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[SPEAKER_01]: Season 21, episode 28.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is writing excuses narrative transitions tools not rules for writers by writers I'm Mary Revanette I'm Don one I'm Erin I'm Howard
[SPEAKER_02]: So this week, after having dug into what makes the scene last week, we're going to start talking about transitions.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you move from one scene to the next?
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you move across that shift in location, POV, energy, whatever it is?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that can be moving from scene to scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be moving from chapter or section to section, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what are the elements that you think about when you are trying to figure out, how do I get from here
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think about what kind of transition I'm planning on using, and I think of them as sort of coming in three modes, there's what I call a through scene, and then there's a break, and then there's an interruption.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a through scene is where you use narration to transition us from one place to another like,
[SPEAKER_01]: We walked for many miles before arriving, and so it is technically the, you're just summarizing all the off-stage stuff, what's happening there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then a scene break is, you know, the hashtag and you jump in time in space.
[SPEAKER_01]: And an eruption is where we stay in the same time in space.
[SPEAKER_01]: but interrupt the action in order to punctuate a moment.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is, you know, often they don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't,
[SPEAKER_03]: advance from scene to scene very cleanly and I described them moving the plot forward instead of it like flowing like a river the cast all ganged up behind this boulder and manually push it down a dry river bed and it's the difference between something flowing smoothly and something
[SPEAKER_03]: It shouldn't look to the reader like you worked really hard to move between these scenes.
[SPEAKER_03]: It should feel, to my taste anyway, it should feel like running water.
[SPEAKER_03]: It should feel deliberate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and first and foremost, and I think one of the big risks in transitions is if you have too much falling action at the end of the scene and then too much rising action at the start of the next scene, you end up in a valley where it's very easy for the reader to put the book down.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, you can have a destruction between the scenes, but this is a little bit just another way to talk about, you know, get in early get in late out in late early.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think about it as do I want to underline what has just happened or do I want to launch to the next scene and sometimes you do both.
[SPEAKER_01]: So an underline is like a reaction shot, which I describe reaction shots through what I've learned from Nathan Philly and have I done the Nathan Philly and okay, I couldn't remember if I had talked at links about this before is this the Nathan Philly and so
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so he said that at the end of the scene and so the camera is going to push in on you and this older soap star said, you are out of things to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you do, there are three faces you make.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I leave the stove on?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I did leave the stove on.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: I turn the stove off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that basically what this says is, I have questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things are bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things are going to be okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it helps the reader understand what is and contextualize what is happened before.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I, sometimes we'll get to the end of a scene like when it's not working, I'm like reading back through it like why is this not working and I'll look at and go is the stove on or off right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or do we have questions about it is this and and sometimes just like adding a single line about that it doesn't have to be like this entire big thing it's just that single moment can I have I have a quick personal question to ask yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: When you reach that moment, do you make the face?
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you make the stove on stove?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because I have caught myself when I am writing, when I am drawing sometimes, I am stuck until I make the face my character would be making and feel what the character is feeling, and then I can put the thing on the page.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that probably has no bearing on the conversation, but it fascinates me.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, but I do, I think it does to a degree because I think for me, it is like, I talk about these mechanical things, but it really is about chasing the vibes and like the, for me, the stove on or stove off is like, this is, this is kind of the underlying, it's the, but it is the stove on or off is, is often the launch of the next scene because you're raising this new question, which was one of the problems that I ran into when I was,
[SPEAKER_01]: starting to shift from short stories to novels, is that I kept ending everything with a solid sort of, everything is fine now or everything is terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's one of the reasons that you sometimes use a through scene or you want to end with a question because otherwise you are giving the reader a chance to leave it in theater terms.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the problems with the blackout is that it's an opportunity for an audience member to escape.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and you don't want that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You do not want to keep them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm thinking a little bit about songs again, which is that if you're listening to a song, I don't know why, but the wobble is coming into my head, the wobble is a song where you think that song has ended because they go into a long repetition as many songs do where things get quieter.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, wow, that was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a lot of fun doing the wobble dance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they're like, just kidding, there's still three more minutes of song.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say, come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, wait, there was no, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: You like, prepped me, like, you know, to exit the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thinking, like, scenes are similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, when you said, don't want about not wanting falling action and then too much rising action,
[SPEAKER_00]: is like a fade out in a song which telling people like this is the end and then weirdly a fade in into the next verse and you're like, wait, that's an odd thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: In songs a lot of times where you go from one scene or one part of a song to the next, it's after a strong moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a long belt.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is like the moment of emotion in the song and then you're like, okay, quiet down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you the next part of this story.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, and so it carries the listener through.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think similarly like having an ending that's really strong allows you to then start in another place because that strong thing, the audience is still thinking about during the blackout.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh, there was a gunshot and then it went to a blackout.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who could have shot it?
