Making flashbacks work

In novels and motion pictures a flashback is a narrative technique to interrupt the chronology of the story to cut away to something that has happened in the past.

The flashback technique is as old as Western literature. In The Odyssey, most of the adventures that blighted Odysseus' return journey from Troy are told in flashback by Odysseus when he is at the Phoenician court.

Roger Levy is a writer who’s deservedly been said to be "the heir to Philip K Dick". His science fiction novels, Reckless Sleep, Dark Heavens and Icarus are all published by Gollancz. He is one of the founding members of the Zenazzurians, a writing group that I was priviliged to have been asked to join 8 years ago. Roger nicknamed me “The Flashback Queen” because flashbacks occurred so frequently in the novel I was then reading to the Zens. And he was right. In The Speed of Dark I relied on them too heavily and didn’t handle them skillfully enough for the reader to be unaware of their presence. 

What most readers are interested in is the story moving forward in the present, not making distracting detours into the past. But if you need to have a flashback, the reader shouldn’t notice it. In the 1986 edition of my first novel, No Angel Hotel, the flashbacks weren’t handled well, as is evident in this Chapter 11 excerpt because it is immediately followed by a flashforward in time. The flashback below is indicated in bold.

Ivan went to Cabourg each year. Each time he walked up the Avenue de la Mer he saw the face of the Grand Hotel as he would a friend, a little older, a little changed.

  At the hotel he could lie all day in his room; he could remain an outsider. In September he could order a plate of chaudfroid, the maître d'hôtel not protesting, 'But monsieur, that was on the summer menu.' Instead, a red-boleroed waiter would serve the filleted poultry in jelly and withdraw.

He had first gone to the Grand Hotel in Cabourg with his father five months before he died. Helen Doran had gone too, to look after the boy. She had been twirling a new, cream parasol with flounces.

The first morning they'd eaten breakfast in the glass-sided dining-room which faced the Channel. She had thanked his father for the gift of the parasol; she had called his father James. The boy cried, 'He's not James to you!' and Helen had looked up from her plate in surprise. His father had turned towards the glass wall. The two adults on opposite sides of the table, tears on her face, the glass's reflection on his.

Twenty-five years later, in his son's jacket pocket, was a note he'd received the morning he left for his annual visit to France:

Ivan, I was quite surprised to hear that you are to be married! You could have had the decency to tell me. I am, after all, your mother. I wouldn't have known except for the enclosed which appeared in the Sentinel. It was the thing to do as far as Pellipar is concerned, though I would have thought you could have found someone more in your league. Having said that, I did find her that night at dinner rather charming and, of course,  quite beautiful. My congratulations to you both.

He folded the note and engagement notice and returned them to his breast pocket thinking, Mother dear, you're not the only one she should have had the decency to tell. 

Below is the re-edited page from the 2012 revised edition. Only the first paragraph in this excerpt is in the present. The rest is a flashback, but because it’s extended, it’s more active because this "umbrella scene" unfolds as if it were the present:   

He went to Cabourg each year. Every time he walked up the Avenue de la Mer, he looked forward to seeing the façade of the Grand Hotel like he would an old friend. He knew the bellboys, the night staff, the chambermaids. With the casino next door, he could gamble all night and sleep all day. If he went in the off-season, he could order chaud-froid from room service and not be told, ‘Monsieur Pakenham, filleted chicken in jelly is only available on the menu of summer.’ 

He had first gone to the Grand Hotel in Cabourg with his father five months before he’d died. His mother was supposed to have accompanied them, but the doctor had sent her to bed with ‘nervous exhaustion’. His new nanny, Miss Doran, had gone instead to look after him. 

They had arrived at the Dives-Cabourg railway station on a hot July afternoon. They checked into the Grand Hotel, then went for a walk on the mile-long promenade above the seawall his father told him was called the digue. 

Halfway down the beach was an umbrella shop with a scalloped blue awning. Miss Doran stepped into its dark rectangle of shade to fan herself.

He turned to his father. ‘Why are we stopping, papa?’ 

Miss Doran leaned down and explained the heat was making her feel faint.

His father asked if she had an umbrella and she said she’d forgotten to pack one. Then his father said that he must do something to remedy that. 

Leaving them on the promenade to watch the waves, his father went into the shop and came out with a big, banana-coloured parasol with a handle in the shape of a swan’s neck. 

