Transition Trouble

Lately I’ve been thinking about transitions between scenes inside a single chapter of a novel. Here are a couple different ways you can do it (I’m using the example of a girl going from her house to her friend’s house.)

1- The first kind is to simply tell everything that happens in between, to not have a break at all. In this case, the girl would go down to the garage, start the car, back out of the driveway, drive onto the freeway, pull off into her friend’s subdivision… you get the idea.

Pros:  This way works especially well whenever something interesting happens on the ride that’s not important enough to get a whole scene but needs to happen. Like maybe her car won’t start at first, foreshadowing a full breakdown a couple chapters later. Or maybe she’s driving along and she catches a glimpse of someone walking along the highway who later becomes a major character.  Also, if your character has a lot of thinking to do, you can have her think while driving. Interiority is always more interesting if your character is actually doing something.

Cons: This can easily get boring. Your readers probably aren’t interested in a character driving along a highway to a friend’s house. Unless something interesting happens or the MC is thinking, it’s probably best not to use this technique.

                2- The second way would be to just summarize it really quickly. You’d write about the girl deciding to go to her friend’s house then say ‘a minute later I pulled into her driveway.’

Pros: This is great because you leave out most of the boring stuff while not actually using a section break, which can be choppy. Since you probably don’t want to use too many section breaks this is a great way to splice two scenes together without one.

Cons: This can still have a lot of unwanted information. You don’t want to jump too far when you’re just skimming so you probably need to give some details, which can still get boring. Also, if this is poorly done, it can feel really awkward jumping so quickly from scene to scene. This was one of my main problems with Mockingjay. Collins would combine so many scenes in one chapter, jumping forward a couple weeks in a single paragraph. It was rather disorienting, actually.

                3- The most often used way would be to simply give a section break to indicate time passing. Here you’d say, ‘“See you in a minute,” I said. * * * * Ten minutes later, I pulled into her driveway.’

Pros: This clearly indicates the passage of time, giving the reader a bit of a breather space and keying them up for a new scene, possibly with a mood change. If you’re transitioning between two very different scenes, this is probably the best way. The best thing is, you can jump as far as you want and start up again wherever you’d like.

Cons: This can easily become choppy, especially if you have many section breaks. It’s probably not a good idea to have more than two of these breaks per chapter. While it’s a great method for transitioning between two very different scenes, if the scenes are super similar it’s probably best to use method number two.

So, here are a couple ideas for switching between scenes inside a single chapter. Do you have any to add? Which one of these is your favourite? 

How to Keep Readers Reading

Last week I wrote a post about what makes me stop reading a book. To recap quickly, the main reason I would put down a book is too much sexual content, like with Discord’s Apple. In that case, not only was I disgusted by some of the scenes, the story didn’t begin to interest me. I’ve read so many books where I could just have put them down and forgotten all about them. As an author, you have to avoid that at all costs. Your job is to make your readers not just want to keep reading, but need to.

Sounds like a really high goal, right? For now, let’s tackle just one small part: making the book impossible to put down. And how do you do that? By not giving them a place to stop.

If you’re like me, you like to stop reading at a place where you can easily pick up again. Most often, this will be a chapter ending. Sometimes chapter endings can be the perfect places to let your readers take a quick breather, but they’re also the best spots for a reader to stick a bookmark in, drop the book in a drawer and forget all about it. How do you keep them from doing this? Give them a good cliffhanger.

Now, this doesn’t mean giving them a cheap Nancy Drew style ‘I opened the door and gasped’ chapter ending. Ending a chapter with a surprise that is immediately explained in the first paragraph of the next chapter doesn’t help. You need something shocking to the overall plot. Suzanne Collins is a master at this. I just looked over the ending of the first chapters of Catching Fire and they all end at the perfect moment. President Snow arrives. She needs to marry Peeta. A person is murdered. She fails at something. (Sorry those were all vague; I don’t want to give spoilers). In short, each chapter ending only plunges the reader farther into the conflict and makes them need to know what happens next.

 

This doesn’t apply just to chapter endings, but also chapters as whole. If each chapter only increases the conflict then you don’t even need a cliffhanger. Just keep increasing the stakes and the tension. You’re allowed to give the reader a couple moments of rest (your MC could win a major battle, or finally meet their true love) but always keep a major threat hanging over them. If there’s no conflict, your reader is bored. If you can keep increasing the stakes, they’ll have no choice but to keep reading.

Best of luck to all you writers out there. J