Flashbacks: Yes, no, maybe?

Oooh, look at me, getting all fancy and posting two days in a row!

I had a thought the other day -- well, actually, I had lots, but this was the only one worth blogging about -- that maybe The Princess Dilemma could benefit from some flashbacks. I've been trying to establish a lot of the background via narration, but sometimes I worry that it comes across as a little too exposition-y.

In the interest of "showing, not telling" as we were so often instructed in class, I'm wondering if it would be better to insert some of this past information as flashbacks... Or maybe not so much flashbacks, but scenes between chapters. Between each chapter, a scene that takes place in the past. I could elaborate on some of Nyeida's past abductions, how and why Ciotoph decided to join The Syndicate, other things involving other characters that haven't yet been introduced via the excerpts on this blog. I'm thinking this might help establish the characters and flesh out the story. But on the other hand, it might be a distraction or break the flow of the story. I may have to experiment with it and figure it out. At the very least, if they don't work in the story, I'll have plenty of stuff to post here on the blog.

So then the question becomes, when do I insert them? Do I go back through right now and insert them between the 11 chapters I've written so far? Do I just start inserting some going forward, and add the rest later? Or do I continue writing as I have been, and add them in draft 2? It's something for me to play around with over the holiday.

And speaking of the holiday, I have a short story all slated to go up on Christmas. Hooray! It is absolutely, positively not Christmas-related in any way, shape or form (as I have never written a Christmas-related story and may go to my grave without having done so), so those of a particularly humbug nature need not worry about that.

Things I learned from good critiques

It's time for me to show this blog some more love!

The excerpt that I posted before is partially the result of some good critique comments that I got when working on a previous project in a writing class. In particular, one classmate said that he liked my description, but he wanted more. Instead of just seeing the scene, he wanted to smell and hear it, too.

It was an interesting comment. I guess that -- as a jewelry designer as well as a writer -- I often tend to think more of the visual and tactile, and not quite as much on the aural and olfactory. But ever since I read that comment, I've tried to not just visualize a scene as a write it, but think about the whole experience, the smells and the sounds as well as the sights. It's still something I struggle with, and sometimes I have to go back through and add things later, but without that critique, I never would have thought of it.

Anyway, I was thinking of livening things up with some more fiction. I've got a ton of old roleplaying background stories lying around on the hard drive. What say you, readers? Are you interested in a glimpse into my geeky hobby, or would you prefer to wait for non-gaming-related stories?