How Did I Get Here?

With Memorial Day upon us, many folks will be on the road, listening to music or daydreaming while stuck in traffic. Nothing at all interesting about it. Though we want our stories to mimic real life, showing every moment or mile gets boring and repetitive fast.

My characters are constantly on the move. If I showed the entire drive, boat ride, or flight, I’d destroy the pacing. Instead, move characters from point A to B by skipping the boring parts.

via GIPHY
When we jump ahead, tell the reader how much time has passed.

Nothing is more jarring than a character at home one minute and in the next paragraph they’re in a new location with no explanation of how they got there. Ground the reader in the first sentence. Or at least, in the first paragraph. Some writers include a scene break between paragraphs — either white space or *** — but that still does not absolve us from orienting the reader.

Show the characters getting into the car. Add a few lines of plot-related dialogue or trees zip past the window to show movement. And boom, they arrive at their new destination. Or, if nothing interesting happens, write something like…

Forty grueling minutes later without air conditioner, I arrived at the hotel with a wet scalp and my t-shirt molded to my chest.

A new chapter signals a time or POV change and/or a new setting.

It’s fine to speed past uneventful stretches in a story. In fact, it’s encouraged. Just be sure to give the reader a sense of how much time has lapsed, especially at the start of a new chapter. Even if we include a timestamp, we should still mention it as many readers will only recall whether the previous chapter took place during daylight or darkness.

Don’t make them have to backtrack to guess where or when the chapter begins.

If the action continues from the previous chapter, it’s still a good idea to set the scene with a brief mention of any time gaps or sensory cue to ground the reader. It doesn’t have to be complicated. “A few hours later” does the trick.

Establish who is present in every scene.

Nothing irks me more than a character appearing out of nowhere to offer a clue when they weren’t in the scene earlier. Too convenient. And frankly, obvious and lazy.

Again, adding a character to a scene needn’t be complicated…

The screen door slapped open, and Jack strolled out to the porch.

Now the reader knows he’s there, so when he offers that all-important clue, it makes sense within the scene.

Change in POV

As a reader and a writer, I don’t understand the fad of including the POV character’s name at the top of each chapter. In my opinion, it’s unnecessary. If we ground the reader in the character’s POV right away, they should know whose head they’re in without a label. If they don’t, then we’ve failed to set the scene. I prefer rotating POVs. They’re easy to follow and add to the overall rhythm of the story.

If you want to include the POV character’s name as a chapter heading, then by all means do so. It’s your story.

The main takeaway for this post is to orient the reader, whether the characters are on the move or we switch to a new POV.

For writers: How do you handle travel or signal a change in POV?

For readers: Have you ever been jarred out of a story due to a change in space or time?

Happy Memorial Day to TKZers in the U.S.!

This entry was posted in #amwriting, #writetip, #writetips, #WritingCommunity and tagged , , , , , by Sue Coletta. Bookmark the permalink.

About Sue Coletta

Sue Coletta is an award-winning crime writer and an active member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. Feedspot and Expertido.org named her Murder Blog as “Best 100 Crime Blogs on the Net.” She also blogs at the Kill Zone, Story Empire, and Writers Helping Writers. Sue lives with her husband in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. Her backlist includes psychological thrillers, the Mayhem Series (books 1-3) and Grafton County Series, and true crime/narrative nonfiction. Now, she exclusively writes eco-thrillers, Mayhem Series (books 4-9 and continuing). Sue's appeared on the Emmy award-winning true crime series, Storm of Suspicion, and three episodes of A Time to Kill on Investigation Discovery. Learn more about Sue and her books at https://suecoletta.com

19 thoughts on “How Did I Get Here?

  1. RE: putting protag’s name in the chapter header–thankfully I haven’t seen much of that because it would drive me nuts. I suppose there could be a good time and reason to do that if you had that many POV characters, but it’s not a technique I need use for my writing.

    My go-to for passage of time change/POV switch is the *** between scenes. Usually some obvious thing denotes passage of time–like now they’re at the office and not at home, etc. But if I need it, a brief description of passage of time (i.e. an hour later, etc.) is sufficient. And making it clear who the POV character is early in the new scene takes care of that.

    Generally speaking, of all the tricky things about writing, denoting passage of time isn’t so bad. However, when it DOES get tricky is in revisions. After you’ve made several revisions to scenes in a book, you have to be careful you haven’t changed the time sequence in the book. In my current historical WIP I use date headers at the beginning of certain chapters when the date has changed. But I’m having to go in and modify some time passage/dates due to some added/revised scenes.

    Hopefully my revision process will get smoother as I write more books–after you’ve read your manuscript 9 million times, it makes you paranoid that you’ll miss something like an obvious passage of time issue, etc.

    • After you’ve made several revisions to scenes in a book, you have to be careful you haven’t changed the time sequence in the book.

      Well said, Brenda. Because my characters travel so much, I do one read-through just for the time sequence. And I’ve caught more oopsies than I care to admit!

