How do you incorporate the different types of cuts in your work?

Exactly What It Says on the Tin. I'd like to know how everyone else uses the different types of cuts mentioned here while writing their work.

If I knew how I know everything I know, I'd only be able to know half as much because my brain would be clogged up with where I know it from

What do you mean by 'cut'?

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Say for example you are writing a scene with your hero at some location and you feel like doing an Answer Cut (With the answer being nowhere near the hero, so simply having the hero look at it won't work). How would you do the transition in your writing without making it seem too forced. (Showing me an example from your work would be nice). Same way, I'd like to know how you manage with the other types of scene cuts (the index of which i linked to in the previous post) in your work.

edited 14th Sep '11 6:46:55 AM by Elfhunter

If I knew how I know everything I know, I'd only be able to know half as much because my brain would be clogged up with where I know it from

Most people here write short stories and novels, and cuts are more associated with visual media, like movies and comics.

For instance, imagine the famous Age Cut in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade— it's fantastic on film, but in writing, it would be something clunky, like:

Doesn't work. Most cuts are like that.

edited 14th Sep '11 7:27:20 AM by Ronka87

Thanks for the all fish!

The problem with writing cuts is everyone creates a different image mentally from what the author sees when writing, but I do attempt cuts in my writing. Example:

See? In some of the books I've read, most people cut to another scene using asterisks. Now, when doing a smash cut, which I what I'm assuming you're referring to, I think dialogue works best than narrative text because the cut becomes clunky if you have to read so much. Granted, it's risky, period, if not executed correctly because the reader might have to go back and read, thinking "wait, what just happened?"

edited 14th Sep '11 10:01:28 AM by PancakeMckennz

(屮≖益≖)屮 彡 ┻━┻ F*ck yo' table; Go read my book! —> http://goo.gl/mtXkm

Most cuts are done in between chapters/separated sections of text. You don't see them as often, but they're there.

edited 14th Sep '11 10:06:42 AM by KSPAM

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Cuts are definitely in book-format works. They're more cleverly hidden, but they exist. For instance, in the Indiana Jones example above, you might end the flashback part with "and he awoke from his reverie", ect. It's a little cheap, but it's doable.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Plus, not everyone here only does literature. The only work I've ever finished was comics-based, for instance, and it definitely used cuts.

edited 14th Sep '11 11:45:40 AM by nrjxll

I have a tendency to cut back and forth between the main story and some form of commentator. (In one experiment, which I haven't finished, the story-within-a-story was written by both the story's protagonists, and it cut to their arguments every time one of them took the story-within-a-story in a new direction.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Sorry i was late to respond. Exams cutting into "me time" .

@nrkxll: Well, I was actually aiming for advice on how to write in cuts in media where there are no visuals to "show, don't tell."

In my case, each chapter is just a collection of scenes (sort of like an anime) without scene cuts appearing between POV changes or to ignore mundane transportation details. I only used to put a line between two scenes, but when i posted some paragraphs here, i was told the transition wasn't smooth. So I was looking for help in that regard. And it'd be good if i could get help with the other types of cuts as well, should i ever need to use them later.

If I knew how I know everything I know, I'd only be able to know half as much because my brain would be clogged up with where I know it from

Every single cut I do is a POV Switch — it's my default setting, it seems. Always there unless someone passes out and needs to wake the hell up.

Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit Deviantart.

If we're talking about segment breaks as cuts, then I guess literature does use them (although I still think of cuts as a visual medium thing; segment breaks are transitions, not necessarily cuts). Asterisks and extra space designate a "fast" transition, while chapter breaks are a "slow" transition. What I mean by that is that asterisks and spaces go immediately to the next scene, but a chapter break delays the transition a bit. Like a cut to black before a commercial break, it adds a little "oomf" to the scene before it.

Another way to transition in writing is using a different style, like italics. If one section is in italics, and then the next scene is normal type, we get the sense those are two different scenes. I see it used with dreams, and it seems to work (although too much italics can be annoying to read).