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time they think, oh, and also maybe I have to pee, you're already in the next scene and they don't have a chance to escape.
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... the movie corpse bride the song remains of the day by Danny Elfman has a crazy key change between the verse and the chorus and there is what we call a common tone modulation between it uh... he sings you know are you built judiciously lovely corpse bride and the note that he's holding on bride is the same note that he begins the lyrics uh... you know die die we all pass away
[SPEAKER_03]: And but the whole key change has modulated around that one note, it's what we call a common tone key change in cinema.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a similar technique where very similar actions are very similar colors or whatever are cut between it's called a match cut.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in prose, the technique is, I don't know what to call it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would call it a match cut or a common tone modulation.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, reaction set comes out of three actually.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she cried into her cup tans at the end of a scene.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, actually, again, scene begins with, he sipped his cup of noodles.
[SPEAKER_03]: and that transition to me is so it's such a useful trick because I can have two scenes with completely different moods, completely different rising falling action, completely different settings, completely different characters, but that one common tone, that one match in the cut, is enough to stitch them together so that it feels like the river is flowing, instead of I'm
[SPEAKER_03]: is a fissing rock down the dry river?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think what a lot of this comes down to is, you know, going back, once again to the idea of macrocosm and microcosm, which I think about a lot, but it comes to what's clearly like the fractal structure of things, is a scene is to have a beginning in an ending, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you move from your ending to the beginning of the next one, we
[SPEAKER_02]: whether you're looking for an interruption, whether you're looking for the matchcard, building a bridge for the reader across that break, what you need to be communicating is intention.
[SPEAKER_02]: I meant to end the scene here, I mean to start the next scene here, and I'm gonna grab you by the collar and move you from one to the other in a way that I think feels very deliberate and communicate something to the reader of, hey, how am I supposed to feel about the thing that just happened and be, how should I feel about this thing
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of the things that makes ending a scene so hard is because you often don't really know the next scene, especially if you are discovery writing sometimes sometimes you end it because you're like oh I've got that you know it's good advice for ending here but I actually don't know what I'm aiming people towards.
[SPEAKER_01]: So one of the hacks that I have learned in the last two or three years and I'm pretty deep into my career at this point is that when you've accomplished everything that you need to accomplish and a scene, you can actually just stop writing it and then come back and fix the transition later.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So don't let all of our, like, do you have to do these things and or this is very useful to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, don't let that make you feel like you can't end a scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're having trouble, it's probably just you don't know what the next one is yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Figure that out
[SPEAKER_02]: and speaking of abruptly stopping a scene, we're going to transition into our break.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a theory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that we're back about, I don't know if you all have ever heard of the eight types of fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard of some types of fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think I've only heard of two.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do have you heard of?
[SPEAKER_03]: We, this is fun and okay, no shit, there I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is a thing that comes out of games, and they say like, why do people play games?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're eight types of fun that you can actually be having when you're playing a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason you might be like, what does this have to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: This transition is real, is real, is real, real.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reason is that when you were talking about the match cut, I was thinking, what is it that people like about that, especially in prose?
[SPEAKER_00]: And part of it is I actually think it allows you to come outside of the story with a small part of your brain and be clever.
[SPEAKER_00]: because you see the, like, I even on some subconscious, like, you're like, oh, cup and cup, I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not anything that's happening in the story on the page.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's but it allows you to make a bridge yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking, well, what is that, exactly?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a meta participation in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, and a lot of times games think about how you meta-participate in the play.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the eight types of fun, I'm wondering if some of these are things that could carry you from one scene to the next, and I'm making it up in real time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am so excited by this, but they are sensation, so the engagement of your senses.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fantasy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like escapism, narrative, drama, and story, challenge, which is an obstacle to overcome, fellowship, which is feeling sort of a social framework, or feeling like you're with these characters, or with this thing, discovery.
