Do you mean scene transitions, such as a line between paragraphs?
^ This. Context Please.
In general when you switch scenes you should give some indication as to where the characters are now. Even being explicit isn't really too explicit in most cases, but I would actually have to read it to be able to tell whether what you're doing is working or not.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)I put little dividing symbols (~*~) between scenes and start with a little opening header including time, date, and the location of the scene from the country to the specific area in the country.
I unfortunately don't have it with me right now to give an exact example, but I know it's in the Critique and Hooked threads... somewhere.
~shrug~
I am now known as Flyboy.^ I do something similar. Large section breaks or shifts to other places/time frames if not chapter ends get separated by a (centered) dash-line followed by a line detailing time, date and location.
Chapter breaks are always 5 (centered) tabbed splats.
But I'm wondering for this thread is this what the OP means or is it stuff like "Meanwhile on the other side of town..."?
I have problems with switching scenes too lengthily—I feel the need to put in everything that happens, no matter how trivial, when I really could elide stuff like people walking places.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)I meant, "Meanwhile, elsewhere..." problems. My narration tends to focus on what people say and what actually goes on, with most scenes simply having no set-up at all and launching straight into events.
(Sorry for the confusion, I wrote the OP at 3am. )
edited 3rd Dec '11 4:43:09 PM by Yej
Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.
How necessary are they? I notice in a lot of my writing, there aren't any transitions at all, and I'm basically trusting the reader to infer where the new scene is jsut from the context. This includes at one point a jump from a university proto-holodeck to making a spacewalk in LEO.
How necessary do you think transition scenes are? Also, how do you think they interact with Law of Conservation of Detail? (Since I think I deliberately skip scenes where nothing plot- or character-important happens, hence the large jumps.)
Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.