Meg Chittenden Waves
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Transitions

Apparently, St. George hadn't changed much since the seventeenth century. It featured steep, crooked streets with names like Featherbed Alley and Petticoat Lane. Pastel houses and quaint shops clustered together on the hillside, looking down on the harbor, their terraced white roofs shining in the sun.

After making the rounds of taverns and restaurants, guided by Derry's matchbooks and coasters, Turner and Jamie stopped at an historic house and a carriage museum. The caretaker at the museum and one bartender recognized Derry's cap, but had no memory of anything else connected with him.

Climbing on foot up a steep street to an old fort that now housed a restaurant and bar, Jamie was tired, sweaty and definitely discouraged.

Note that the two paragraphs beginning with "After making the rounds" and ending with Jamie being tired and discouraged, constitute a transition--an instance of changing from one form, state, subject or place to another.

Transitions link your scenes. Sometimes they are fairly long--mostly they should be brief. A well-known example of a transition, which I hope you will never use, is: Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Sometimes you don't need a transition at all: you can just hop or slide from one scene to another. Here is the beginning of the scene that follows upon Jamie's being tired and discouraged.

Scene begins: (Notice how the characters come to life when they are on scene.)

"This is not going well," Jamie said after they had settled themselves on stools at the fairly busy bar and had ordered drinks.

Turner grunted a vague answer. Ever since they'd come into the bar, he'd been glancing around furtively, as if he was looking for something...or someone.

Sipping her mineral water, Jamie looked at the high ceilings and whitewashed walls. The place was lit by a wagon wheel full of electric light bulbs. There were several flags hanging from the rafters.

A woman entered the bar and Turner glanced at her, then away. "Are you expecting someone?" Jamie asked.

He had just raised his glass to his lips. The clear sparkling liquid sloshed but didn't spill. "I'm just keeping an eye on things," he said. A lame answer if ever she'd heard one.

"Ready for another?" the barmaid asked.

They both shook their heads, then Jamie dug out Derry's photograph and laid it on the bar.

The scene continues with the barmaid telling Jamie and Turner all she knows about Derry and includes information on the woman (Linda) whose entrance had caught Turner's interest. When Linda shows up again, the viewpoint changes to Turner's as he questions her. The scene ends like this:

Linda's body language had given rise to another question. She'd been horrified right until the moment he turned the photo over. Whose photo had she expected it to be?

The next chapter begins with an abrupt transition in place:

Along with eight or so tourists, Turner and Jamie boarded the Coral Queen at the ferry terminal in Hamilton.

It's perfectly O.K. to make a sudden change of place, day, time, character, at the end of a scene or chapter. Sometimes the scene will seem to require a detailed transition to the next scene, sometimes not.

You can make a transition in place, as above: Turner and Jamie boarded the Coral Queen... You can make a transition in character--after presenting a scene in one person's viewpoint, you can switch to another person's viewpoint for the next. Or a time transition could be used: Three days later...

There are many types of transition. Try to avoid ending scenes or chapters with a character going to sleep, which is not only trite, there's a danger that if the characters go to sleep the reader will do likewise. Something interesting should be happening at the end of a chapter.

Also try to avoid making your transitions too lengthy. Say two characters--Pamela and her mom--have had a quarrel, and you end the scene with Pam stomping out of the room. You don't have to show her closing the door, climbing the stairs to her room. Just write: "In her bedroom, Pam..." or skip that too and jump to the next day, or the next week.

Again, it's a good idea to study novels to see how other writers handle this business of transitions.