Hello Everyone, Winnie Griggs. I'm deep in the midst of working through copyedits so I hope you'll excuse me if I reprise a post I did here back in 2009. It was the first post I did for Seekerville, waaaay back before I became a regular blogger here.
When writing your story, you don’t want to include a detailed account of every action taken by every character in your story, nor do you always want to unfold the story linearly. Instead, a good writer will carefully select those scenes that are not only of interest but that also progress the plot in some way. Which means, by necessity, gaps will occur: gaps in time, in movement from one location to another, in point of view, in scene focus.
Transitions
are those small but oh-so-important words or phrases that help guide your
readers across these story gaps smoothly, while keeping them grounded in your
story. There are several techniques or
devices you can utilize to do this effectively.
The Direct
Method or ‘Clean Break’- Simply tell
the reader what change has taken place:
Early the following Monday, ... (Time change)
Once he
reached the parking garage.... (Location change)
Mood - Use feelings,
emotions, atmosphere to help convey the change:
As
Stan pulled out of the company garage onto the congested highway, his hands
clutched the wheel in a death grip and the cords in his neck tightened. It would take forever to get out of this
tangle of traffic...
Once
the city was behind him, however, the tension drained away and he breezed down
the open road that led to his summer cabin.
(Time and Location
change)
The Five
Senses - Use sound, sight, touch,
taste and/or smell to bridge a story gap:
Margie hummed
as she applied an extra spray of her favorite cologne, enjoying the light
floral scent.
Andy’s nose
started to twitch before Margie even entered the room. Why did she insist on using that nasty
flowery perfume that always made him sneeze? (POV change)
Cassie heard
a distant grumble of thunder off to the east as she closed her book. Maybe Allan was finally getting some of that
rain he’d been hoping for.
Allan
squinted through the windshield, looking for a safe place to pull over and wait
out the violent storm. This wasn’t what
he’d had in mind when he’d prayed for a ‘bit of rain’. (POV and
location change)
An Event - Use an ongoing, recent or anticipated event to
unify your scenes:
Hesitating
for only a heartbeat, Lynda dropped the letter into the mail slot, determined
to make the first move toward reconciliation.
When a week passed without a response, however, she began to wonder if
contacting her grandfather had been such a wise move after all. (Time change)
The
near-crash triggered a memory, one she’d rather not dwell on. But there it was, full blown and swooshing in
like an avalanche. That other crash had
happened six years ago. Her mom was
driving her and her friends to the airport... (Time change -
flashback)
A Character
(whether human or otherwise) - Use the
mention of a character to guide us through a story shift:
Stacey pulled
into her driveway on Friday afternoon, wondering how she’d let her sister talk
her into dog-sitting their troublesome mutt for the weekend. She really wasn’t big into the whole pet
scene.
But by Sunday
evening,, Rufus had wormed his shaggy way right into her heart. (Time change)
An Object - Use an object or activity to move from one scene to
another without jarring the reader:
Roger halted
mid-sentence as a baseball came crashing through the window. Blast it all, he’d told Jimmy not to play
ball in the yard.
He picked up
the ball and marched to the door . Jimmy was going to pay to fix this, even if
it meant he had to mow every yard in town to do it. (Change in
scene focus)
The
Environment- Use weather, terrain,
scenery, seasons to depict change:
The autumn
seemed long that year. Perhaps it was
because she was so homesick for the Ozarks, where nature painted the
mountainsides with magnificent blazes of color. Winter was easier, and by spring, the
(Time change - extended period)
Any thoughts on this post? Can you think of other ways to smoothly handle transitions? Leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for your choice of any book from my backlist.
