The Story is in the Transitions

I wrote a comment on Michelle Styles's blog a little while ago that, after I thought about it, seemed to beg for a blog piece of its own.

Michelle was talking about writing a partial for her editor and mentioned synyopses and trying to work smarter and understand what works and what doesn't work. It all makes a lot of sense.

We all want to work smarter. I don't necessarily love the process of tearing apart the middle of Demetrios's book and putting it back together again just to say I did. I want it to work, yes, but I would much prefer that it worked the first time!

I thought it did.

And in fact, I think I could make a case that it did. But I think it's stronger this way. And I didn't really know it until I got past the middle and had to look back on it. Logically it did work "the old way."

But the characters are stronger now. And it's getting to be, I hope, a better book. But as I write, what I'm discovering is that the movement from one point to another is only partially accomplished by what happens in a given scene.

The real keys are the transitions -- they are the bridges from one scene to the next, from one point of view to another, from one emotional place to the one that grows out of it.

Getting the right lead-in to a scene is crucial.

Yes, it should come out of the scene before it -- even if it's a contrast or a complete departure and in someone else's point of view. Still, it has to carry the story to the next place and it has to put the characters and the reader in the right frame of mind when they get there.

Stopping a day's writing at the end of a scene may seem like a good idea. There's a sense of closure, a sense of 'now I can go to sleep because these people are sorted out.' And that's fine for the day, but it's dire for the day after.

There's no momentum for starting up again. Much better to leave a scene in mid-flight, as it were. Much easier to jump back in and take up where you left off. And then when you finish that scene, at least get going on the next one -- even if only with a line or two -- so that you have the springboard already there before you quit. It's lots easier to get going the following day.

Transitions, for me, are the places where I end up reconnoitering about how the characters are feeling, how they perceive the actions they are about to take or that they observe others taking.

Getting off on the right foot with a character's understanding of things and finding the right tone to express his frame of mind is so important in dealing with the scene. It's the gut-level place where all scenes have to come from.

If I'm just recounting what happens without being inside the character's head understanding why it's happening, the scene is flat, whether it's a car chase or a a duel or two people talking about what to have for dinner.

The right lead-in and seeing the scene from the point of view of the character -- his or her investment in the scene -- is what really makes it work. Without that, it's just me pushing pieces around on a chess board with no inner reason (no why!) in mind. It doesn't work.

This is probably the long way of saying why I find synopses less than helpful.

They tell me the 'what' but I never quite get to the internal 'why' until I am actually writing the story. And that only comes when I know the people and how they grow and change.

That change, that growth, is the story. Get it wrong or even simply different and you have a whole different tale.