“I don’t know what happens next”: Writing Transitional Scenes
image via Afif Ramdhasuma via Unsplash
As I continue my February Writing Challenge, I had a new hurdle last week: Transitional Scenes. These scenes are important, but they don’t get a lot of attention from people talking about craft, or often writers themselves.
What are Transitional Scenes? These are the scenes that happen in between the big Milestone Scenes (the Inciting Incident, First Plot Point, Midpoint, Second Plot Point, Climax, Resolution. Often when we think of our stories, we think in terms of those big scenes. And they are great goalposts to aim for. You absolutely have to nail them, or you don’t have a story.
But often when people say “I don’t know what happens next,” their problem isn’t with a Milestone Scene, but how you get from, say, the Inciting Incident to the First Plot Point, or from there to the Midpoint... and so on. Or they have other important scenes that they know need to happen in order for the Milestone Scenes to make sense, but they don’t know how to string them together. In other words, they need Transitional Scenes.
This is sometimes also referred to as “scene and sequel,” the back-and-forth of action and reaction that drives the story forward. But you can break them down into different types, and not all of them have to be actual scenes. Confused yet?
What are Transitional Scenes?
They come in several different types:
Setup scenes – the scenes you know you need to write in order to set up what happens next. You introduce characters and complications, clues and conflict. These are often meaty scenes in themselves, and one scene can (and usually should) have many layers.
Summaries – brief narrative passages that give us information we need to know, but don’t need full scenes. You use them sparingly, since they are more about telling than showing – and that's okay! These are great for time leaps, when you don’t need or want to show every little thing that happens.
“The spring semester flew by, filled with teaching her classes, advising her students, committee meetings, and the endless paperwork required to set up an archaeological dig in Egypt. By the time the plane hit the Cairo airport tarmac in June, she prayed everything was all set. Even knowing nothing ever went smoothly, she was unprepared to see Ahmed’s pinched, worried face in the arrivals hall. “What’s happened?” (Note: If there is something important in the spring that affects the dig later on, you would put that in a scene – an argument with a colleague, say, whose importance the reader doesn’t fully understand until later...)
They’re also great for showing character interiority:
“Lulu closed her eyes and imagined her cupcakes laid out on the table in perfect rainbow rows. She pictured the judges taking a bite, and proclaiming them the best they’d ever had, asking her secrets. She strode up to the podium to accept her crystal cupcake trophy, while all the other bakers applauded – especially Mary McCarthy, who thought she was the best baker who ever lived, to hear her talk. First, though, Lulu had to perfect her recipe. She perused every cookbook in her mother’s pantry, scoured the internet, spent hours dreaming up combinations of ingredients. Then one day...” From here, you’d transition into a full scene.
Summaries can also be quick info dumps, when you need to impart information but don’t want two characters standing around awkwardly saying. “Well, as you know...”
Regrouping and planning scenes – these allow the characters (and the reader) to draw breath after something big happens. Even in a thriller, scenes need different lengths and pacing. Going flat out at the highest pitch all the time exhausts everyone, and then readers don’t know what the crucial scenes are. It’s exactly what it says. The characters take stock and figure out what to do next. I wrote one last week in which my main character is hunting for something. After the big defeat at the town council vote, Ruby has to think of what to do next. She turns the house upside down hunting for the deed to their property. She plans how to find her friend Otto and see if he’ll help. Failing that, she’ll make a last-ditch effort to contact the nixies. The scene with the nixies is the next Big Scene, but if they are a last resort, I have to briefly show her trying other things first in order for the “last resort” to have the biggest impact.
Things to keep in mind with Transitional Scenes:
They can drag on too long. Make sure you keep to the crucial information. Don’t meander, with action, dialogue, or thought.
Make sure they are necessary. This is tricky. In a first draft, you may overwrite scenes, or have too many transition scenes as you figure out the story. That’s fine! But in revision, you will have to see if they slow the pacing too much. You may need to eliminate or combine scenes.
Be sure they still have tension. You don’t want dead zones in your story. If you’re coming off a big scene with a lot of external conflict, be sure that a transitional scene still has some internal conflict. As in my example, Ruby is anxious because the clock is ticking on the developer’s taking over her grandfather’s property. She has to find the deed, or some way to save the land. That tension drives the transitional scenes before the showdown with the nixies.
When to summarize, when to scene? This can be tricky. Use summaries sparingly, for time jumps or a bit of foreshadowing. When you want to show character development or conflict or drop important clues the reader needs later on, write in scenes. Make sure that scenes have a point, and a beginning, middle, and end that leads to the next scene. Summaries need to have a reason to be there (not just because you thought the information was cool) but they don’t need to follow a structure as scenes do.
As you can see, Transition Scenes don’t just get the character from Point A to Point B. They provide context and a reason for what they do, and increase the stakes (inner and outer) so the reader remains engaged and rooting for them to succeed.
