Forum: Author Hangout

In my work in progress, there are occasions where I think I need to use a flashback.
In some stories on SOL, there is nothing to indicate that a flashback is about to begin. It's just the next paragraph that comes next. Some stories have a dash or some sort of marks or something that indicate there's a scene change coming.
I'm thinking about inserting words at that point, probably within parentheses. Something like (FLASHBACK TO THE SPRING OF 2016).
Who has an opinion about the use of such a device? Would it help or harm or do nothing?
I saw something like that once a good many years ago when I got to look at the script of a movie being filmed in my home town.

Another device that could be used is to end the previous scene with the protagonist starting to tell the story of the flash back.

"I remember, it was the winter of 94..."

scene break

I was digging my car out of the snow....

In one of my stories I have a flashback. Since I use a Location and Time/Date in Bold to identify my sub-chapters, I used it for my flashback.

My MC (Main Character) doesn't recognize a young female former Marine who is now an FBI agent, since he is in uniform, and she is told his name before he sees her, she knows who he is the chapter before.

So, I have (something like):

In the air between Joint Base Andrews and Buckley AFB
0630 Hours EST 15 September 2010

Dialog between characters. The bereaved Gunnery Sergeant suddenly realizes he knew this woman 6 years before...

FOB Chosen, Iraq
2200 Hours Local, May 15th 2004

How the MC and at the time young female Marine meet, and become intimate.

The flashback is a much better way to Show why she initiates a sexual liaison with the MC, and, even though the readers are aware the MC is going to Colorado to deal with a death in his family, why he might agree to renewing the relationship.

If I had started the story six years before with what is essentially a "hook up" and that neither character ever expected to see the other again it would have started the story on the wrong track.

Nor did I want a long exposition of what had occurred years previously. It would have been awkward for the characters, and they are on a government aircraft with a bunch of Federal Agents...

Letting the readers witness events let's them draw their own conclusions. But I don't tell the readers. Reading further interactions of the characters Is a Plot Point. I Show things in the flashback that readers may use to put further events in context. But I don't Tell them, which would spoil the readers opportunity to make their own opinions.

Also, if I "Told" then some future plot twists would be spoiled.

Thus, in this circumstance, I believe a flashback is the best way of presenting events.

What REALLY annoys me is writers that use NO scene transition clues. So you are reading along and suddenly you have different people talking, and they seem to not know things that have already happened in the story and WAIT, that person who is talking just DIED, a chapter ago. Oh, it's a flashback! Wait. Now I have to reread that and get my timeline staight! Has he gone back to the present yet? #%=_&^