Transition toolbox, part 1

In looking back over this blog after the last post, I realize that I haven’t ever explicitly dealt with scene-to-scene or chapter-end-to-chapter-beginning transitions – not all in one post, anyway. So here is that discussion.

The first thing to look at is what changes between the end of the scene/chapter and the beginning of the next scene/chapter. The three most common things are:

1. Time. There is a significant amount of time between scenes/chapters.
2. Place. The next scene/chapter happens in a different location from the one that is ending.
3. Viewpoint. The viewpoint character changes to a new person in the next scene.

A new scene may also involve changing the story’s mood, tension, or pacing. These aren’t always as obvious as the three above – a significant shift in the mood can occur when a character ducks into a corner at a raucous part for a moment of quiet contemplation, for instance. Often, this kind of transition is so subtle that it is hard to recognize.

On the other hand, chapter cliffhangers often occur when an action or revelation abruptly changes the level of tension for the reader and/or the characters in either direction (that is, the tension can suddenly increase or decrease). Increased tension usually happens at a “cliffhanger” break – the last line of the chapter is “Before he could move, the timer on the bomb clicked over to 000” or ““And now I know who the murderer is,” she said.” The first line of the next chapter then immediately continues the scene – “The blast knocked him into the far wall…” or “There was an instant of silence, then everyone began demanding to know who killed the rabbit.” (Or, if the author is really mean, the next scene/chapter switches time/place/viewpoint, leaving the reader…hanging off that cliff for a while.)

Scene breaks can also function as a change in pace, speeding up or slowing down the rate at which the reader is getting information about events or background. A series of quick, short scenes from different viewpoints can be used to keep up the pace and tension in a massive battle (while also keeping tabs on key characters in different parts of the field).

Every time a story goes from one scene to the next, all of these things can change at once, or only one or two. “What is changing between these scenes?” has a lot to do with exactly how the writer decides to handle the transition.

The techniques for scene-to-scene transitions start with a basic space break or jump-cut. The writer finishes off the current scene, leaves a blank line (or one with some asterisks in the middle to show that it was done on purpose) and begins the next scene. Sometimes, that’s all the writer needs to do; the blank line is enough to alert most readers to the fact that something is now different, and as long as the writer drops a few clues near the start of the new scene, they’ll be fine. “Two weeks later, George stared down into the Grand Canyon, wondering how he’d been talked into this” crams time, place, and viewpoint into one initial sentence, but spreading the information out a bit also works.

Space breaks are usually used when the writer wants to skip lightly over unimportant, obvious, or unnecessary information – things like eating breakfast, or driving to a new location. If there has been a major change in time or place, or the writer has switched viewpoints, it’s usually a good idea to establish this early in the new scene. This can be done by featuring any of the three most-prominent changes in the first few lines; one isn’t limited to time-stamps like “Three days later…”

To make the space break read more smoothly, writers sometimes use them in conjunction with a hand-off. Scene/chapter A ends with something – an action, a line of dialog or internal monolog, etc. – that points to the opening of the next scene.  For instance:

        “Fine, I’ll take your dog to the vet tomorrow,” George said.
.                                                                  ***
.        The vet’s waiting room was small, crowded, and no place to bring a high-strung Pomeranian, in George’s opinion.

This space break shifts both time and location by flagging a place (the vet) that the reader knows George wasn’t going to visit until “tomorrow.” The reader can safely assume that the new scene is taking place the next day, and the writer has simply skipped all the non-essential business in between. A slightly different handoff might start the next scene a few minutes earlier, still clearly in a new time and location:

.        “I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” Ivan said as George loaded the pet carrier into the back of the car.

Most readers will recognize right away that if George is loading up the pet carrier, the new scene is starting “tomorrow” next to George’s parked car (which is presumably not where the previous scene’s conversation was happening). It is not immediately clear whether the space break has shifted the viewpoint as well as the time, but in a few more sentences it will be obvious that we’re either following George in the car or Ivan watching him leave.

.       He shook his head, wondering what Maria was doing now.
.                                           ***
.        Maria dodged behind a parked car, narrowly avoiding a bullet.

As is usually the case with writing, it’s usually more effective to mix up the kinds of transitions one uses, as well as the way one uses them. Space breaks are quite flexible, once the writer recognizes that they don’t all have to follow the format “dialog-scene-end/break/time-stamp/establish-viewpoint/location-stamp/begin-new-scene.”

Ending every scene with a character falling asleep or changing the subject to indicate that the important/interesting part of the conversation is over gets annoying after five or six chapters, as does starting every new scene with a time-stamp (“Meanwhile…” “Later…” “The following day/week…” “Three months later…” “It had been two years…”) Hand-offs, starting or ending with dialog/interior monolog, opening a new scene with a brief description (or even a more extended one), starting with a new viewpoint character’s reaction (“George was bored, bored, bored…”) provide plenty of opportunity for variation.

I’m going to talk about narrative transitions next week, because this is already too long.