[SPEAKER_00]: Expression and comfort and repetition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love this so much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love this like when I think against for all those reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm like, I know food for all the reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just exist for all those reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like, and this is literally one of the things that I love about games and about writing is that the reason it works is that it mirrors stuff that we do in the real world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sitting here thinking about the way, you know, I talked in the previous chapter, previous chapter, sure, the previous episode about my, my little to do list, my prompts and purpose of seeing like I love the idea of adding that in is like, okay, but
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this, is this scene?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: What kind of fun is this scene promising?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then using that as a kind of framing tool to pull you in to suck you into the scene a little bit faster.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then probably lie to them if we tell them it's comfort.
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the interest of meta, in the interest of meta taxonomy, I think your eight types of fun are almost all type one fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, except maybe a challenge will sometimes fall into the type 2 game narrative can be tab 2 challenge can be tab 2 fantasy even if you're playing Resident Evil 4 you know what I mean like you know I think I think type 1 type 2 is a really useful concept that I use constantly and again type 1 fun it it's fun what you do it it's fun when you think about it later
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, type 2 fun, which comes up a lot in backpacking and I gig in other outdoor sports is uh, it was not fun while I was doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was cold and wet and miserable, but it's still it's fun when I think back on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm glad that I did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, one of the things like the comfort one type of fun is partly what they used to describe when people are grinding in a game when you're repeating something over again in order to get the item and it is like the hiking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like in some ways you're doing it it's not fun at the time, but actually the ritual of doing it over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: becomes a weird kind of comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a thing you know you have to do like if you could like fast forward through all the hiking and just be at the spot, maybe you would do it, but you might feel like I missed something because in some ways the like struggling to get there is what makes the reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that contrast between like, oh the slog and oh my gosh, like I got the item or I got to the place I wanted to get covered.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, when you're hiking, there's a whole bunch of those micro moments on the way to the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, this is pretty, that's pretty, so a whole bunch of smaller words on the way there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you were having to do that same slog through like the same length and the same ups and downs, through a featureless concrete obstacle course, none of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would not be fun to look back on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is why people talk about a road walk or desert hiking and some of the toughest hiking because it's very repetitive with very little distinction from moment to moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so I think one of the things for the transition of it all is that like you can maybe use these feelings or these things to figure out how to bridge the gap so you can be like I'm going to bridge the gap with sensation with like a sensory detail that will focus I'm going to bridge the gap with discovery oh my gosh something new is here and then you can change everything else the people divide the et cetera, but something about that type of fun or that type of emotion that's happening from the reader is actually carrying you across.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was re-reading the final books of Schlachmer-Snery in preparation for putting them into print and realized it just now from the memory of having re-read it that I used the match cuts, the common tone modulations.
[SPEAKER_03]: much more commonly in Act 3, when I am making scene changes while everything is more intense, because the way the match cuts worked there, it was a pacing tool.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I hadn't thought about that until right now, but the kind of transition you use can be a throttle for accelerating the pace or for pulling back on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is exactly the way I used the difference between a through scene and a scene break.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the thing about it, so if you think about if you've ever gone to see a musical or a stage show,
[SPEAKER_01]: Hamilton does this a number of times where they don't jump black out as they move from one scene to another.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dancers and the actors are still on stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are the ones moving the scenery.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still in action that is happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you keep this sense of forward movement even though it actually takes longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't provide you with an exit point.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's one of those things that you can use when you do a through scene like we traveled
[SPEAKER_01]: It is both slower and also keeps you more engaged than if you do a scene breaking comeback.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one thing I think about too along those lines and connecting back to this idea of eight types of fun is you need that difference from beat to beat for your reader to also process what just happened, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Not to continue too much on my resotto heading, but when one byte is exactly the same as the byte before, at some point that repetition becomes hard to bear and it's hard to process what makes each individual byte exciting and wonderful, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you go from an action scene directly into another action scene, into another action scene, and I see people trying to do this is like, oh, I'm writing an action book.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a thriller.
[SPEAKER_02]: It needs to be fight fight fight fight.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you do that, I can't enjoy any of the fights because I need that moment, that sort of transition moment of the actors' runs on stage moving things around.
[SPEAKER_02]: It gives me a breather.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to process the emotional thing I just experienced.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the principle we talked about at the very beginning of the previous episode.
