Transitions: The secret to excellent story flow

by Gina Burgess

She looked at his expressionless face and wondered what he was thinking.

She remembered that key, and the box it opened.

Bernice might know. Bernice was the neighborhood gossip and tidbit collector.

Betty tried to quit thinking about Bob to no avail. She looked out of her window and saw his car.

The fridge was empty, and so was the pantry.

Those are examples of transitions that I just made up, so don’t be too critical, please.

The first one is a transition for a head hop within a scene.

I personally dislike head hops. I really like a smooth story flow with one POV, but when done well with good transitions, I don’t even notice a head hop within a scene. The transition is there, and it’s good, and it helps the hop become more like an easy step than a jarring hop. Head jumps take the reader to a different POV in a different scene. Usually the switch happens at the beginning of a new chapter. Without a transition, the head jump is like slamming my head into an airbag in a car wreck. Oh, so painful.

Using a transition to lead into a head jump from one scene to the next gives continuity and even flow without disturbing the pace of the story. With transitions, I know exactly where I am in the story and whose POV I’m viewing. Easy Peasy.

The second example above transitions the reader into a flashback. The reader is gently prepared to go back in time to see why the box is so important to the story. Nothing wrong with well written flashbacks as long as there is good transition and the flashback is crucial to the story. Otherwise, I think I said this before, I hate them.

The third example is flexible enough to either indicate a head jump to Bernice, or a scene change of going to Bernice and finding out if she really does know the needed information.

The fourth example is the same: head jump to Bob or scene change to the car outside. Or a switch in Betty’s thoughts from Bob to events that happened in the car – another flashback perhaps.

The last one is rather ambiguous as a transition. From here the character could wallow in hunger or go to the grocery store where the robber changes her life forever by shooting her and nicking her spine. This is where a transition is actually the scene Set Up. You are helping the reader to suspend reality/belief, and settle into a plausible story flow where characters have reasonable motivations for their actions/reactions.

You might need to think about that for a moment.

Fantasy and sci-fi writers need this kind of plausibility more than contemporary or historical fiction writers. It’s the suspension of belief factor that helps authors creatively draw readers into the suspension of reality. Most authors would not consider — The great earthquake of 2025 shifted the flow of the Mississippi River — a transition. It is much needed information so the reader understands why Biloxi, Mississipp is 12 feet under muddy, Mississippi River water. It isn’t a flashback. It’s a bridge of information from one scene to another to make sense of what is happening in the reader’s mind.

What was the last transition that you’ve written? Do you even notice them? Transitions are mostly like missing words to an editor as in the sentence: He stumbled as he ran for train station.

How many times did you read that sentence? Did your brain automatically supply the word the? Did the sentence falter in your brain while you figured out the word the was missing?

Transitions, just like common words, are never noticed unless they are missing. When a transition is not there, the missing part creates a dam making a great story flow screech to a halt; I know mixed metaphors, sorry. The reader is jerked out of the story so he or she can reread the sentence or section of sentence adding the word in, or causing the reader to lurch and stumble into the next scene trying to figure out where in the story he is or how what she just read relates to what was previously read.

An excellent example of that kind of lurch and stumble is in John Gresham’s book The Pelican Brief. The first six chapters (I think six) we are introduced to, and experience the assassination of six judges. By the fourth one, I was bored and skipped the next two chapters – and didn’t miss one single thing for the story to make sense. Any one of those chapters would have been a great start to an interesting story–but not six of them.

So tell me, when was the last time you actually noticed a transition (not the words like and, furthermore, nevertheless, etc.), but the tool used like a needle stitching scenes and sequels together to make a work of genius?

What are some great or unusual transitions that you’ve noticed? Give us some examples, please.

Motivation of Your Characters

by Randy Ingermanson

[Editor’s note: If you are not getting Randy’s ezine, I do recommend you do. It is packed with lots of thought-provoking writing, organizing, and marketing advice plus it’s plain common sense stuff.]

3) Craft: How to Measure Motivation

Practically everything in fiction eventually comes down to your characters’ motivations. The lead character in your story wants something, One Thing.

It’s tempting to say that the strength of your story is directly proportional to how much your lead character wants that One Thing.

But that’s false. It’s so far from being true, it’s not even wrong.

Let me explain how you measure motivation. I’ll do that by telling you a little story…

Back in August, most of America took a day off to watch the total eclipse of the sun. By good luck, the path of totality came very close to where I live. We were scheduled to see 99% coverage at my house. Which is not bad, but I wanted more.

On the day of the eclipse, my daughter and I got up early, packed our gear, and left the house at 4 AM to beat the traffic. We drove for a couple of hours until we reached a friend’s house in Salem, Oregon, dead center in the path of totality.

Then we waited for a few hours to watch the show.

When it was over, we waited several hours for the traffic to die down, then headed north. The freeway was slogging along at parking lot speeds. After an hour of that, we took an exit and zigzagged across the countryside on back roads, using our phones to navigate. It took us four hours to get home.

The trip burned an entire day, and it was quite an adventure, just to see two minutes of eclipse.

Why’d we do all that, when we could have watched the eclipse from our own back yard?

Because 99% isn’t 100%. It’s not even close. I watched the coverage go from 0% to 99% and it was qualitatively the same thing. Sure it was less and less sunlight, but sunlight is sunlight. Then I watched the last little bit of the sun wink out, and a hole appeared in the sky where before there had been blinding light. A hole is not sunlight.

The difference between 99% and 100% is huge. They are different kinds of things, not different amounts of the same thing. The reason is because 99% totality is 1% sunlight, whereas 100% totality is a hole in the sky—no light at all.

Something is qualitatively different from nothing.

When you have the chance to see a total eclipse of the sun, you should take it. The opportunity doesn’t come along very often.

But I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do when the next total eclipse comes along. I’ve seen one and it was pretty cool. But I’ve seen one and I don’t feel a strong need to see another. If it’s convenient next time, I’ll probably go watch. Otherwise, I might just give it a pass.

Now contrast my attitude with those people who get addicted to seeing total eclipses. They’ll spend thousands of dollars. They’ll take days to reach the zone of totality. They’ll camp out in insanely terrible places. They’ll charter boats or airplanes to get themselves to exactly the right spot at exactly the right time. They’ll risk the possibility of a rain-out or cloudy weather.

All for an experience that never lasts longer than seven minutes.

That is some serious motivation.

These eclipse addicts are all-in. Whereas I’m not all-in.

My level of motivation to see a second eclipse is 99%. Theirs is 100%.

Those are qualitatively different motivations. When you’re all-in, when you’re 100% motivated, you’ll do anything, no matter how crazy, to feed your need.

When you’re not all-in, when you’re only at 99% motivation, you’ll do whatever’s convenient.

Write stories about characters who are all-in on their story.

Characters like Luke Skywalker, who’ll do anything to defeat the Evil Empire.

Like Lizzie Bennet, who would never think of marrying a man unless she loved him 100%.

Like Katniss Everdeen, who’ll do whatever it takes to survive the Hunger Games.

If your lead character is all-in on your story, then your readers will be all-in too.

If your lead character isn’t all-in, then you won’t be either, and neither will your readers.

That’s how you measure motivation. All-in. Or not all-in. As Yoda once said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

Homework

• What is the One Thing your lead character wants?
• How bad does she want it? Does she want it 100%? Or only 99%?
• If she’s not all-in on that One Thing, then fix your story or kill it.