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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36139
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am not a proficient story writer but I try to pay attention to the story line more than anything else when I absorb art. I will work with your latest edit:

> An example would be that the main character might replace her with a android that they built together (not quite what will happen but easier to explain) and I want to both tell the background story of how they built that android as well as how said android differs from the real version (speech, personality etc.).

If you want to avoid falshbacks, you can work with what I think is called projections. Let's say if I would lose my loved one, I still carry her in my thoughts. I can see how this person views the world to the point that it becomes almost a dissociative identity disorder. Very harshly put, what I actually mean is that you can have impact from that dead character by having the living character mentioning what she would think, comparing her to the android, fearing/excusing-himself-through her reaction if she knew he would replace her with the android. This is a very smooth way, I find, to go to a flashback without doing it Tarantino style but simply as a literary tool (which I think is often used in stories).

However, this is only one option. Another option is to have a third character evaluating the living character based on the dead one. So the story will come out naturally through the living characters reminiscing.

This is my two cents on it :)

Original score: 3