[SPEAKER_03]: the conflation of the word scene in scene sequel format, where sometimes we are transitioning between action and action, and sometimes we're transitioning between action, and hey, let's take a breath and process the action that's in place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is also the thing for me, like when we were talking in the last episode about flashbacks, and if those were to,
[SPEAKER_01]: or if those were different scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for me, the reason that there are scene which is because you're using these through scenes to transition these small, very small micro transitions to move in and out of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is, it, it's, it's, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same idea as when you are, I'm in this place and then we travel and then we're in this other place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are two different scenes, but we stitched them together with this through scene text.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I was actually thinking about like, because I love like scenes where there's a slight memory, or we move a little bit in time, but we're still in the same scene.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think like what's interesting is thinking about how the difference, what the difference is in the transition technique between the two of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like it's like same technique softer hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you like land like,
[SPEAKER_00]: If every single memory overwhelms the scene that it's in, then it feels more like a flashback, because it's like that memory's like punching you in the face, whereas as often happens in our own lives, if you're remembering something while still doing another action, that memory is a lot less like, it didn't stop you from doing what you're currently doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just something you're noting, often because it informs what you are doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and I think the way I was actually thinking about that going from one action scene to the next to the next to random lay transition in the middle of my thought, which is that one of the things I love about fight scenes is what you learn about the fighter from the way that they fight and what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: and having a second to process, I'm not as good a fighter as I thought I was, oh no, the next fight is beginning, is makes that next fight more resonant than if it's just like, and I'm gonna think about that, I'm just going and going and going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that a lot of times when we use memory, it's to add that additional context without having to have you don't have to show the whole my last fight showed me I was quite bad at this you actually just do that with a small memory of being hit or a flinch that happens within the character and there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thinking oh my gosh like this is just gonna be like another this is gonna be like last time This is adding extra depth and extra context to the current scene by having that small transition that brings the rest of the world of the story into the scene that you're in if our listeners are anything like me
[SPEAKER_03]: This episode contains a whole bunch of new and exciting thoughts about how to stitch scenes together.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just want to present all of you, fair listeners with the strategy that I'm giving myself, which is, I'm going to apply these cool new transition between scene techniques.
[SPEAKER_03]: as edit pass techniques.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to let myself write to the scenes first and then I'm going to go back and look at the order of them and then I am going once I know they're in the right order, then I'm going to worry about the pros that stitches the scenes together.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have, which I will put in the liner notes on the website, I have examples of what it looks like when you do the same scene with a through scene versus a break, because it is an edit past thing that you can do later.
[SPEAKER_00]: actually to build on that I am a big fan of using transitions which I often struggle with because they're hard and you know that's why we're doing a whole episode about it by making myself fun bracket notes as I'm writing like I'll be like and then she goes to the bar to confirm that woman in a much more interesting way than I've got right now and I'll put it within brackets so that I can find it and it doesn't end up in the final version of the story but what I love
[SPEAKER_00]: almost have transit like give myself a little note of fun and a little giggle that makes the transitions feel like something fun that I get to do as opposed to something annoying that I have to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do this too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually picked this up from Ceil Polk that they will write in brackets at the beginning of a scene or the end of a scene sometimes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing closing line goes here.
[SPEAKER_01]: that summarizes everything that's happened and sends us into, makes us excited to go into the next thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, so just leaving a play soldier for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, this is what I want to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just don't know how it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brackets are all self-negging.
[SPEAKER_03]: My brackets are tell better joke here.
[SPEAKER_03]: This was cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: Write it again.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, positive self-talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and all this kind of points too, I mean, there's a thing that they say in film and TV, which is, and this is especially a true documentary work, which is you find the movie in the edit.
[SPEAKER_02]: The shooting process and the script process is kind of your intentions, but what actually emerges at the end is what happens in the editing process, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that'll be
[SPEAKER_02]: books are that extreme in that way, but I think everybody's really spot on here in terms of as you're writing your first draft, as you're drafting, as a process, don't worry too much about these transitions.
[SPEAKER_02]: These transitions can be layered in layer.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're somebody who doesn't as you go through fantastic, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not telling you not to do that, but if you're stressed out by hearing all of this being like, I'm barely able to like write the scene that I'm in, I don't want to think about how do I get to the next scene yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can do that later.
[SPEAKER_02]: And on that note, I have a little bit of homework for you, which is to kind of do the thing that Mary Robinette was talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to take two scenes from your current work in progress and think about different ways to transition them and then try them, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I want you to transition from scene to scene as a through scene as a break and as an interruption.
[SPEAKER_02]: try all three of these and deliberately go through re-read them, make some notes about what worked better, what didn't work as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why was that happening?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why does that work for this scene and not for this other scene?
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's your homework for now, try some different transitions and see how it goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been writing excuses, you're out of excuses, now go right.
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[SPEAKER_01]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts and Howard Taylor.
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