Elfhunter, I remember reading your section (it's this one, right? Sorry I forgot to finish my critique!). As I recall, you had a few issues with transitions— first, you had a very non-standard transition style (using numbers to designate new sections). It makes the story difficult to follow. If you used a standard transition style, like an asterisk, the breaks would be more clear. Second, when you shifted scenes, you didn't do enough to establish the new scene. You should provide some details on the setting and what the characters are doing so the reader will know what's going on. You don't need much— just some key info within the first four lines. Third, the segments themselves are really short. Short segments are fine sometimes, but in this case, it feels like they go by too quickly, and that makes the fast transitions jarring— it feels like we haven't done anything in the first scene, and already we're in the next.

Thanks for the all fish!

My default cut form is a Hard Cut. There's a space in the text, and then you're in the next scene. If there's a point of view from a character in the first scene and that character isn't in the next scene (which for me is about 90% of the time), then there is a POV shift, which I usually show by having the Po V character's name as the first word in the opening line of the new scene.

Some of my favorites that I've Seen It A Million Times but don't know what to call them:

• you have a character say something aloud as they write it, and before they finish, a second character reads the rest aloud, having recieved the message written by the first character.
• you have a scene where one character says something over the radio, then cut to the person listening to the same sentence, or someone watching the same event again over a security camera, or you see paramedics tending an injured person, then replay the same scene from the victim's perspective.
• you have a character preparing for a trip, Hard Cut to either a map showing a travel route or a montage of the character in different vehicles used for the trip or watching scenery, then Hard Cut to the arrival and greeting scene. Unfortunately trying to do that in literature would just be silly.

edited 17th Sep '11 4:37:40 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

The first and last one are Voiceover Letter and Travel Montage, not sure about the second.

Thanks for the all fish!

Thanks!

@Ronka 87: Oh, so that was the problem. See, i had posted a link in a later post to show how it was supposed to look and no one responded, so i assumed it didn't make much of a difference. I numbered the paragraphs cause the original format didn't transition over well. I'm working on fixing the other problems though.

@Frodo: The first two are interesting, though I can't use the second one in my setting. I usually avoid travel montages, unless something important gets discussed en route.

Has anyone ever tried doing a Distant Reaction Shot in their work? If so, could you show me an excerpt?

edited 18th Sep '11 3:03:25 AM by Elfhunter

If I knew how I know everything I know, I'd only be able to know half as much because my brain would be clogged up with where I know it from

I like to "cut" with one of these:

~*~

Which usually denotes POV change, whether it means from a different character's POV or just in a different time/location.

Best—or rather, most effective—cut I've done recently, IMO, was cutting from a man about to off himself with a shotgun to the same man firing as he jumped from a trench, some days earlier...

I am now known as Flyboy.

My current work is a bit experimental and handles cuts in an interesting way. Actually, the best part of it in my opinion is how it can handle cuts.

Basically, I've decided to split a written story up into rather small sections that I believe would be equal to about two 4komas' worth of events. Each of these small sections of the story, or story fragments, would get its own little webpage. Each story fragment's webpage would have links to other story fragments. Some of these links are pretty much next/previous links. Others are links to profile pages for characters/places/items. The rest of the links are cuts, whether it be an Anti Climax Cut, Cutaway Gag, Answer Cut, Switching P.O.V., or something else. With what I've written so far, the next and previous links are still unused, leaving the links used for cuts as the only way to go from one story fragment to another, which I don't really mind.

Thinking of ideas to use with a literary work that is meant to be WikiWalked through.

Interesting idea. Wish I could afford to get that much space .

Anyone ever tried putting in a flashback in between a scene (without using reported speech)? When i tried to do it, it ended up kind of weird looking...

If I knew how I know everything I know, I'd only be able to know half as much because my brain would be clogged up with where I know it from

I can't afford that much space either, so I went to wikia for a free wiki to use for the project. Sure, I plan to move to somewhere else if I can get enough money from it.

Thinking of ideas to use with a literary work that is meant to be WikiWalked through.

With my last work, I had two kinds of cuts.

***

and

HEADLINE

With my current work, I use chapters, and every chapter is one scene without cuts.

edited 25th Sep '11 9:23:16 PM by PDown

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Andrzej Sapkowski used them, a lot of the Witcher saga felt almost like watching a film.

One instance: heroine fights a bad guy — then a repeat of Geralt's words from much earlier, then "I understand" and she does what he told her that time. You know how in a film, there's a close-up of a character, and a voiceover of The Obi-Wan? It was like that.

Or alternative example, an asterisk - flashback *

- asterisk insertion.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"