In the popular Warner Bros. cartoon "Looney Tunes" featuring the Road Runner, there's the inevitable scene where one character goes over a cliff. It's almost always Wile E. Coyote. Poor guy. I'll bet there are days when he wishes the script writers would dodge sideways from the expected and let the bird, the Ajax delivery guy or… anyone but him go over that cliff. But that might deflate our expectation and not transition well, unless of course the transition was done with care. Hmmm… while I'm thinking up an example of how that could be done, let's examine transitions and why they're so important.

How Not To Be

Nobody likes listening to a windbag. You know the type; she monopolizes every conversation and drones on, utterly fascinated with her own words. It takes her twenty minutes to get to the crux of her story and she does it in such a roundabout way that you're hopelessly confused by the time she wraps it up. When she looks to you for comment your mouth pops open and shut like a mystified goldfish and you float away as fast as politely possible. Her story telling technique isn't anything you want to imitate.

So What Is It?

Transition means to move from one form to another as when you've gone from eight to ten centimeters and your doctor yells, "Okay, push!" You're about to move from the pregnant form to the new mother form in a few moments' time. This can be done smoothly or with a lot of thrashing about, similar to what you might experience while birthing your latest masterpiece. Let me tell you, smooth is better. This is what your windbag friend does NOT understand about telling a story. The seamless transition from one scene or action to another is a skill worth developing. The end result is a baby everyone is anxious to see.

Words That Propel

Besides the word "push" there are dozens of other words and phrases that can help with a smooth transition. As you attempt to advance your story and skip over time, space, and action, you need a linking word, sentence or paragraph that joins two ideas. This can be accomplished with an action, an object, a name, appearance, or even the weather:

Amanda stretched a lazy cat stretch and threw her legs over the side of the bed. Her head still hummed with the wonder of her first date with Brandon. And he'd asked her to play tennis today too! She twirled a dainty pirouette as her nightgown skimmed her ankles and then she heard it… rain.

Two words define the transitions here. "Then" acts as a warning word-- something's about to happen-- and "rain" tells us what. This transition phrase allows the plot to thicken, twist, and move on. No doubt Amanda anticipated a sunny day on the courts with Brandon and so were you, but in that one phrase we've moved the story along and set ourselves up for a new development. How would they spend the day now? Would Brandon phone and cancel the tennis date? Will her evil twin Agatha intercept Brandon's call and suggest a tryst with Amanda unaware? Wherever you take your stories, smooth transitions allow your readers to glide rather than bump through your tale.

Be Logical

Logical is something my husband tells me I'm not. It makes me furious, but I've had editors tell me the same thing so maybe he's got a point. Thus I've come to understand that the name of the game is A comes first, then B, then C… in that order! This doesn't mean however that a bit of foreshadowing or tingling anticipation can't be used as a transition tool. Consider the following from one of my own favorite classics, The Wind in the Willows:

"…and it was not until afternoon that they came out on the high road, their first high road; and there, disaster, fleet and unforeseen, sprang out on them…"

This passage precedes Toad's first mesmerizing encounter with a motorcar and the author, Kenneth Grahame, hints at the coming event but in the next paragraph backtracks to reveal it. We're filled with anticipation because our curiosity is piqued. Brilliant.

Examine Your Work

How many of your own stories follow a logical pattern from beginning, through the middle, and on to the end? Examine one of your favorites paragraph by paragraph and ask yourself, "How can I make it seem all right for Wile E. NOT to go over the cliff this time?" Then do it. No wait-- I'll go first.

Scene I – Ajax delivery guy brings a pink box for Wiley. Out pops a ballerina doll that begins to dance.

Scene II – The  Roadrunner sees Wiley and the doll dancing and joins them. RR pirouettes too close to the edge of the cliff and this time He goes over. Wiley picks the ballerina up and hugs her.

Susan is a freelance writer and children's playwright. She's had more than a hundred stories and articles published and is the author of five children's plays. Her e-mail address is sparrowgirl2001@yahoo.com.

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