Flashback Week – write a flashback about your character in your own RPG

With a Flashback you can write about your character’s early years, and how they became the character they are today.

What’s a Flashback?

A flashback is when you write about something that happened in your character’s life before the current story. It could be from the character’s childhood, and it could explain why their personality is the way it is now. It could explain why they are scared of spiders, why they hate the colour blue, why they don’t trust men with beards, or why they are such a bastard to everyone.

The flashback might relate to what your character is currently doing in the story, and might explain how they know a specific skill, or they might now meet a character from their childhood.

You might have written a flashback for your character before, or you might not have. It’s dead easy to do, just think about it, and start writing. But even though it’s so simple, you don’t always think about doing it. So why don’t we all do it at the same time?!

What is Flashback week?

Flashback week is a week where you’re encouraged to write a Flashback for your character, at the same time as people in other RPGs everywhere.

There’s a thing called Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), which is a month-long challenge where you are supposed to write a 50,000 word novel. Of course there’s nothing stopping you from doing it any month, but setting a specific month allows people to do the challenge together, and support each other.

There’s also a thing called “talk like a pirate day” where for the entire day it’s okay for you to talk like a pirate. Why? No idea. But it’s fun, and because a entire day has been specified it means you’re not alone when you want to talk like a pirate!

So both “Nanowrimo” and “Talk like a pirate day” are things that we could do any time, but we do just because it’s fun to do it at the same time as everyone else.

Flashback Week is a week where you can write the flashback about your character that you’ve always wanted. Explore your character’s early life, it will be a refreshing change.

Flashback examples

Here are some examples of what you could write about in your character’s flashbacks:

• When they were bullied at school, and how they got over it
• Meeting their first girlfriend/boyfriend, and breaking up
• Explain how and why they decided to do the job they do now
• What happened to their parents?
• Explain how they got the scar or prominent feature they have now

How it works – It’s easy!

You don’t have to do anything different to how you normally post. We’re not asking you to post in a different place, or visit another website. Just post as normal, but just consider writing a flashback post this week, or maybe a few. Your character might have a complicated back-story which you want to write!

Spread the word!

Other members in your game might not have heard of Flashback week, so send them a link to this blog article and they might be interested in writing a flashback for their character too!
There’s also a Facebook event page, click here.

Make a competition out of it!

If you’re a GM of a game, you could create a competition in your game where you ask your members to choose which is the best flashback story. If you do, I’d love it if you let me know by posting on the Flashback Week event on Facebook page or comment on this blog article.

When is Flashback Week?

9th of August 2010 – 15th August 2010.

Start writing your Flashback article

What are you waiting for? Start writing a flashback about your character right now!