Make A Scene (29 page)

Similarly, when a character has a distinct and vivid personality, or personality disorder, for that matter—perhaps he's shy, overly strict, mute, cruel—you may decide to go back in time through a flashback and offer some perspective on this character so he does not seem one-dimensional. For example, in order to understand why Darth Vader was so starkly evil, George Lucas went back in time in his later movies and
showed
young Anakin Sky-walker before he became Darth Vader. By witnessing Anakin's pain and loss, the viewers understand him better and develop compassion and sympathy for the character.

When you use a flashback for either of these reasons, be sure to keep the flashbacks short—their purpose is supportive, so you don't want to go too far from the frontstory.

ending the flashback scene

When you end a flashback scene, transition back to the present so the reader is brought full circle to the point where the flashback started, or leave the flashback on a note that will force the reader to keep reading.

In
The Historian,
the goal of the flashback is to set the plot in forward motion. The story piques the narrator's curiosity such that she begins her own investigation into the mysterious Vlad Dracula and her father's past. The flashback also offers insight into the character of her father, who has always been a bit reserved, and hints at details about her absent mother. The flashback ends by coming back to the present like this:

"Good Lord," my father said suddenly, looking at his watch. "Why didn't you tell me? It's almost seven o'clock."

I put my cold hands inside my navy jacket. "I didn't know," I said. "But please don't stop the story. Please don't stop there."

The reader shares the narrator's attitude and doesn't want him to stop ei-ther—he wants to know what happened next. In this case, since the back-story has a direct effect on the frontstory, the reader and the narrator both have gained new insight that will compel the reader to go forward.

Bringing your flashback back to the present allows the reader to feel as though he has literally traveled back in time and now has a fuller understanding of where he is going.

The example from Russell's
The Sparrow
is structured slightly differently (in fact, all her flashback scenes are). Here, the flashback is its own contained scene; it ends the chapter and does not come back to the present moment. Instead, it leaves the reader with an image of Emilio that's very different from the tortured person shown to the reader at the beginning of the narrative. Her flashbacks serve the role of revealing what happened on the mission to Rhakat slowly and suspensefully. Each flashback fills in more of the puzzle. The reader learns the specifics of the mission in question through Emilio's memories, and through them learn how different Emilio was then from the person he is in the frontstory:

Emilio Sandoz threw back his head and laughed. "God!" he shouted into the sunshine and leaned down to kiss the top of Askama's head and pull her up into his arms for an embrace that included the whole of creation.

"God," he whispered again, eyes closed, with the child settling onto his hip. "I was born for this!"

This back-and-forth quality—a flashback chapter followed by a present-time chapter—gives the narrative a feeling of suspense and plants more and more seeds in the reader's mind that the protagonist might not be so terrible after all.

If you choose this technique for your narrative, you are essentially running two stories side by side, using the flashbacks to build toward a truth that will have to be addressed, answered, and realized in the frontstory.

Finally, in the example from Gaiman's
Anansi Boys,
the flashback ends when Charlie's fiancee, Rosie, with whom he was arguing when he first slipped into the memory, calls his attention back to the present:

"So," said Rosie, draining her Chardonnay, "you'll call your Mrs. Higgler and give her my mobile number. Tell her about the wedding and the date. ..."

The flashback achieves two crucial functions. First, it shows the reader what Fat Charlie considers embarrassing and inappropriate behavior. He sees his father as a fair-weather man—Charlie resented the fact that his father could just swoop in at the last minute and make his mother happy. (Some might argue that the flashback shows Charlie as selfish, not caring about his mother's happiness, only caring about himself.) Second, it reveals plot information, as the flashback moves to the day of his mother's funeral, where Charlie spotted a stranger who will play a very significant role in the future plot; but the character is merely dropped there as a hint, a piece of foreshadowing.

Structurally, this sort of flashback acts as a detour from the scene at hand—like a slide of the past slipped into someone's photos of a recent vacation. This is a very good use of the flashback for your consideration—it's brief, it adds to the reader's understanding of the characters, and it provides a hint of future plot events to come.

Flashbacks need to feel purposeful, or they lead to the feeling that you've departed from your story, so they should be used as strategically as possible. They should be vividly written and quickly paced, and should leave the reader with the feeling that he has learned something important that he needs to know.

FLASHBACK SCENE MUSE POINTS
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•A flashback should focus on all of the following: action, information, and character interaction.

•The information contained in the flashback must have some bearing on the frontstory.

•Always be sure to use flashbacks judiciously so the reader doesn't lose track of the frontstory.

• Use flashbacks when the past directly affects the front plot.

• Use flashbacks when you want to use some element of the past to create suspense in the present.

• Use flashbacks to deepen the reader's understanding of a character.

An epiphany is a moment when awareness or a sharp insight dawns suddenly on your protagonist as a result of events and interactions that have driven him to this moment. Epiphany is synonymous with change when it comes to character development. Very often epiphanies come with a cost—characters can be very attached to their perceptions of things and people, and it often hurts when they finally gain awareness. But epiphanies can also bring resurgence in hope or faith that the protagonist believed was lost. By introducing an epiphany, you provide your protagonist with an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to transform.

