Travel Writing Transitions and Flashbacks

Getting from Here to There and back again! 

Transitions

Creating transitions in travel writing can be quite a particular challenge. How to take your reader from one place to another, back and forth in time, place, and point of view, without getting lost, is not always evident. Yet the experience of travel provides so many possible links—from feelings, impressions, objects, and sensory input—that once you decide where you want to go, there are dozens of writerly ways to get there. The only rules are: 

—Avoid transitions that are needlessly long  —Avoid transitions that are confusingly abrupt—not so much transitions as JOLTS!  —Prepare the reader for a transition. Just as in music, when you can feel when a musical passage is about to change—in dynamics, key, or rhythm, or when it’’s building to a crescendo or a close—a thought or a scene can prepare the reader for a change of place, mood, scene, period in time, or point of view. 

You can create transitions—links from one scene, time, thought, mood, idea, place to another by using: 

—Thought  —Emotion  —Dialogue  —Physical action, movement  —An object (which can bridge or link a time period, emotions, thought, or a place)  —Time [ An hour later.. The week before, or even a century before]  —Weather  —A character  —A memory  —Sense of place -different facets of a place; changes in place  —A sense - touch, taste, sight, smell, sound  —A word or name association  —Narration: Hiatus (four white spaces—page break or asterisks); One-sentence transition [And then she/he decided to....]  —A longer passage  —Standard transitional phrase: [The following day... The day before...By Spring...That winter...Back in the hotel...] 

Flashbacks

Flashbacks are used to fill in information, provide background or history that would be awkward, difficult or illogical to include in a straight chronological presentation of events. Before you get tied into worry knots about flashback technique, think about how flashbacks are a natural part our thought processes. We are always flashing back in our thoughts and memories, to what happened an hour ago, or yesterday, last week or ten years ago. Think about what triggers these flashbacks in your own mind/ experience. What triggers these flashbacks are the same devices or stimuli that you can use to create flashbacks in your own travel stories. 

A flashback is meant to capture the essence of a past event or remembered experience. It need not show all of the events/impressions/ details that happened, but only the ones relevant to create an effect: convey an idea, portray a character or a place etc.  A flashback should not be obtrusive. It should never break the story’s momentum. It should reveal and illuminate. Think about what you want purpose you want your flashback to serve. 

—Don’t overload the flashback with more material than necessary.  —Don’t make it so long that the reader loses track of where the story came from and where it is going.  —Don’t make the events in the flashback more vivid or impelling than the story itself. 

Flashbacks can be triggered by:

—Senses - sounds, sights, smells, textures, tastes  —Objects: photographs, mementos, a sign —A word or name association  — Overheard dialogue  — A direct statement of past events (narrative technique)  —Revery  —Reminiscing  —Self-analysis or reflection  —Letters, diaries, posters, calendars, photographs, etc. discovered or seen 

Aanatomy of a flashback

First, you the writer, or a character is (Reflecting in) the present time...  Then, something triggers a move to (thinking about) an event, anecdote, story that happened before, which creates a hinge sentence linking back to the past…  Then you present/describe/ tell the what happened before… Then you swing back to the present with another hinge sentence back to the present, to signal to the reader that the flashback is over.