FLASHBACK

MEANING
In literature, a flashback is an occurrence in which a
character remembers an earlier event that happened
before the current point of the story. The definition of
flashback is identical to that of analepsis, which comes
from the Greek for “the act of taking up.” There are two
types of flashbacks those that recount events that
happened before the story started (external analepsis)
and those that take the reader back to an event that
already happened but that the character is considering
again (internal analepsis).

TIPS EXAMPLE
There are also examples of
flashbacks in film and television. For
Use a trigger to justify example, the series How I met your
taking the reader back Mother is delivered entirely in a set of
into the past. This is the flashbacks, for it is supposed to be
most natural way to showing the evolution of characters
over time as the main character tells
introduce scenes from his children how he met the children’s
the past as this is mother.
actually how we recall
memories in real life – we
see something that
reminds us of an event,
person or detail that
occurred in the past.