One of the big things I’ve had to work hard at fixing, both in nonfiction and fiction, is transitions. Treehouses, you see—

Wait.

Let me explain.

Transitions between scenes: the problem.

Most transitions when I’m thinking or writing happen internally for me. They happen very quickly and I tend to get frustrated because they take more time to explain than to tell. Most of the time, especially in conversation, I simply want someone to follow along and add something in. I tend to have an easier time of things as an audience’s intelligence and a working familiarity with certain subjects increases. This leaves me silent at many social gatherings as a result. Though, generally, New York culture, academic culture, and nerd conference culture has all helped me socialize and figure out how to walk folks along.

It’s a me thing. It’s something I have to fix for most people if I want to interact with them.

And that leads me to transitions in novels between scenes.

Sometimes it’s on a motivation-reaction unit level. I forget to give the sensory details of how the perspective character reacts to an event, how it changes their mind. Sometimes it’s on a scene-to-sequence level, I forget to give them time to sort out where they went wrong and what needs to change.

Most of the time, however, it’s from a scene-sequence level to another scene-sequence. Those transitions are exceedingly hard, especially if they jump time and space. They often make sense in my head, but seldom work swimmingly on paper.

Especially in the current novel, which has no less than six perspective characters. How do you jump between heads, chapter to chapter, in a way that doesn’t leave the reader feeling jarred?

And then something hit me.

I could do in a novel what I’m used to doing in film. Of course I could. There’s a trick in film where transitions between objects, movement, and light can connect two otherwise seemingly unconnected shots.

Here are three examples of how transitions between scenes work in film:

There’s a great breakdown on Sherlock’s transitions here:

As well as a compilation of object-based transitions:

And here’s a list of some that are based more on camera movement and editing:

So how did this occur to me this morning?

Well, as we say in critique circle, no disclaimers. But I suppose since this isn’t critique circle, you should know what I’m about to post is from the first draft. It’ll show you how I’m teasing it all out:

Chapter 1 ending:

Sherrif Niv didn’t care. He had the periapt at least, police force or no police force, sunburn or no. It wasn’t perfect, but now at least he could stop searching for that like some kid whose most prized toy had fallen out of a treehouse.

Chapter 2 beginning:

Hillow sat on the bean bag chairs of the treehouse, listening to the dreyoni mating calls with their beaks and rumble. Dreyoni. Airbears, when translated. Called to mind a great crashing hulk falling through tree boughs. Like a greater, northern, swamp people version of down bears. 

Chapter 2 ending:

Now that she had him, it all felt complicated:

What could she do now?

Chapter 3 beginning:

What could he do now? At a misty lake surrounded by white sands, the young storyweaver trainee sprinted, tired and excited and a bit ashamed, having something to prove rather than something to give. He had a golden yoke around his neck. 

Chapter 3 ending:

He wanted to help, sure. To impress, of course. He’d even been half willing to throw his life away at some fool’s mission.

But not while interviewing a demon.

What the hell?

Literally.

Chapter 4 beginning:

Hell would be too kind: she wanted this man dead.

Some observations about transitions between scenes.

I want to make a couple of notes about these examples.

1. The first is a transitional metaphor at the end of one chapter that becomes an actual place at the start of the second chapter. They’re sharing similar feelings of height and safety.
2. The second is a transitional question at the end of the second chapter that becomes the question asked of another character at the beginning of the third. They’re sharing similar doubt.
3. The third is a transitional metaphysic — at the end of the third chapter, it’s a profane reference to a place of demons as a curse and at the beginning of the fourth chapter, it’s an actual meditation on said place.

I’m sure there are many, many other ways to do this, but it’s what I’m teasing out right now with six different characters. Perhaps it was obvious to you, I had yet to pull it over from the film domain into novels.

What do you think about transitions between scenes? How do you employ them?

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Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash