: Learning to write transitions and segues I'm a writer but unfortunately I don't read nearly enough, I'm looking for some suggestions for novels that feature well made or unique segues and transitions
I'm a writer but unfortunately I don't read nearly enough, I'm looking for some suggestions for novels that feature well made or unique segues and transitions between scenes. My closest comparison is with certain movies such as Fight Club (1999) or Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) which fully utilize the medium of film to a create very smooth transition from one scene to another.
Obviously you can do things in film you can't do in writing, and vice versa, and I'd like to see some prime examples of the same thing in writing so I can learn how it's done. Any recommendations would be great.
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As writers we often make transitions from one scene to the next much more difficult than they should be. The reader's mind follows changes much more fluidly than we think they do. I learned this from the great book Make Your Words Work (Gary Provost) - amazon link
There is an entire section on Transitions in there and he explains how simple they can be since often you simply end the scene and then in the next scene explain exactly what has happened.
Here's a simple example I'm making up right now:
... Doug jammed his foot into the accelerator and the car's engine
roared and the tires screamed as he slid around the corner. "They'll
never take me alive," he muttered under his breath. Doug saw a lady
up ahead crossing the street and his reflexes forced him to swerve.
The car slid wildly and crashed into a telephone pole. Doug's head
smashed into the steering wheel of the '57 Pontiac -- no airbag -- and
he felt cold as the darkness closed in. "Can't stop..." he muttered
and passed out.
Doug blinked and looked up. He saw a policeman yelling at him but
still couldn't make out the words. "...for a long time, you idiot,"
the cop said. Doug tried to reach up to his aching head but his hands
wouldn't move. A knife of pain stabbed through his skull and
everything went dark.
"You've had a terrible spine injury." Doug could hear a voice
speaking but he couldn't tell if he were awake or dreaming. "Can you
hear me?" Doug forced his eyes open and tried to see who was talking.
"Urghh...," Doug said. "Don't try to talk. You're in a lot of
trouble."
I have also written a book with numerous examples from published works. It's a free download from amazon right now (07/10/2015) for 24 hours, so go and get it:
Fiction Writing Gems - amazon link
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