: Re: Transitional sections As I mentioned in my other recent question, my novel in progress has three main locations. I feel those three settings are strong, fully imagined places, with interesting

@Bethany377

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I suppose it depends entirely upon what you're hoping to acheive. If the liminal location isn't there for any other reason to show geographical distance, then you probably don't spend any time focusing on the traveling there. I think it was "The Wise Mans Fears" that basically implied an entire pirate adventure and ship wreck for the main character in a paragraph. The paragraph before he gets on a boat. The paragraph after he gets off the boat. Apparently nothing too important happened in any of that because we only have a brief "btw, this" and then we move on.

All stories should have a beginning middle & end. What is the story for these locations? If there isn't one, its not important. For your larger story you might want to think about what sorts of problems you're actually dealing with. It sounds to me like you're writing a work similar to one I abandoned (not because it couldn't be done or wasn't interesting) but because it wasn't a coherent story that I could describe to someone else.

[not to be answered here] What is your book about? In a sentance? In a paragraph? As a pitch? Do these locations matter to that? Do the individual sections of your story help build towards that aboutedness?

Consider MICE:

Milieu - The story begins by entering a place/ends by leaving the
place
Idea - The story centers around the information you intend to
explore before the end of the book
Character - The story is about who
the character is, who they want to be, who they must become.
Event -
The story is about what happens around an event

These are framing devices. You can use many of these multiple times in a story. Each scene is usually one of these. But books themselves tend to work better when they have a primary objective. If you've ever coded, then when you open a paren its because you're opening one of these types of stories, when you close a paren you're closing this type of story. It can be confusing if you open/close separately or if your entire story isn't bounded by one type of frame. When you resolve these sections close together they tend to ramp up the emotional impact and the final close is what can give readers a feeling that they've consumed a whole work and reached a satisfactory ending.

The Hobbit is a Milieu story: Leave the shire - Return to the shire. It has events/characters/ideas; but the primary story is one of overcoming the difficulties of a travel. Having 3+ locations that matter means that Mileu is a framing device for your story. But is it the point? Idea probably isn't very important to the story. (Also, The Martian, which is also an event story, but primarily Milieu)

Game of Thrones: Arguably this is a bunch of character stories in a largely meta-character story. Its about the character of the people of Westeros. There are events. There are places (there's definately a frame of leaving/returning to the north); but the story is all in who these people are and what they're going to become. Lots of stuff, but every device always points back to a kind of character sketch, right down to the way the individual chapters take on different view points. We don't spend a lot of time traveling, though this does happen; but we do spend a lot of time thinking about who these people are, what they should, what they will become and what that will do to everyone else. Ideas actually seem to fall back here. Not super important.

The Prestige is an idea story. It's exploring sacrifice, dedication, duplication, and what is real/imagined? Character is important, but it's not the story. Mileu is the frame for the chapters around Tesla, but it's not the story. Who is in the box? That's the story. Everything else supports that thing.

Deep Impact (picking a movie since these tend to exemplify the frame) is an event story. Everything the ideas, characters and places all revolve around the event. A meteor is going to hit earth, everyone must cope and adapt to this thing no matter where they are. Character and Idea are 2nd tier framing devices and location (since we're not escaping earth/coming back) is a relatively minor affair; though it is the final frame for the final act and it is closed (at the same time we're closing some serious character/idea frames) before we deal with resolving the event.

The point of all of this was that if you're not writing a Milieu story, it is much more acceptable to have hard cuts and simply re-introduce your characters as worn out or slightly changed from their travels. You can explore that travel if it is important only in as much as it impacts the actual things you want to write about. But even in a Milieu story, you might gloss over the details that aren't important.

What do these locations/moments in these locations do? Represent? You can imply time and space with a few sentances. Harry Potter is excellent at this, maybe study it. Tons of locations. Very solid time-frame. Every transition is hard wired into the readership's nostalgia calendar; super effective in a small space and the entire scenery is painted, but the how we transition from one place to another gets very little attention. It doesn't need it. It's not important what happens to the kids between the moments where they learn/grow and are challenged.

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