Transitions are a pain.
It is very likely that I feel this way because I hate doing transitions, and the ones I write nearly always feel clunky to me. Some of the clunkiness is probably just my dislike of the process of producing one attaching itself to the finished product, but I don’t think all of it is. And painful or not, one has to get one’s characters (and one’s readers) out of one scene and into the next somehow, which means transitions are a very necessary part of writing.
Plot transitions, by their nature, often come at spots in the story where nothing much happens. That’s the point of a transition – the author needs to get from whatever just finished happening to the next place or time that something happens, and it needs to be done without boring the readers to tears (or boring the writer).
Which perhaps is one reason for the popularity of the “jump cut” transition these days. That’s the one where the writer supposedly jumps over the boring nothing-much-happened part and cuts straight to the start of the next scene. Usually, this kind of transition is marked by a blank line, called a space break, in the text. Sometimes, the book designer puts a little arty squiggle in the center of the blank line, to make it look nicer, or maybe so you don’t miss it when you’re tearing along through the book. They look like this:
She ran though the ballroom door, tripped on the steps (losing a shoe in the process), and on out into the night.
#
“Did any of it really happen?” Cinderella thought next morning as she stared into the cold ashes of the kitchen fire.
A jump-cut transition is the fastest and shortest way to do a transition, but it doesn’t get the writer off the hook completely. The readers still have to find their feet in the new scene, which means that the writer usually needs to establish how long it’s been since the last scene (just the rest of the night; it’s “the next morning”), where the new scene is taking place (in front of the kitchen fire), and who the point-of-view character is (“Cinderella”, obviously, since we’re getting her thoughts right off the bat). Who, when, and where are as much transitional material as the stuff that vanished into the blank line of the space break.
So even writers who are addicted to jump cuts still have to write at least some transitional material at times. Finding the right balance can be tricky – on the one hand, too many rapid-fire changes of scene or viewpoint can feel choppy and disorienting; on the other hand, quick changes with minimal down time can work really well as a tension builder (which you find toward the end of a lot of action-adventure books).
The other main way to handle a transition is the narrative summary. This can be as simple as She ran out into the night. By the time she reached home, footsore and weary, she was half-convinced it had all been a dream. Next morning, staring into the cold ashes of the kitchen fire, she was sure of it. It can also be as complicated as three or more paragraphs describing the journey: She ran out into the night, wondering when the dream had become a nightmare. / It only got worse. She could have dealt with losing one of her slippers. She was hardly surprised when the coach turned back into a pumpkin halfway home, and walking the rest of the way in the mud with only one shoe was practically normal. What really got to her were the rats and mice, the ones who had been horses and footmen and the coachman. They insisted on following her, as if she were some sort of Pied Piper, all the way to the familiar kitchen door. Et cetera.
The book I’m currently working on has nothing but narrative summary transitions. No jump cuts at all; everything is supposed to flow from one sentence to the next, one paragraph to the next, one chapter to the next. The tricky part here is deciding how much narrative I need. Is one wondering-if-it-was-a-dream sentence enough? Is three or four paragraphs of pumpkins and mice and avoiding the City Watch so as not to have to explain why she’s walking home in rags at midnight going to be too much? And if there’s that much going on during the walk home, maybe that should be a scene, too…which means more transitions to get into and out of that scene.
The one thing I am sure of is that the Transition Fairy is not going to sneak into my house and leave the perfect choice typed into my computer. She won’t even show up with one measly sentence. I have to write it, and I have to decide how much is enough and how much is too much. And eventually, I do.
But I whine a lot first. I consider this an exercise of my constitutional rights, and if there isn’t a clause in the Constitution that says writers have the right to whine about their books, I am convinced that it’s only missing because some editor took it out. It was there in the manuscript. I’m sure of it.
Got to agree on this one. Transitions are a bear. My tendency is to meander for several paragraphs while I try to figure out what’s happening next, then editing it all out and wondering why I bothered.
LOL about complaining being a constitutional right that got edited out. 🙂
I am completely with you on this. The chapter I’m working on now is 90% transition. And it is terrible! Trying to make what is essentially “time passes, space passes” interesting is really difficult. Especially because my character’s perspective was incredibly amorphous while I was writing it, and he isn’t even having any interesting thought processes while it’s happening. I have six pages of him being bored. Not thrilling reading.
Time to apply the hatchet.
