alone (and his marriage to...well, read the fic! ) gives the reader a very rough idea about his A/U Hogwarts life.

Also;

If Fleur's father was murdered when she was younger, it would result in a personality shift for Fleur, and everyone else, such as Apolline.

There's also the fact that, if she was young enough when he snuffed it, Gabrielle wouldn't have been born.

Also, if you care about such things (and many authors don't, due to the whole 'suspension of disbelief' thing), Fleur's papa snuffing it that early on would cause a ripple effect, allowing you to basically fuck-around with some of the more recent elements in the HP world.

(E.g., Harry being in Ravenclaw, or Hermione being killed before Hogwarts in a freak automobile accident, or one of the Weasley children being stillborn, etc).

Really, so long as 'ripple effect' is implied somewhere in the story, to the reader and not to the characters, you've got a green card.

It would make the fic a lot more interesting, too, since you would have more creative freedom.

 

Yeah, I think flashback should generally be a last resort.
Leave the reader clues, leave some things (like what exact change makes this an AU) vague which gives you leeway later in the story to change some minor things if you need to.
Do you have any of this story posted to get an idea of what the plot is?
That'd be helpful to help us give you better suggestions.

 

Okay, as someone who uses flashbacks frequently in writing, let me put a few of my ground-rules on the table.

1. Ask yourself why you're bringing in the flashback. Why is it important? Why is it relevant? What are you communicating in a flashback that you can't communicate elsewhere through another method? Jorm is right, flashbacks tend to be really tacky if used incorrectly - however, if used properly, they can have a lot of impact. However, if you're dead set on using flashbacks, make sure you have answers to the following three questions. Firstly, does this flashback convey adequately the design/plot/development that you're intending to show? Secondly, is this flashback relevant to the character who is reminiscing? Thirdly and finally, does this flashback convey dramatic emotion in a way that is both relevant and affecting for the reader?

2. What one must realize with flashbacks is that they're the poor-man's show-don't-tell. If written incorrectly, they're expository in the worst way, and they can really come across as such. The key with exposition is to blend it into the narrative - as much as certain authors might like the essay format (they know who they are), it does horrible things to narrative flow if one chooses to go into lengthy exposition, and flashbacks are the worst culprits here.

3. If it's within a Harry Potter story, the Pensieve can be a powerful tool if used in limited quantities. That adds a narrative constraint to the flashback (there needs to be a Pensieve of some kind within the story to utilize the flashback, and even here it can be clunky (not even Rowling escaped this)).

4. If you're not looking to use a Pensieve, you can still use flashbacks, but you must keep narrative flow in mind. The flashback must have purpose, and that purpose must tie together with the flow. Discordant flashbacks about oblique subjects are pertinent if you're writing an art piece, but the best of them utilize montage techniques to still symbolically link to the greater story.

I won't lie, I use flashbacks a lot. Hell, in the introductory chapter of my story, I used extensive flashbacks as narrative devices - but then again, I was working from a template popularized by crime television to keep the flow tight and the narrative engaging. Flashbacks, in limited positions like this, can be invaluable to set the stage for the story - but from the looks of things, you want to make the flashbacks the backbone of the narrative. Speaking from personal experience, this rarely, if ever works.

And my final piece of advice is this: for fuck's sake, do NOT include 'flashback tags or any such bunk. Don't ever go 'begin flashback' or 'end flashback' - try to make it feel as natural as possible. It never will feel completely natural, but if you can incorporate the flashback into the flow of the narrative, it can be compelling and not distracting.

 

Fuck the haters, flashbacks for life.

(Silens ninja'd my own possible TL;DR, so I just felt like it needed to be said).

 

Garden: Yes and no. I posted a very different version as "Desolation of Innocence." But after reading the comments, I decided to skip the POV, the narrator, etc., and come at it from a completely different direction. So except for the general story line, most of the fic will be different.

Jormungandr: That makes sense concerning flashbacks and how to put the material in. As for Gabrielle, she will still exist, but is Fleur's half-sister. Fleur's personality will be different, in that she's much more focused on against Voldemort and Purebloods, since it was that connection that killed her father (Purebloods sympathetic to Voldemort in France in the first war).

She also will be a lot less willing to get into a relationship because of what she saw her mother going through, which becomes Fleur vs. Self, giving me a line of character development with her. I do however, need a line of character development that does not revolve around a relationship with Harry.

EDIT: (Answering more posts)

Sesc: I've tried to integrate the flashbacks. Here is one example.

The lead out is

It still feels clunky, but that's it so far. I do need to weigh how much is flashback and how much is current.

Silens - excellent ground rules. Thanks. If I decide to stick with the flashbacks, I may give a few of your fics a read and proudly imitate it. . . with credit of course, if that's ok.


Oh, and flashback tags? I'm trying to improve my writing, not re-write My Immortal.

 

The problem with flashbacks, and the reason I'm always wary to see them, is that most of the time they can be a very lazy form of writing. The most common use that I see in fanfiction is to fix plot holes, where the author hasn't planned properly and has to go back and add in a cheap fix using a flashback.

So I'd just say make sure you're using them for a good reason and not just for the sake of it.

 

I have at least two stories that rely heavily on flashbacks... if you can call them that. Basically, the writing occasionally focuses on events that happened in the past, sometimes even taking up entire chapters, usually to purposely reveal facts to the reader a piece at a time.

Still annoying to some people, sure, but a far cry from the horribly juvenile *flashback* tags you see in some fan fic. Just about the only way that shit could get worse is if the author had Wayne and Garth doing their flashback pantomime for the fade-out and fade-in.

Flashbacks can be done well: Just look at the Firefly episode Out of Gas.

Is there really any other way to go when you have a story that starts in the present, and you want to reveal the past a piece at a time? If your entire story takes place in 2012, but you want to show how the two main characters met, back in 1987, do you really have to start your story in 1987? No.

(One of the two stories I mentioned above, for example, starts roughly "Nineteen Years Later", with Harry married to Daphne and in the position of being Hermione's employer. Some old enemies resurface to cause trouble, and in some of the breaks between the action in the present, you have Hermione thinking back to the time leading up to Voldemort's defeat, revealing to the reader the ways in which the story diverged from canon.

Doing a story like that chronologically, by simply starting the story in sixth year, seems inescapably lame, to me. :| Plus, the whole point of starting it in the present is to reveal bits of the past as you go along.)

Flashbacks are like so many other literary tools: Done right, they can be a good thing. However, so very many people don't do it right, just like a lot of other literary devices get misused.

Anything is going to be bad when it's shoehorned into a story in some clunky bastardization of script-style format, **A memory enters, stage left.**, or is only being shoved uncomfortably into a chapter so the the author can provide exposition they were too lazy to figure out how to fit properly into the rest of the story.

If you're doing it for a real purpose, and can integrate it into the story in a natural fashion, I see no reason why it shouldn't work.