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Literature vocabulary · Plot and Structure

Flashback

Meaning in literature, with examples

/ˈflæʃbæk/nounCore term

In literature, flashback means: A scene that interrupts the main story to show events that happened earlier, often to explain a character's past or motives.

In Turkish: geriye dönüş, geriye dönüş tekniği

How it is used

Used for novels, plays and films. A story is told in or through flashbacks; critics say a flashback reveals, explains or interrupts. The opposite, a scene from the future, is a flash-forward. In narrative theory the technical term is analepsis.

Example sentences

  1. A long flashback in the middle of the book shows the brothers as children.

  2. The story of the war is told entirely in flashbacks.

Common collocations

  • in a flashback
  • told in flashbacks
  • flashback scene
  • flash-forward
  • foreshadowingA technique in which the writer gives early hints or warnings about events that will happen later in the story.
  • narrativeA story or account of connected events, and the way it is told; also used as an adjective for anything that tells a story.
  • plotThe series of connected events in a story and the way the writer arranges them, especially how one event causes another.
  • in medias resA Latin phrase meaning 'into the middle of things', used for a story that begins in the middle of the action and explains earlier events later.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Plot and Structure

Practise with graded reading

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