Transition scenes

Last week, Deep Lurker asked whether I still hate writing transitions. The answer is a qualified yes – qualified, because the question made me realize that this is one more place where writing terminology covers at least two kinds of thing, and they’re very different.

Transition is defined as “the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another.” So even the definition acknowledges that there is more than one type of thing you can cover. Transitions are the in-between part, where the characters (or the writer) have left Point A, but have not yet arrived at Point B. (Note that A and B can be places, times, opinions, emotions … pretty much anything, as long as Point A and Point B are clear and distinctly different. In a very real sense, every novel is one giant transition.)

That said, when people say “I am having trouble with the transition,” they usually mean one of two things. The first is a transition from one distinct bit of novel structure – a scene or chapter – to the next structural bit. This gets talked about a fair amount, because lots of people have trouble getting from one scene to the next. Scene-to-scene transitions are also relatively short – a paragraph or two is about as long as they get (and a space-break is the shortest possible). This makes scene-to-scene transitions easier to talk about and make recommendations for.

The other type of trouble-with-transition is an entire transition scene or chapter. This actually is three transitions in a row: the transition from the Point A scene into the transition scene, the transition scene itself, and the transition from there into Point B. Unsurprisingly, this makes a transition scene more complex than a straightforward scene-to-scene or chapter-end-to-chapter-beginning transition.

Transition scenes are the type of transition I hate writing. Scene to scene transitions aren’t usually a big problem; I have a toolbox for that, and I have had a lot of practice at using it (though I am never opposed to adding more tools to it, should I run across any). But transition scenes are the very definition of change – which nearly always means they’re more unpredictable than the rest of the story, as well as being important.

In my experience, most transition scenes aren’t place or time transitions (at least, not in novels. Movies/TV are a different matter). If all George needs to do is get from the coffee shop back to his office, I don’t need a scene. At most, I need a paragraph; usually, a sentence (“George walked back to the office”) or a jump-cut will do the trick. In other words, changing place or time is generally just a normal scene-to-scene transition. If something interesting or unusual happens on the way to the office, the resulting scene isn’t about the change from coffee shop to office; it’s about the interesting/unusual thing that happened. It’s foreshadowing, or a new plot-point, not a transition.

No, most of my troublesome transition scenes are character-centered emotional or situational scenes. They’re the scenes that have to happen when the character has realized they need a better plan, but hasn’t made one yet; when someone has just made a life- or plot-altering revelation, but the character(s) haven’t processed it yet; when the protagonist has just been slapped in the face with a major realization (usually that something they’ve taken for granted since forever is wrong), but haven’t come to terms with it yet; when the viewpoint character discovers that someone (frequently themselves) has made a hugely horrendous mistake, but there might still be time to mitigate the consequences. It’s when the character has been pushed off a mental or emotional cliff, but hasn’t hit the ground yet.

The “yet” part is important – it’s the compass that aims the scene at whatever Point B is going to be.

Often, for me, these are council scenes – meetings with a bunch of characters in which there’s a lot of discussion and/or backstory that clarifies Point B and/or enables my protagonist to take the last step to get to Point B, but in which not a lot seems to happen. I find this sort of scene particularly annoying, because it tends to be long (all those people want to say something, and then they start arguing!), and what I really want to do is get on to Point B, where both I and my characters know what to do next.

But transition scenes are not limited to meetings. A lot of them, especially the emotional cliff sort, involve only the viewpoint character and one trusted confidant, or even just the viewpoint character. The key is the in-between-ness … that, and keeping the viewpoint character moving (physically, mentally, or emotionally). If they just wallow without either changing or definitively refusing to change, they’ll never get out of the transition and on to Point B (or C or F or Q, or wherever they end up that isn’t Point A).

Half the battle is recognizing when a scene is a transition – when the whole point of the scene is that the character is in-between. They haven’t made the decision (but by the end of the scene, they will). They haven’t realized they’re in love (but by the end of the scene they’ll be a lot closer). They’re still denying that their boss is the real villain, despite the evidence (but even they can see that their justifications are getting weaker and less plausible, and by the end of the scene…).

You will never be able to skip all the transitions – you have to get from scene to scene somehow, and even a jump cut/space break is a transition. Skipping all the transition scenes is possible … but not advisable in most cases. At best, it results in flat action-adventure characters who make the novel feel dated by about a century, maybe more. At worst, it makes both characters and plot unbelievable and/or incomprehensible. To quote the Muppet Movie, “plot exposition – it has to go somewhere.”