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Tips For Using Effective Transitions
By Bonnie Eaton
When I first started writing, I searched for information dealing specifically with transitions, those short,
direct statements that help a writer move a story forward smoothly within a scene and from scene to scene. There are
four types of transitions every writer should know; they indicate changes in time, location, emotion, and mood. It
took several years and a lot of research before I understood the proper use of transitions. Hopefully, the information
below will shorten your own struggle by making transitions easier to understand and use.
Transitions in Time
Transitions showing a time shift can cover any length of time such as:
- Twenty years later...
- By the time November arrived...
- The following week...
- Several hours later...
- By 3:00 P.M...
- Four beers later...
Transitions in Location
A change in location signals a new scene. After the opening sentence, the reader needs to know when it is happening
and who is in the new scene. Check book jackets for good examples of stories that move to different locations, such
as Mary Higgens Clark's A Stranger is Watching. Her locations change from Connecticut, to New York's Grand Central
Station, and finally to a prison. The examples below are from my own work.
- It had been three days now since the ice storm swept into Kansas...
- When she arrived at Kansas City's airport...
- In Little Rock, Arkansas...
Transitions in Emotion
A transition is needed to alert the reader to a shift in a character's emotion as shown by the following example.
- Sarah sighed in disgust as Harry tipped the bottle again. The more he drank, the angrier
she
became.
Transitions in Mood
Similarly, transitions are needed when changing the mood of the story. Mood changes can be either personal or
atmospheric.
- When Mattie left the café four hours later, the sky had darkened and a low
rumble sounded on the horizon.
Make your writing easier by understanding how to bridge scenes with the right transition, know where they are needed
and which kind will work best to move the story forward into the next scene.
Try the following exercise:
Pick any novel and scan the page. Try identifying each transition type. Before you know it, you'll have a good idea on
the proper usage of each type and you'll wonder why you thought using transitions were so hard in the first place.
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