Transitions, Part 2 – Narrative

Narrative transitions are the second major way of getting characters from Scene A to Scene B. Instead of simply skipping a bunch of time or a change in location, a narrative transition briefly summarizes, describes, or explains whatever the author is skimming over lightly. Because narrative transitions aren’t as abrupt and don’t leave out absolutely everything between A and B, they don’t interrupt the flow of the story as much.

Narrative transitions can be done in a sentence or two (“Nothing much happened for the next week…and then the roof caved in.”) or they can take a couple of paragraphs to summarize the minor actions or developments that the writer is skipping over.

.           “Fine, I’ll take your dog to the vet tomorrow,” George said.
.           He spent most of the evening regretting his impulsive offer. He regretted it even more by the time he had wrestled the dog into its carrier next morning. Opening the door to the vet’s office only confirmed all his misgivings. The waiting room was small, crowded, and no place to bring a high-strung Pomeranian, in George’s opinion.

The above narrative transition uses three sentence to cover what the space-break version in last week’s post left out. There’s no interruption in the flow of the text, and no interruption in the reader’s attention. Narrative is particularly useful when a space-break transition seems too heavy-handed. For instance, if Scene A ends with George stomping out of his office in a snit, and Scene B opens thirty seconds later, when he stalks past the receptionist at the end of the hall, it is usually less distracting to say “George stalked down the hall. The receptionist at the far end looked up and…” rather than stick in a space break, even though between time, place, and the new character, the story has moved on to a new scene.

Longer time-and-location skips work either way – with a space break and an opening paragraph that starts “Two years and 3,000 miles later…”, or with a paragraph or two that sums up the missing two years. There are several reasons why an author might choose to use a narrative summary rather than a space-break.

First, something relevant happens during the transition period. This can be something minor, like a bit of useful backstory (the reader will need to know that George spent time in Egypt, but the details aren’t all that interesting or important). Alternatively, the thing that happens can be something major that the writer wants to hint at, but not totally reveal … and it’s much easier to hide some crucial information in a summary paragraph than in a full-fledged scene.

Second, a summary can convey the mood or atmosphere of the missing time period. A space break won’t tell us that George spent the next two hours being bored to tears, and few writers want to take the chance of boring the reader by showing all the stuff that George found boring. Similarly, a space-break won’t convey three days of gloom and rainy weather … and making that the opening paragraph after a space-break usually means one doesn’t actually need the space at all. A narrative paragraph can set up George’s increasing frustration over something, so that when he starts the next scene in a bad mood, it isn’t a big surprise.

Third, a narrative transition into a new scene gives the author an opportunity to provide the reader with relevant information in a natural manner. The most common use of this is for description of a new place that has a powerful impact on the viewpoint character and/or that the character will come back to over and over – think Harry Potter’s first view of the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

Less common, but still useful, is using the transition for a quick infodump about culture, backstory, or setting. James White does this in his Sector General books, where he’ll end a meeting scene with a summary of the medical case the main character is being assigned to, which transitions naturally into the next scene where the character worries about how to handle it. Or he’ll use a character moving between wards as an opportunity to explain the medical system of classifying aliens (which is almost always plot-important in those books).

Fourth, narrative transition can give the reader more of a sense of time passing than a simple space break, especially when it’s a matter of days, weeks, or months rather than minutes or hours. A space break followed by “Two weeks later…” establishes that it’s been two weeks, but that’s all it does. A narrative transition can give a sense of the character actually moving through that time, even if they’re not doing anything important.

Finally, narrative transition can be a way of avoiding writing a scene the writer hates doing, thinks they’re not good at writing, or wants to avoid showing for some other reason, without leaving out something critical. The writer can say, “The battle went on for three days, and at the end of it the exhausted survivors gathered around the fire to recuperate” instead of writing several pages of action set-piece, or “He expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do” instead of pushing herself to write a more explicitly detailed love scene.

Using narrative transition to avoid a scene the writer hates writing or thinks they’re not good at may work in the short term, for a particular story, but I don’t think it’s a good long-term strategy, unless, as in the example from Pride and Prejudice above, there are cultural reasons why the author might want to leave out the scene.

On the other hand, there can be excellent story-related reasons for doing so: picking up the pace or preventing boring the reader with the 13^th Giant Battle With Monsters, for instance. Various writers have done interesting and clearly quite-deliberate experiments with “leaving out” things that would normally be considered vital parts of the story, giving them only in glimpses or using this sort of narrative transition – the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episode “The Zeppo” was one; John M. Ford’s The Last Hot Time another.