A flat-panel liquid crystal display (10). The display includes a flat sheet of bistable chiral nematic liquid crystal material activated by a drive circuit that individually controls the display state of multiple picture elements. The driver circuitry activates the liquid crystal domains with various drive schemes which have any number of different phases (300, 312, 318, and 320) to attain various addressing sequence times. At the end of each drive scheme, the texture of the liquid crystal material is allowed to provide either focal conic or twisted planar end states (320) across the two-dimensional array of picture elements. Each drive scheme employs at least a preparation phase (300) and a selection phase (318) to predispose the liquid crystal material to one of the end states.