A flashback is a scene that interrupts the chronological flow of a narrative to show an earlier event. It supplies background that illuminates the present action.

The device can be triggered by a character’s memory, a discovery, or a narrator’s decision to fill in prior history. Effective flashbacks are clearly signaled so that readers do not lose track of the main timeline. They should earn their place by changing the audience’s understanding of the present; mere information dumps disguised as memory feel mechanical. Film and prose handle the transitions differently, but the underlying purpose remains the same.

Flashbacks can be brief or extended, single or multiple. In some narratives the past eventually becomes as important as the present, and the structure intercuts the two timelines until they converge. The risk is always that the interruption will sap momentum; the reward is depth and the gradual revelation of why characters act as they do.

When the story steps backward in time to recover a crucial earlier moment, the device is a flashback.