As novelists and short story writers, we probably don't think about scene transitions too much. Don't get me wrong, we may take a long time seeking out the perfect hook or the most-intriguing opening, and we may write and rewrite the end of the scene to get it just right. But when it comes to moving from one scene to another . . . it's probably something we feel more rather than really think about.
And that's okay, and you can be totally successful that way.
But last year I learned about two scene transition techniques that have stuck with me. Unsurprisingly, they come from film, a medium where scene transitions are more obvious and more touchy.
Lately I've been more and more mindful of them in my writing and have found they can be quite helpful when trying to get the flow between passages just right.
They come from the book Story by Robert McKee.
In it, McKee explains that when it comes to successful scene transitions, you really have two options:
