Passages of Time and Transitions

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Transition issues are common problems in first drafts (later drafts, too).  I’ve been guilty of a couple of different transition fouls in past manuscripts.

Transitions that are too long and boring:

When I was writing my first book, I had a lot of trouble with getting characters where they needed to be. This resulted in a lot of really boring, pointless scenes where the narrative went something like this:  Jenny decided to head over to the restaurant to find out more about what Thomas was doing the night of the murder.  She found her keys and hurried out to her car.  On the trip to the Italian restaurant, she mulled over what she was going to ask Thomas.  Upon arrival at the restaurant…blah!  Dreck.

I think I believed it would be too choppy to suddenly pick up with the character at the Italian restaurant.  Or that it was cheating.  I’m not sure what was going through my head, but it took an editor to tell me to get rid of it all.

Transitions that are too choppy:  Now I have the ability to go too far in the opposite direction with transitions, causing editors to write “Elizabeth, can we soften this up a bit?” or “Elizabeth, this might seem a little abrupt…” in the margins.  I’m sure this is related to the way that I abruptly pick up and put down my manuscript when I have small pockets of time.  It’s great to be able to write at short notice, but it can mess with the general continuity.

Just right (?):

So, a couple of different ways to deal with short passages of time (or even longer ones, actually).  We can have a scene break or we can have a little transition lead-in.

With my mess of an example above, a better way of handling the car ride over would be something like this:

After hanging up the phone with Bruce, Jenny realized she was going to need to speak with Thomas again.  She looked at her watch.  If she hurried, she could get to the restaurant before it closed.

            Twenty minutes later, Jenny asked the hostess to tell Thomas she was there.

Or something like:

Jenny hung up the phone.  Clearly, she would need to speak with Thomas again.

(Scene break)

Unfortunately, Thomas wasn’t speaking.  He scowled belligerently at Jenny from across the booth at his Italian restaurant.

So either way, there’s a sort of natural segue.  It’s a bit of a fine-tuning thing.  We definitely want to make sure that the reader is able to follow along when we jump to the next scene.  They’ll want to know where the characters are and have a hint as to how much time has passed.

How do you handle transitions and time passages in your books?  Are you more apt to err on the side of  too-long transitions, or choppy ones?

Image: MorgueFile: priyanphoenix

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