An epiphany can take place in more than one type of scene—for instance, suspense or drama can build to an epiphany, and an epiphany can also be earned at the end of a contemplative scene. In an epiphany scene:

• The epiphany comes at some kind of cost or it renews hope or faith, or both

• The epiphany rises out of plot events and information—it does not come out of the blue

•Your protagonist gains surprising new insight or breaks through denial

•As a result of the epiphany, the protagonist is forced to make some sort of choice or change

Because epiphanies have a pivotal effect on characters, you don't need to have one in every scene. In fact, one major epiphany in each of your three narrative parts would be plenty. Epiphanies shouldn't happen too early in a narrative either, as they require events and circumstances and emotional information to drive them into being. People don't usually just wake up with insight—it is earned through experience. Very often a dramatic scene (in which hot emotional intensity is elicited), or a suspense scene (in which information has been withheld) comes just before an epiphany scene.

TYPES OF EPIPHANIES

When you write an epiphany scene, you need to take stock of who your character is before the epiphany, what kind of change he needs to undergo, and how you will lead him to this change. Let's look at the kinds of epiphanies a character can undergo.

• Removing the blinders.
When a character has been in denial but through an act of will decides to learn what the truth is.

• Realizing a suppressed desire.
This is when a character who has lived his life in a limited way realizes what it is he really wants to do or be— the lawyer who realizes he really wants to work with children; the failed artist who realizes he was only acting out his parents' will for him. These are powerful and usually suggest that the character will have to leave one way of life for another.

•Accepting the limitations of oneself or others.
Many times a character must realize that the abusive spouse is not going to change; the dead-end job is not going to improve; and that any change he craves will have to be an inside job that nobody else can facilitate.

• Experiencing identity epiphanies.
These kinds of epiphanies are fairly specific and limited. This is when a person realizes something essential to his being—that she is a lesbian after all; that he wants to embrace his father's African-American culture rather than his mother's Caucasian

background; that it's time to convert to Judaism. A character's decision to claim an identity of some kind that he had been resisting or denying can come as the result of an epiphany.

•Undergoing a rude awakening.
Sometimes a character needs to be forced to change by circumstances or people out of his control. His friends stage an intervention for his drinking; his wife confesses she doesn't really love him.

OPENING AN EPIPHANY SCENE

Now that you have a feeling for the kinds of categories that epiphanies fall into, let's talk about how to open one. What is most important about the opening is that you show the character in conflict of some kind, under pressure, or in some way destabilized. This is the scene in which his old facade is crumbling (or about to), and you want the reader to know that change is on the horizon. Epiphany openings work best when:

• The protagonist is afraid or anxious about the future

• The protagonist is under pressure or stress

• The protagonist takes an unusual action or behaves oddly

• The protagonist expresses conflicted feelings about a given plot event or relationship

•Your setting details or images are symbolic and hint at the kind of epiphany that is to come

Let's take a look at some examples of opening epiphany scenes that show the protagonist unbalanced or en route to an epiphany at the very opening of the scene.

In Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Hours,
Laura Brown is a housewife in 1949 with a "perfect" life—a husband with a good job, a healthy son, and a second child on the way. She has a nice house and all the material things she could possibly want, but her true self is stifled; she wants to be more than a mother and a wife, yet there is no way for her to express this in the life she currently leads.

In the scenes prior to this one, the reader sees Laura repress desire, resentment, and her own creative spark, so there's a feeling that some kind of change is on its way in her life, but they don't yet know what it will be (and neither, it seems, does Laura). Two major factors begin to push Laura toward her epiphany. The first is reading Virginia Woolf's book
Mrs. Dalloway,
which boldly emphasizes a woman's right to her feelings. The second is the example of her neighbor, Kitty, who seems, without any angst, to be able to balance all the demands that Laura cannot. One day after a visit, she and Kitty kiss—and though this kiss happens with no premeditation on Laura's part, it further awakens in her a terrible hunger and desire. Soon after that, she has more trouble dealing with the status quo of her life and finds her son's and husband's demands incredibly oppressive.

The epiphany scene opens with her reality in the process of shifting.

As she pilots her Chevrolet along the Pasadena Freeway, among hills still scorched in places from last year's fire, she feels as if she's dreaming or, more precisely, as if she's remembering this drive from a dream long ago. Everything she sees feels as if it's pinned to the day the way etherized butterflies are pinned to a board.

There are a number of cues that something is different here. The way she feels "as if she's dreaming" and the eerie details of everything feeling "pinned" to the day like "etherized butterflies" are not typical reflections for Laura. The reader feels the tide of change coming. When it is revealed that, in a moment of panic, she left her son with a neighbor and is on her way to rent a motel room, the scene is set for something to happen. Will she kill herself, take a lover, or make some kind of decision about her future and her feelings?