Chicory – Sometimes, the meandering is part of the process. Like the scaffolding on a building – you need it to get everything put together properly, but you have to take it down once you’re finished.
Cara – 90% sounds like far too high a ratio, especially if the main character is bored and nothing interesting or important is happening. This kind of thing is really made for the jump-cut, even if it’s more of a narrative transition jump (“Three weeks later, he was still pondering…” “When he finally got to Betelgeuse a month later, the rabbit was already gone…”). The reader doesn’t have to know the boring stuff; in fact, it’s usually better if they don’t.
I do love your examples! Hmm. Wonder who was pursuing a rabbit to Betelgeuse, and why…
I’ve resorted to a fair bit of jump-cutting in my WIP, especially in the current bit where my main character’s fleeing a failed attempt to palm off a faked magical protection. Another character’s supposed to be giving her some help, if only by distracting the Other Side, and he’s trying to do so. I *think* it works–fortunately, I have a good critique group.
Is there anyone who enjoys transitions?
From the ballad “Sir Patrick Spens”
The king has written a braid letter
And signed it with his hand
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens
Was walking on the strand.
I think I’m a lucky person and handle transitions by instinct. I never use jump cuts and don’t notice clunkiness (in transitions no – in sentence structure, length, variation, etc… oh yes!).
Jane – Jump-cuts work in some stories, but not in others; if you’re using a lot of them, they’re probably working well in yours.
Dan – That’s an omniscient technique that hands off the focus from one character to another; Flaubert uses it in Madame Bovary. I never thought of looking for it in a ballad before!
Alex – As I said ages ago, everybody gets something for free; looks like you got transitions! I’d be jealous if I weren’t positive that there’s something else you have just as much trouble with. 🙂
I also find that transitions flow naturally for me.
But I use jump cuts, and I’m not quite understanding why anyone would consider them a last resort. Sometimes having a clean break and starting afresh, seems to me to be what the story wants.
When I’m working on graphic novel scripts, jump cutting becomes the least obtrusive form of transitioning, while everything else draws attention to itself. (Which, um, doesn’t stop me from using techniques *other* than jump cutting, whenever those seem appropriate.)
Michelle – As I said, jump cuts are one of the simplest and most straightforward of transitions – and Loretta is right about the connection to visual media. But sometimes, as in the Frontier Magic books, the character’s voice simply doesn’t allow for them. It’s as much a stylistic and taste thing as anything.
Loretta – I wish I could leave the transitions for last, but I’ve never had much luck with leaving things out to be filled in later.
The examples are really great. As a beginning writer, I loath writing transitions. They are often the last thing I insert in the text.
As a reader, I’ve gotten more used to the Jump Cut transitions mostly as a result of the media frenzied world I’m accustomed to. Jump Cut transitions have more of a film feel to them– It seems it would be something that would happen in a movie.
I do appreciate the narrative summary transitions though, when they tell me something about the character– It’s nice to know Cinderella gets annoyed. Yay for humanity
You have a blog! I just found out about it on rasfc! How did I not know this! (This is ShellyS555 from AOL, btw! Or at least, I was, but I don’t have that account, anymore.) Anyway, I just subscribed. I have so missed your advice and wisdom re: writing and am glad to have found this blog.
Just for an update, my ms is finished, a friend is proofing, I’ll make one more pass after that, and I’m working on a query letter and then the dreaded synopsis that is making writing the ms seem like a walk in the park. 🙂
ShellyS – Good to see you! I don’t think I’m saying much here that I haven’t said before, multiple times; it’s mainly a different venue and a somewhat different audience, but you’re welcomed to join in. And questions are always good – I’m a lot better at answering questions than at generating content on my own, I think!
@ShellyS: You mentioned a synopsis. There’s a blog post on March 7th that gives some advice on how to write such things. “A line around the outer edge”, I think.
You have to be kind of careful with jump cuts and make sure there’s a clear trajectory from source to destination. I was reading over a manuscript for somebody where they did a jump cut that landed about 50 feet to the left.
Domineering boss commands the slimy junior executive to marry his daughter; but dad refuses to give any help.
Junior exec says to daughter, “I will marry you whether you like it or not.”
Daughter says to junior exec, “I will never marry you!”
Jump cut.
Daughter is watching the wedding being planned with a broken heart and head held high and the story goes on from there.
The reader is left to wonder what happened to change her mind and why she is meekly going along with it.