Miss Doran twirled her new umbrella as they walked in the direction of the cliffs. They were passing a cafe on the promenade that had a flaking lattice screen hung with framed pictures. Ivan was a few steps ahead when he turned back and saw Miss Doran slip her hand into his father’s. He heard her thank him for the gift of the parasol. He heard her call his father James. 

In the 1986 version the leap from a flashback into the present (flashforwarded 25 years) was too jarring. This was solved by editing out the section about the letter and engagement notice and inserting them into the following chapter so the time frame was more straight forward.

A postscript. After Roger called me the "Flashback Queen", I began to wonder why I was so drawn to using them until I realized that it was because I was more interested in my characters' past than in their present. That must be why I'm so fond of this quote by Kirkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." 

Stay tuned . . . 

Making a book trailer

One of the things a writer needs to do once a book is published is to promote it. Many authors do not feel comfortable with this (myself included), but it's a necessary evil. There are millions of novels out there. How do you get the message out that yours is now available in the seemingly-infinite soukh of physical and cyber books?

One of the things I decided to do was to create a 3-minute book trailer for No Angel Hotel. But what images and footage to use to best give the flavour of the novel to tempt a potential reader?

The first task was to create a short synopsis that would, hopefully, create interest. Not an easy thing to do. Writing a synopsis is similar to what Flaubert said about writing a novel; it's like trying to put the sea into a carafe. I finally managed to "bottle" a minute's worth of plot on which images could then be overlaid.

I have friends who are award-winning photographers and they generously allowed me to use their images. Then there was some hand-held footage filmed in Cabourg years ago. And I was also able to use several of the covers the graphic designer had come up with for both the front and back covers. Line of Sight had given me a choice of six covers and I was able to use four of them in the trailer. 

Music was a hugely important consideration. I had originally decided to use Eric Satie's "Gymnopédie No 3" as the soundtrack, but while I was compiling source material for the video, I was playing one of my favourite songs, "Blue" by Joni Mitchell. The album by the same name came out in 1971, only a few years after the late 60s when much of NAH is set, but as I worked, I realised the song was the perfect backdrop. So many of the images I'd chosen for the trailer were blue and the mood of the book is blue and, for much of the novel, the main character is "blue".

As Mitchell said herself in 1979 about the Blue album, "there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either." A lot like the heroine, Elkie Bonner, in No Angel Hotel. 

Even if you have no desire to buy the book, listen to the trailer, just for Joni and for three minutes be serenaded by her sad angel's eloquent voice.

Stay tuned . . . 

Rewriting: between dog and wolf

The French have an interesting phrase for dusk: entre chien et loup. Literally translated, it means “between dog and wolf”. More precisely, the phrase might be rendered as “twilight” in English: when the level of light is so low that one is unable to distinguish between these two similar, yet very different, four-legged creatures.

But the French phrase means more than that, implying that it’s also the time between what is comfortable and familiar and what is dangerous. What is unknown and frightening.

Reworking a text that is familiar, but needs major work was, for me, entre chien et loup. Terrifying because you can see—and not see—how to proceed. You can still make out the shape of the old narrative, but the new chapters are dissolving.

I had been working on the rewrite of No Angel Hotel for months; the more I played with the “canvas” of the text, the muddier (and uglier) it became. I was about abandon the project forever when one of my students gave me some wise advice. Gwendolyn Kosten Modder had read the published version and loved it and she told me, It’s of its time, Anne. Don’t tinker with it too much.

So I went back to the drawing board. I took the original and compared it, word by word, with the muddy, reworked version, keeping the best of them both and correcting some major plot inconsistencies.

Not many writers have the chance to rework their prose once it’s been in print, but I was lucky enough to be able to. The result is the same book, but one that is completely different and, hopefully, much better. And if you don’t believe me, buy the new one and get the old out-of-print one on Amazon for one pence (plus postage). Stay tuned . . .

Rewriting: kill your darlings (2)

Another easy decision in the rewrite of No Angel Hotel was to remove the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I’d been attached to what I now call my second-hand "darlings" when I first wrote the book, but jettisoned them for the new edition.

