[Giovanna Clairval]

Originally Posted by Anthony G Williams

If you have a lot of background to fill in, it can be done by alternating chapters to allow two parallel stories to develop (now and then), but I'm a bit dubious about that approach.

I do agree with you.

In my novel, there are three storylines, each narrated by a different character. One of these storylines occurs in a time that precedes the others. It's like a prequel, if you like, with a different voice, a plot and a conclusion.

This is not at all the definition of "flashback". In a flashback, the character thinks back to what happened. Of course it can be done, but, in my novel, it didn't serve the plot. What I did was giving the reader information that the other two narrators (the three are written in the first person) have not.
At the end, one of the three makes a terrible mistake because she didn't know what had really happened. At one moment, she has the same information... crisis.
If I had put the info-dump just like that, it would have been really boring.
In that way, I dramatised it.

So, I shouldn't have used the word "flashback" in my post.