Just Add Magic: How to Write Flashbacks

Incorporating your character’s backstory into your novel can be difficult. On the one hand, you want your readers to understand the emotional depth behind your character’s actions, but on the other hand, you don’t want your readers drowning in exposition. Writing backstory requires a delicate balance, one that is often achieved by including flashbacks. 

They are used in all sorts of storytelling mediums and provide an incredibly simple solution to most of your backstory problems. However, you have to be careful when applying this technique. 

As easy as flashbacks are, it’s also easy to mess them up. They can quickly become confusing or irrelevant to the story instead of providing clarification. Not to mention, with all the multiple timelines, things can quickly get out of hand. How can you write flashbacks well? How can you make sure they add something to your story instead of taking away from it?

Here to answer that question is the live-action fantasy series Just Add Magic. 

Just Add Magic 

When Kelly and her two best friends discover a magical cookbook, their entire world is turned upside down. Suddenly, these girls are able to cast any spell they want with just the flick of a whisk. 

Kelly is especially excited about their discovery because she thinks it will be able to heal her sick grandmother, who, just a few months before the start of this story, woke up one morning and completely lost her ability to talk or hear. Not being able to cook with her grandmother like she used to is absolutely destroying Kelly from the inside out, and she would do anything to get her back to normal. After discovering magic, Kelly realizes that her grandmother’s illness might be connected in some way and she spends the entire first season of the show trying to figure out how to fix her grandmother’s curse. 

Unfortunately, no matter how much she cooks, nothing seems to work. Even when the girls take magical spices from crabby old Ms. Silvers and question the local coffee shop owner, Mama P., they don’t get any closer to learning more about magic or figuring out how to help Kelly’s Grandmother. 

One day, after a spell meant to improve Kelly’s studying ability backfires and she ends up in detention, she discovers an old yearbook photo with a younger version of her grandmother, Ms. Silvers, and Mama P. all smiling together in a picture. And one of them is holding the cookbook. 

Although they have difficulty trusting her at first, Kelly and her friends wind up befriending Mama P., the only one who is able (or willing) to answer their questions. Slowly, she begins to unpack the past and explain how she met Kelly’s grandmother, how the three of them were an inseparable trio as kids, and how magic tore them all apart. 

Two Tips for Writing An Engaging Flashback

From the moment the girls discover that Mama P. knows about magic too, the show is littered with flashbacks. Despite this, however, not a single one feels unnecessary or dull. Each flashback adds a layer of mystery and excitement to the show, and there are two specific reasons why:

#1. Make it Relevant 

When the girls first discover that Mama P. knows about magic, she doesn’t sit them down and explain everything. Instead, she gives them answers to the questions they have for her at the time. They walk away from the conversation knowing a little bit more about Mama P’s old friendships and how the book ruined most everyone’s life, but not every single detail. They only learn more details as the past becomes relevant in the show’s present.

When writing your flashbacks, tailor them so that they only reveal what the audience needs to know at the time. Give them a taste of satisfying answers, but don’t spoil everything all at once. Instead of foreshadowing information that will be relevant to your protagonists in the next few chapters, try showing a flashback that will affect the present. Don’t dump every piece of explanation into one flashback but spread out your exposition, and only bring it forward when absolutely necessary. 

#2. Use Them To Move the Plot Forward

One of the later episodes begins with a flashback Mama P, Ms. Silvers, and Kelly’s grandma as kids. This snippet reveals not only who gave them the cookbook, but also that she gave each of the girls a powerful seed that can amplify any recipe’s power. Then the show cuts back to Mama P, and she explains how Ms. Silvers used the magic to curse people she hated, and how she is the only one who still has her seed. This kicks off the events of the next episode, where the three girls attempt to steal it from Ms. Silver‘s house before she can use it for evil.  

Flashbacks should not only be relevant to your character’s present situation; they should move the plot forward as well. You can easily drop a flashback anywhere into your story, but that risks making them come across as unnecessary or annoying. However, if you carefully place one in a spot that provokes the plot, then the readers will be much more invested. 

Place your flashbacks strategically. Only fill your reader in on the backstory when it becomes relevant and envelope your reader in the description when you do. Make sure your flashbacks bring on the next plot point in your story, and you’ll have an audience who can’t wait to read the next one.

Let us know in the comments:

Have you seen flashbacks that end up confusing or annoying? Where have you seen them done well?