I did love those quotes but, thinking back on it, I believe I'd put them there in the hope of making my first novel have more literary "weight". My younger self didn’t think my own words were enough. I can still remember the amount (a considerable chunk of the small fee I received in advance royalties). Some people who dispensed the permissions were extremely generous and asked for no remumeration for a few quoted lines from a first-time novelist. I am still grateful, Vera Nabokov and Olywn Hughes. As beautiful as some of those twenty-four chapter quotes were (from sources as diverse as Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood, Vladimir Nabokov's "Spring in Fialta" and T S Eliot’s "The Waste Land"), they all disappeared from the fourth imprint at no detriment to the manuscript.

I did, however, keep the epigraphs at the beginning of each of the four sections the book is divided into: Autumn 1966, Summer 1967, The End of Summer 1968 and Fall 1980. Reading a short quote on each of these pages slows a reader down just enough so they register that time has been kaleidoscoped, flash forwarded.

My favourite quotation in the book is two sentences taken from a short story by a friend of mine, Victor Rowe. "Night Time" is his plangent tale about an unequal love affair and absolutely perfect for the third section of No Angel Hotel. "How I hug my antique grief to me, it keeps me warm." Thanks, Victor.

Stay tuned . . .

Rewriting: kill your darlings (1)

  

When BareBone Books decided to re-release my out-of-print first novel, I was thrilled. No Angel Hotel had been published many years ago: twice in the UK and once in the US. I hadn’t looked at the book in ages and it was a shock to re-read it.

When it was first published, No Angel Hotel received excellent reviews, including ones in Kirkus and the Washington Post Book World. But reading it again, with a colder, crueler (and more experienced) eye, I was unwilling to publish it in the version that had appeared more than two decades earlier.

Words have power; they are precious, but every word a writer produces is not precious. I often quote William Faulkner’s wonderful phrase to my students: “Kill your darlings.” I discovered that to make the new edition work, I had to kill quite a few youthful “darlings” of my own.

The writer is a puppeteer, creating a world of characters that only exist in a metaphorical theatrical box. The string-puller must invent, clothe and conjure up words for their marionettes to speak. They must move them behind the proscenium arch in a way that is so skilled that an audience suspends belief, surrendering to the irrational idea that  these wooden, wigged figures have lives of their own. During the magical time of the performance, the audience is aware of the puppeteer’s existence (who wears black so as to be as invisible as possible). The audience wouldn’t want the house lights to come up and see the person manipulating the strings.


Authorial sentences and “suspect verbs” do exactly this; they reveal the presence of the puppeteer.  So one of the easiest parts of the rewrite of NAH was to delete lines that were suspect, inaccurate, unnecessarily poetic or clever, examples such as these in Chapter 5. In the rewrite, I was relieved to leave these, and many other, cringe-making phrases on the cutting-room floor.

• “Through the drawn curtains a splinter of light embedded itself into the floor.”

Geez, this is embarrassing. Why you may ask? Because pulled drapes allow in more than a “splinter” and light cannot “embed” itself into the floor. A physical impossibility (and a suspect verb, to boot). Old curtains in a child’s bedroom, a small hole through which light can pass, is more atmospheric. And precise.

• “In Frankfurt, they’d buried their dead with bells on their fingers to prevent premature inhumation.”

This might have been credible in third-person narration, but it was an internal thought of one of the main characters after a one-night stand. I don’t think many men think something as arch and complicated as that after mattress mambo with an attractive young woman, even if they are remembering a recurring nightmare about their father’s death.

• “his [father’s] fists hammering against the Risorgimento sides [of the coffin]”

Risorgimento had to go, too. The word was there because it sounded grand; I liked the sound of it. My younger self was trying to be clever and, for my crime, I am now whipping myself with a wet noodle.

To illustrate the difference in just one page between versions, above is the edited original first page of Chapter 5 and the 2012 edition. If you’re interested in the editorial process, compare the old and new versions (click on the relevant page to enlarge), then decide for yourself which is better. I had to. Stay tuned . . .

Denise Chávez

Denise Chávez is one of the leading Chicana playwrights and novelists of the US Southwest. Her books include The Last of the Menu Girls, Face of an Angel, Loving Pedro Infante and A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture.

In an interview with William Clark of Publisher’s Weekly Chávez said, ‘Writing for me is a healing, therapeutic, invigorating, sensuous manifestation of the energy that comes to you from the world, from everything that’s alive. Everything has a voice and you just have to listen as closely as you can. That’s what's so exciting—a character comes to you and you can’t write fast enough because the character is speaking through you. It’s a divine moment.’

