How a Best-Selling Author Writes Flashbacks

12 May 2026 #writing

To learn to write, dissect the best fiction writers.

That’s a lesson from James Altucher, one of my favorite writers. I’ve been doing it with opening lines.

This time, I read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons through writer’s eyes.

Here’s how he writes flashbacks:

#1. A situation, character, or object triggers a memory that takes you to the past.

“Langdon wanted to say something to her, offer his sympathy. He too had once felt the abrupt hollowness of unexpectedly losing a parent. He remembered the funeral mostly, rainy and gray…“

#2. A sound, character, or external element takes you to the present.

After describing Langdon’s father funeral,…“The ping of an elevator pulled Langdon back to the present.”

That’s exactly how we daydream or time travel: a snap or tap on the shoulder takes us back.