posted
OK, does anyone, ANYONE, ANYONE out there as a reader feel bothered if a story glazes over traveling so you don't have to chew through the gristle in order to get to juicy stuff again?
Allow me to clarify, say you have a character who is at his house and realizes he has to be at the store for an epic showdown/duel he's participating in, over a gum-flavor disagreement naturally, and he's at his house at the moment, and the next important place for him to be is at the store, and there is nothing that develops the plot in transit, so isn't it okay to just glaze over it? "...he thought about it all the way to the store. Upon arrival he noticed the large sign looming above him..." Or do people feel withdrawn too much from the story you get jumped forward suddenly, without some kind of smooth transition?
This could be an opportunity to open up another window to the world and scenery around the character. It's also an opportunity to bore the reader who's more interested in the imminent fight coming up.
I ask because I have been blasting through my "travel" sequences, and I'm wondering if it's because I'm lazy, and could be better with more description involved.
posted
I have a problem when stories don't skip the excruciating details that don't further the plot.
Please, skip the travel if it's not important.
Now, it's best if the transition is smooth. There are a number of ways to do this. You can show a character leaving the house and then ***scene or chapter break**** he's at the store.
You can throw a quick sentence at the car trip as you suggested above, although this can feel clunky if there is a lot of action at the house and a lot of action at the store all back to back. This can be a very natural place to break the story. If, on the other hand, he spent very little time at home -- just long enough to do some important plot thing, then the one sentence transition is probably fine.
However, there is the concept of pacing to remember. You might need a bit of a breather between the two scenes. Or if the last scene was tense, you might want a breather in there.
posted
In the case you mentioned, Zero, yes, I would be bothered by it, because it seems the wanna-be duelist is going to anticipate the showdown, and I want to be there for those thoughts. While I don't think we need to go into the whole nitty gritty break down every step of the way, but I'd want a slightly longer transition, say, of him walking down the street, first feeling confident, maybe, and then thinking crap, who am I kidding? That kid's the biggest bully on the block, to, Oh man, what a stupid thing to get into an argument about! Which would then set us up for a very different fight than if he thought, okay, I'm going to pound him, and walks down to the store to do just that, with no transition. And sometimes I feel cheated because I suspect the author (or editor) truncated the movement because he/ she thought it was mundane. Well, it might be mundane to walk, but the thoughts might not be.
So the short answer is: it depends. And pacing is a huge issue, too.
posted
I think transitions are important, but more about time taken than distance travelled. But having said that it takes time to travel a distance, unless your characters can teleport.
If it takes a month to go to the store (don't ask me why) as a reader I would assume the character would have done something interesting. If the store is next door then the character is unlikely to do anything interesting and you would find yourself describing concrete pavements. If you have a very short transition I would assume the store was very close, longer the transition further away I would assume the store was.
posted
I think this question is best answered in revisions. To me, it's a pacing issue, one that isn't always apparent while in the throes of writing. Sometimes, because the story has been moving at a fast pace, you need to slow it down. Some description of a travel sequence can accomplish that. Sometimes, a story is stagnating with overlong descriptive detail. Skipping (compressed narrative is one term I've heard used for this) over the details and doing a summary/highlight can help.
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posted
I'm inclined to arrange scenes like, say, Scene One end with somebody saying "I'm going to see so-and-so"---then a sharp scene divide, usually marked off in the manuscript with a line space, a "#" and another line space---then start Scene Two with Somebody on So-and-So's doorstep at the very least.
I don't think the details of transporting Somebody to So-and-So absolutely have to be included---unless they add something to the story. At the writer's discretion, keeping in consideration what the reader will put up with.
I subscribe to the belief that any given scene of exposition needs to actually expose something important to the story and the world it is set in. And often, if not most of the time, I find long transitions that over-describe to be boring, long-winded, and slow. So I tend to stick to the story at hand, almost like jump-cuts in a film. But, it did occur to me that I might be simply justifying my own laziness.
posted
Sometimes I need to let something like this live itself out in writing before I have a good answer. I just wrote such a scene...the cops arrive at a woman's apartment...a standoff...an arrest...then they go to the police station...then more stuff.
Nothing really happens in the police car between the apartment and the police station. It doesn't further the plot to have it there. Nevertheless, as I tried to leap over it, the whole thing felt wrong to me. The thing is, there was stuff going on there, even if it wasn't action. The woman under arrest (my POV character) was feeling all kinds of things and dreaming up all kinds of wild scenarios about what might await her on the other side of that trip.
I didn't dwell on it (I think) but in the end, I did write the part in transit and I'm glad I did. I will therefore have to change my vote.
Obviously, this will depend upon exactly what is going on as to whether and how much you need to show of the trip, but especially if the character is anticipating something on the other side of the journey, there is likely something you need to show of their thoughts/feelings.
posted
One of my earliest writing memories was a historical short story I was assigned to write in high school and I cut to a different scene and the teacher noted that that sort of thing works on film but not in writing.
I think what he meant was I hadn't allowed it to work.
When you cut scenes on film, the whole scene cuts. When you cut scenes writing, the reader has to be given enough to go with you.
Alternately, one could just become a screenwriter.
posted
Tricia, I agree. I think you can cut to a scene, easily. It just might not work.
Pace has been mentioned a couple times, and I really think it is a key issue. I've been thinking about this more, and I wanted to expand on my first statement.
I think pace is often a matter of detail (including internal thoughts.)
Christine's example highlighted this for me. From what was said, I assume the arrest had tension. The station probably had some tension, too. Maybe not. But it sounds as if Christine sensed a need for the story to slow down between the scenes. To me, that's pace.
If scenes shoot by rapidly, the story loses something. Some scenes need to slow down.
In OSC's Magic Street, I noticed the pace. It began with a rapid beat, but then it slowed down. Things progressed at an easy pace. Then, towards the end, things picked up. The scenes seemed to come quicker. Then after the climactic scene, it slowed down. Pace made the story better than it might have been, in my opinion.
So going back to Zero's original question:
quote:so isn't it okay to just glaze over it?
Ultimately, it's Zero's decision. From what Zero said, the character was at his house and realized he needed to be at the store for a showdown. If the scene at the house was slow, perhaps packed with detail and internal thoughts, then it's probably time to skip to a tense scene. Quick transition. Describing the transition in detail might bore the reader, otherwise. The reader might think, "Come on, Zero. Get on with it." (I don't know his WiP, so I can't say which would be best.)
So, I think the "wrongest" thing to say in this thread is Yes or No to detailed transitions as a whole. For Christine it worked. For Tricia it didn't (and it may have been for a number of reasons.) For another author, maybe even for Zero, who knows?
It's an artful decision the author must make in each case. But I think pace is a key issue.
posted
That makes a lot of sense. The tricky thing about Pace is, how do you check yourself to see whether your pace doesn't match your story? I find if I'm constantly re-reading what I've freshly written, I tear it to pieces. I suppose I can go re-work the pace after I've finished it, and let it sit for a while, but it'd be nice to know what techniques you use to keep tabs on your pace, so to speak.
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