Flashbacks Can Be Hard On A Story

Well, the book I was going to review today wasn't one I liked.  It had a great story idea, and I did like the main character, but I had a hard time with how the author chose to tell the story.

It started out with a bang, an event that affected everyone and was quite chilling, actually.  But then the second chapter skipped ahead several years and we didn't get to see the immediate aftermath, we saw very different people that hadn't coped with the event well.  We did see some of the immediate aftermath through flashbacks, a lot of flashbacks, but it really started to drag the story down.  It was like, we would finally be pulled into the story, and then there would be another flashback to pull us out and we would have to start all over again getting into the story.

Which brings me to my point today.  Flashbacks are very hard to do well.  It can take a reader out of the story, it can get overly long, it can be overdone.  I think in this case the author would have been better served to show the immediate aftermath in the succeeding chapters instead of skipping ahead and then doing it in flashbacks.  Don't get lazy in your writing and resort to just telling the story through flashbacks.  Really show the story and draw your readers in.

Flashbacks are generally easy to do, but hard to do well.  Carefully consider why you're using them and if they really serve your story before you put them in.