  2. Good points, Sue, and these come to light with my critique partners, because we get chapters to read only every few days at best. We’re always pointing out when we’re not grounded in the when, where, and who.
    We have to remember that our readers might not be able to sit down with our book and read it straight through. (gasp!)
    Showing POV characters in chapter headings never works for me. Those headings disappear when you turn the page, and if you’ve had to put the book down, you come back with no clue who’s got center stage. To establish POV, you need to mention something only the POV character would know.
    An example I used when I did a post about transitions:
    Graham finished filing his reports, surprised to see it was four-thirty. Instead of going home, he drove to Central Ops. Roger Schaeffer in CID might let him poke around a little.
    We’re immediately in Graham’s head, we know the time, and where he is.

  3. Thanks for a great focus on how to ground the reader, Sue. I find it irritating when a character is floating in space in a time vacuum. Newer writers often justify leaving out time, place, and space details, claiming it make the story mysterious. Uh, no, just confusing and frustrating.

    Here’s a driving scene from my WIP:

    After dropping Mimi off, Tawny and Tillman were finally alone, driving back to Kalispell. She studied the rocky cliffs that edged the highway. One jutting promontory nearly matched Tillman’s profile. She took a long breath. “Can we talk about the elephant that’s riding around in the back seat?”

  4. Great tips and info, Sue.

    I use the triple asterisk *** when there is a scene break. If time or place has changed within a scene, I use the first paragraph after the change to mention time, place, and situation. I almost never change POV within a scene.

    It doesn’t bother me if a chapter heading includes the POV character’s name. I have more problem with rapid fire dialogue and no attributions. I find myself looking back and counting to see who is talking. I would rather have excess attributions or even script format with the names and a colon before the dialogue.

    Great topic today. Have a wonderful day!

    • LOL I love rapid fire dialogue, Steve. But it’s important to use distinctive language to keep the reader oriented as to who’s speaking and not let it go on too long without a body cue or tag.

      The names in chapter headings are more common in YA, I think.

  5. Great tips, Sue. And the comments “learned me”, too.

    I remember reading a novel a long time ago-sorry, can’t remember the name or the author-that had me constantly backtracking to the last chapter I’d read to figure out where I was and who was in the room with me. It was a miracle I finished the story, but I did. However, it seems that it was such a trying experience, the title is forever lodged in the spam folder in my brain.

    I don’t want my readers going through that! 🙂

    Have a great Memorial Day. Here at our house, it’s flank steaks in the smoker later on…

  6. Excellent advice, Sue.

    I’m yet another proponent of the three *** for scene break. I try to avoid travel sequences, unlesss I can milk them for tension, provide another plot beat or two, or, especially with car rides, give another setting for conversation that’s advance the plot/character arc etc. Other wise it winds up being dull and wasting words.

    In the one novel I’ve published with two POVS, the science fiction adventure “Spice Crimes,” I initiated the POV break with a scene change, and endeavored to ground the reader in the situation and uniqueness of the particular POV character the narrative had just moved to.

    As a reader too many POVs can pull me out of a story—I tend to like the tight focus of one or two. Also, I end up bonding to characters and can lose interest if the narrative has been following POV #6 or 7 too much and not my favorite. That said, Mur Lafferty pulled off the feat of juggling at least 7 POVs in her science fiction mystery “Station Eternity”, but she started with just one and then slowly expanded until she had a chorus of POVs later in this 130K word novel. (Terrific SF mystery by the way.)

    Hope you have a Happy Memorial Day my friend! I’ll be working on fixing a few last things in “Book Drop Dead” before sending it to my editor in a couple of days.

    • I agree, Dale. Too many POVs confuse me unless the author is skilled enough to pull it off. The most I’ve used is three. One for each co-protagonist and the villain. In my Mayhem Series, I now stick with two, one POV for each of my antiheroes, alternating chapters between the two.

      Rainy here, so we’re not doing much. Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day!

  7. Happy Memorial Day, Sue and all!

    Great tips, Sue. Like others, I use the three asterisk *** for scene breaks. I was told early on by my first editor that I couldn’t head-hop in a scene, and I’ve been a good student since then. One scene, one POV. However, lately, this doesn’t matter since I’m writing first person.

    I’ve read several novels lately that used the POV-character-name-as-chapter-heading technique. It makes me think it’s become a trend. I like chapter headings, but prefer them to be a more interesting statement about the chapter.

    • Me too, Kay. I much prefer an interesting chapter heading or a quote to strike the mood of the storyline. Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s becoming a trend. *sigh*

      “One scene, one POV” are words to live by.

      Wishing you a happy Memorial Day!

  8. The WIP has three pov characters, written in a rough alternation, one character per scene (and only occasionally with the same character in several sequential scenes).

    Each scene gets a short heading in the same format: character’s name, and then a mini description of when and where – time and place and date – because the complex plot requires a navigation device.

    I still make sure you know who you’re channeling immediately from the first line or two in the scene, so you can skip the headers if you like, and not be too lost. And the scene will give you plenty of hints for place – but date and time are important, and there is no easy subtle device (calendar montages in early movies and clocks with hands going round and round notwithstanding) to give a reader those in a novel which takes months, and covers three continents.

    This has turned out to be the least obtrusive navigation device I can use, as my main rule for writing is ‘Don’t confuse the reader!’

    • Good rule, Alicia. I also use day and time, but many readers skip them so (like you) I ensure to orient them within the narrative as well.

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