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Novel transition and structure?

Novel scene transition?
Conversation transition among the characters?

I love writing although I feel that i am not very good at these types of transitions.
As well as creating "Meaningful scenes" in novels.
 

Devora

Sage
Well one method is to find passages in novels that you like that you feel make a good example for these transitions you speak of and try to emulate that. Use that as a form of practice.
 
There's a video on Youtube called 'The key to writing freakishly good dialogue' that I can recommend. It also covers how to write smooth dialogue transitions.
 
I feel like dialogue transitions have a potential to be self-explanatory when you quickly establish characters' manner of speech, accent, motivation etc. This will allow you to essentially drop almost all "John said, Eliza said" and make your dialogue more dynamic for the reader.

In terms of scene transitions, I try to think of my writing as of a play. Imagine yourself in a theater where you see a scene with two characters just talking in a tavern about conforting their landlord about their missing payment. After they're done with that conversation, the curtain closes, the setting is changed and when you see actors again, they're in the castle, doing exacty what they've agreed on. To my mind, that's a smooth transition. If they appeared in a middle of a swamp surrounded by monsters? Then you'd have a bit harder time as you'd need to explain how that happened which in turn could unnecessarily slow the scene down.

And what do you mean by "meaningful scenes"? Do you mean showcasing some deeper emotions of your characters?
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Novel scene transition?
Conversation transition among the characters?

I love writing although I feel that i am not very good at these types of transitions.
As well as creating "Meaningful scenes" in novels.

You got several questions at once here, and so this thread will be hard to address. Asking about meaning and ways to transition are two different topics.

Meaningful comes from a long and/or effective process of the reader having a type of relationship with the characters, an understanding of their stakes, and the importance of the scene. Meaningful almost creates itself if you get the other elements of the art of story telling right, and then add things that have impact, and make the point. To dwell on it first is to put the cart before the horse.

Stories are a collection of scenes. Scenes are about something. Transitions should happen when the scene ends and a new scene begins. So...if the scene you are writing has achieved its goal and done whatever it was you wanted, time to close and move to the next.

In things like this, I would suggest going back to the basics. As your English teacher would teach you, Topic sentence, three supporting ideas, and close. This is the building block of a paragraph, but its also a good template for it all. A scene should have a purpose (topic), things that happen that support the topic, and then a close. Not in formulaic paragraphs of course (we are on the creative writing side), but we aren't just writing rambling things and hoping they have glue.

Dialog ought to flow naturally from who the characters are, and say things that bring in their perspective and informational view. Characters can do a lot to hook the reader in, cause we are reading as much to know them as we are to know what is happening. So...its almost like a reader hack to get it in through the characters. But...if you are having trouble writing dialog that sounds natural, and gets the story moving, I would suggest erring in favor of keeping the characters in character and letting the info leak out slower...maybe even in other scenes.

There are two things one must master to get this writing thing going. The Craft and the Art. The Craft, of course, is all the stuff like spelling, grammar, structure and all that. The Art is some feel where you are telling things in a compelling way. You have to get the craft right before you can bring out the art in a way that people will be attracted to. Transitions and segues are born out of both. But you, the author, have to have the sense of when they are needed, and develop a feel for how to get them in in the tone the story needs.

For all new writers struggling to get to that next level, and finding difficulty, I give the same suggestion. Find people seeking feedback on their writing and review the crap out of their stuff. A site like MS has some of that. A site like Scribophile is almost entirely that. So...where is your energy best spent?
 

Mad Swede

Auror
Novel scene transition?
Conversation transition among the characters?

I love writing although I feel that i am not very good at these types of transitions.
As well as creating "Meaningful scenes" in novels.
To start with your last question. All scenes you write for a story should be meaningful to the story, otherwise they shouldn't be there. It doesn't matter if it's a short story or a novel, a scene must add to and develop the story and/or character arc(s) in some way. If you're writing a novel then you can structure things so that the significance of a scene doesn't become clear to the reader until later. This isn't something you can do in a short story where, as a general rule, the scenes must directly move the story forwards.

Transitions between scenes are a necessity, otherwise all you've got is a series of disjointed events. In that sense transtions link scenes into a coherent story which leads somewhere. Transitions can be done in several ways, and dialogue can be a good way of setting up a transition. A few examples. You can use dialogue to imply a series of actions which, although they are never described, then lead on to a new scene. Or you can use dialogue to start a scene where something happens as a direct result of what is said. Dialogue can also be used to explain things which have happened in previous scenes, as seen in many detective novels. Another form of transition is actions and events, where something happens to start a scene or to round off a scene. That last one is quite often used as a way of leaving a chapter on a cliffhanger, which in itself sets up one or more following scenes.

To get a feel for scenes and how how to move between them you need to read a lot and you need to read widely. Only then do you get a feel for how different authors handle these things and only then can you develop your own ways of doing this.
 
I would personally not make too big a deal out of them. As long as a reader more or less knows where and when they are they don't care all that much. the only transitions in A Game of Thrones were that you would see which character's POV you were getting. The first paragraphs might establish the when and where, but mainly from context. There's nothing wrong with doing it like that.

The main thing you want to keep in mind is probably "In late, out early." Don't start a scene too early. You don't want to show your character getting up and having breakfast for 3 pages before you get to the point of the chapter, and you don't want to keep describing how they had dinner and went to bed if that adds nothing to the scene. Just show the point of the scene and move on.

Lastly, there are generally 2 types of scene structures. Either a scene is a sort of mini story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or you start on a high point of action, resolve that action, and start the next high point, and then leave on a cliffhanger.

Thrillers tend to do the last thing, end the story on a cliffhanger. This tends to drag readers through a story, because chapters are logical stopping points, and a cliffhanger combats that. It's also exhausting reading and it can feel a bit forced sometimes. The Davinci Code did this for instance. A chapter would always end with someone knocking on the door, or something exploding, or some mystery being found. The downside was that some of those surprises were fake. The guy knocking on the door would just be the pizza delivery guy or something mundane like that.

Many fantasy stories, which tend to be longer, use the first type. Characters start something, and you get the whole journey, until that conflict is resolved.

Of course, you can, and most stories do, mix up both kinds.
 
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