Not every flashback is as suspicious as an uneven mole. Not every flashback pegs you as a cheater.
What are the rules for a good flashback?
Excellent question.
- Firefly, pilot episode. Jams an entire catastrophic interstellar civil war into one quick, action packed sequence with suspense and disaster. It’s a whole story in itself. It gives real, tear-jerking, necessary character development. It’s context, but it stands by itself. Also, if you haven’t seen Firefly, I…I can’t even. Just do it.
- Average spec script. Flashback establishes that characters exist and something happened that the rest of the script will deal with settling.
How can you tell the difference? Well, first of all, in the second case, the entire mystery is set out before us in the easiest way possible. There are no red herrings, clues, reveals. We know everything immediately, and until the third act, it’s all just coloring inside the lines.
It’s smarter to hold back as much as you can for as long as you can.
In the opening flashback of Firefly, an amazing act of heroism is juxtaposed with a heartbreaking act of betrayal, setting the stage for entire strange worlds and their inhabitants and the chips on their various shoulders.
Firefly’s opening flashback is not a cheat, it gives backstory in a way that everyone can care about.
An opening flashback that gives away all the information that the second act should skillfully reveal is a bad flashback. See example two.
A good flashback is not concerned with the upcoming story. You can see this difference for free on Hulu or Amazon Prime.
Until you can teach a course on the difference between a bad flashback and the Firefly opening flashback, don’t write one.