How Do You Write a Flashback in a Script

How to Write a Flashback in a Screenplay

You see flashbacks in movies all the time. But how do you write a flashback in a screenplay?

Most films and screenplays have at least one flashback scene.

I've written three screenplays in the last two years, and each one had at least two or three somewhere in the narrative.

My biopic screenplay about Wes Craven, for example, has three flashbacks to when Wes was a child, seeing the man outside his bedroom window that inspired his creation for Freddy Krueger.

My recent screenplay, about a mother who goes t o extreme lengths to track down her kidnapped daughter, has eight flashbacks, all sprinkled throughout the narrative. In my story, the mother has become obsessive in her search for her daughter, and the flashbacks show a simpler time, a softer time, when my protagonist could sit and relax with her daughter and all is well in the world.

At the end of the movie, I show one final flashback to show both what my protagonist has lost… and ultimately gained.

Writing a flashback in a screenplay might seem complicated, but it's really not.

In the most basic sense, you just need to add a few words to your scene headers.

First, if you open your screenplay with a flashback scene, you don't need to tell the reader that it's a flashback. After the flashback, if, say, the second scene begins much later, you just say the following after the new scene header…

SUBTITLE FADES IN: 10 Years Later

Or twenty years, or six months, or whatever it is. This is what happens in my latest screenplay. The first ten pages are set in one time period, and then I jump forward ten years where about 80% of the screenplay is set in.

Now, if somewhere in the screenplay you do jump backward in time, you need to tell the reader that in the scene header or he or she will get confused.

So, for example, let's say on page thirty we jump back in time ten years. The scene header should read something like this…

EXT. PARK — DAY — FLASHBACK

There, that's all you have to do. Whatever the place is in the scene header, whatever time a day it is, all you need to do is write the word FLASHBACK at the end. You don't need to shout it to the rooftops that you're going into a flashback, just make it clear in the scene header.

Now the flashback can last one single scene, or more scenes.

You may or may not need to keep the word FLASHBACK in your scene header, depending on how many scenes you actually have. The rule is to just make it so that the reader is clear when he or she is reading a flashback scene or not.

So, when you bounce back from the flashback, you need to put three simple words in the scene header, BACK TO PRESENT.

So, for example, you would write

INT. ROOM — NIGHT — BACK TO PRESENT

This tells the reader we are no longer in the flashback.

Was that so hard? Not at all, right? Don't let flashback scenes intimidate you, and I'd recommend for most scripts that there should be at least one or two flashbacks that reveal character and offer new surprises for the reader.

Just make sure the flashbacks are SUPER CLEAR throughout your screenplay, and you'll be good to go!

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Brian Rowe is an author, teacher, book devotee, and film fanatic. He received his MFA in Creative Writing and MA in English from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his BA in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He writes young adult and middle grade suspense novels, and is represented by Kortney Price of the Corvisiero Agency.

How Do You Write a Flashback in a Script

Source: https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-write-a-flashback-in-a-screenplay-8b62e389b980