Throughout her writing she emphasizes the need for comunidad, or community, and that is exactly what she creates in spades at the Cultural Center de Mesilla that she runs with her husband, Daniel Zolinsky. A stone’s throw from where Billy the Kid was once jailed, CCM is a vibrant, eclectic place where you can buy books, new and old, find wonderful LPs which have been donated to the center, attend workshops as diverse as learning about Nahuatl and Mayan teachings to creating a papel picado. There is also a children’s corner and a freezer where you can buy delicious handmade Mexican ice cream. It was at the Cultural Center de Mesilla that my novel, The Double Happiness Company, received its US launch this summer. To view a short video of the celebrations, click here.

The Cultural Center de Mesilla and Denise will be featured in PBS’s “The American Experience”, in a new documentary about Billy the Kid’s life and his relationship to the Southwest and Hispano New Mexico. It will be aired nationally on 10 January. For more information, click here.

Denise is also the Founder and Director of the Border Book Festival, the longest running literary festival in the American Southwest. This year's title is “The Shamaic Journey” (La Jornada Chámanica) which will take place from 20 - 22 April in Mesilla, New Mexico, featuring healers from Mexico to Africa.

While I was in the United States for the launch of my novel, I was honoured that Denise agreed to an interview. “Mango Day” is the result: a 10-minute video where she reads from her moving memoir, A Taco Testimony, and reflects on the process of writing. She has said of her work, ‘My characters are survivors . . . I feel, as a Chicana writer, that I am capturing the voice of so many who have been voiceless for years. I write about the neighborhood handymen, the waitresses, the bag ladies, the elevator operators. They all have something in common: they know what it is to love and to be merciful . . . My work is rooted in the Southwest, in heat and dust, and reflects a world where love is as real as the land. In this dry and seemingly harsh and empty world, there is much beauty to be found.’ Stay tuned . . .

A story of a book and its cover(s)

Due to the popularity of my second novel, The Double Happiness Company, BareBone Books have decided to reissue my first. No Angel Hotel was written a long time ago which is why I wanted to revise the text to reflect the fresh new cover design.

Throughout the four reincarnations of No Angel Hotel, I have been fascinated to see how differently my book can be perceived because of its "wrapping". The first edition was a hardback with a jacket. The editing, typesetting and layout were top notch, but I was less than happy with the cover: a doleful watercolour of a young woman with thick red hair, staring mournfully into space. There were dropped pink rose petals on the table where she was sitting. I cringed when I first saw it and I inwardly cringe when I think of it now (which is why you won't see it pictured here*). This book—which is the exploration of the obsessive love of a young Northern Irish woman for a man who can not return her passion—looked to me like an upmarket version of a Mills & Boon publication. I had spent years writing a book which my editor (and later reviewers)  compared to the novels of Jean Rhys, only to have the art department create a cover that looked like it belonged on one churned out by Barbara Cartland.

The first paperback edition by Grafton Books was miles better. My editor commisioned a pastel drawing by Emma Chichester-Clark. The artist read the text carefully because the bedsit window has straggly house plants, orange curtains and four teak elephants with raised trunks, all of which feature in the book.

The US edition was a jacketed hardback with Elkie and Ivan in a car: he in a tux, she leaning against his shoulder in a friend's black dress. Again, the artist read the book closely and created an image after the ball that Elkie and Ivan go to where he ignores her and she is left to dance with a bald old lecher in a cummerbund. (And if you're wondering why the title is different, it's because the marketing department at St Martin's Press said a negative title wouldn't sell in America.)

The new edition of No Angel Hotel will be available in February 2012 with this striking new cover by Line of Sight Associates in Toronto. The artwork was designed by Sharon Lockwood, the company’s President and Creative Director, who read the novel closely and was clearly moved by it. What she has created is sensual, sexual: the throwing open of a window in a darkened room onto a vista which is reminiscent of the explicit flowers of Georgia O'Keeffe.

I found Lockwood’s interpretation fascinating. She produced artwork that perfectly conveyed the sense of isolation which all the key characters in the novel possess. The darkened room, either in a hotel or a bedsit, is suggestive of both intimacy—or of being utterly alone. There is the empty bed, the yearning. Mystery. Suspense. And there is the female character drawing open the curtain, arms raised. There is the suggestion of wings to either free her or try to move the barrier of her imprisonment. You’ll have to read the book to see which version got it right. Stay tuned . . .

*I've relented. If you're curious to see the "Cartland cover", click here.