Rewriting to Create a Page-Turning Story - Transitions 4

Transitions are the links that keep people reading (or watching). In addition to orienting and reminding, they can charm, raise questions, and make people worry about characters. One standard practice for writers revising their manuscripts is to look at beginnings and endings (of chapters, scenes) to make sure they have strong hooks and cliffhangers. That’s part of the job of improving transitions, but it can miss a few things. So this week, I’m offering a short quiz and some guidance on what to do when transitions score poorly.

Transition Scorecard

Rate each one from 1-5, with 5 being the best score. (Note, it’s okay to consider transitions that are sequenced rather than single blocks.)

A) This transition is clear. All the elements (time, location, characters present, and situation) are presented in a helpful order.

B) This transition delights. It does more than the minimum. Voice, appropriate humor, poetic devices (such as metaphors), and/or imagery make it fun to read.

C) This transition engages through curiosity and concern.

D) This transition elegantly reminds people about key points before launching into the next phase of the story.

E) This transition is spare, without distracting and diluting extras (purple prose, artsy description, asides of questionable value, etc.)

F) This transition, without calling attention to itself, entertains with rhythm, precise word choice, and ideas that demand attention and invite rereading.

Chances are, there are few perfect scores. So here’s some help:

A) Clarity is the easiest fix. Usually, it’s a matter of discovering what’s missing and adding it in. But sometimes, writers are too clever by half. The elements are all there, but they are hidden or presented poetically when prose will do the job. If so, it becomes a matter of balancing appropriate emphasis with directness.

B) Delight involves a lot of choices. The important thing is what’s fun has to be fun for the chosen audience. And even for people who enjoy broad humor and shock, there’s a limit. When I think if what delights, I tend to look for three levels and go for the highest level where possible. I explore the levels by analogy to Stephen King’s types: gross-out, horror, and terror.

C) Curiosity is raising questions and deepening interest. (And this fails if the subject is hard to connect with or the answers are well-known.) Concern is an essential ingredient to most fiction, making people worry about a protagonist with whom they empathize. (Where many writers fall down is making the worry is about something trivial. Jeopardy, risks, and stakes need to be high and getting higher as the story progresses.)  Note: Questions make some people uncomfortable. So some readers will advocate, even demand, that some questions get answered right away. In general resist this (unless it’s genre related). In my experience, for every person who hates a delayed reveal, there are four who love it.

D) I’m frustrated by the “last week” reminders for episodic TV that I stream. TV has (or had) an excuse for being so ham handed. Most stories, though they need reminders of key points (especially in puzzle stories), repeated images, the reaction of a different character to the situation, or a worsening of the situation can bring the detail back to mind. Don’t have one character recap with nothing new to offer the reader. (This is a good place for artifacts, like news stories or songs to be dropped in.)

E) Good writing can paper over everything. No junk words. No relying on adverbs when robust verbs can do the job. Kill your darlings and resist the urge to show off. If it doesn’t serve the story it needs to go.

F) Having something to say is good throughout fiction. It can set a transition (which is often reduced to bare function) apart in the best way. Beyond ideas, make the words feel good in your mouth. That means reading the passage out loud (not silently) and not tolerating anything that feels false or awkward.

Taking things a step further, if reading beyond individual transition passages (or transition sequences) can be enlightening. By reading just the transitions, one after another from beginning to end, you can make judgments on consistency and variation. Generally, the tone, complexity (including word choice), and pacing should be similar (or deliberately chosen to jar). The transition techniques should be varied enough to provide novelty without distracting. And singletons (only one use of a quote, only one section from a character’s point of view, only one titled chapter) should be avoided.

Getting enough variation is trickier as the overall writing becomes more sophisticated. In these cases, there often are good reasons to break rules and the writer probably has the skills to do it well.  

For some of these, it will be easier to identify a concern than to create a solution. Creating a great title or opening sentence (for the work or a section) can be a challenge. But I’m hoping this series will make the opportunities for better transitions more visible, and some of the options will suggest possibilities that fit the need.