IWW
Practice-W Exercise Archives
Exercise: Transitions
These exercises were written
by IWW
members
and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its
members.
You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that
you found
them at the Internet Writers Workshop
(http://www.internetwritingworkshop.org/).
Prepared by: Florence Cardinal
Posted on: Sun, 15 Apr 2001
Reposted on: Sun, 27 Jan 2002
Reposted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2003
Reposted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2004
Reposted on: Sun, 22 Jan 2006
Transitions, moving someone from one place to another, or from one
time
frame to another, is difficult for many writers. If you move your
character
too quickly, your audience may feel disoriented and it may take them a
few
moments to realize what has happened.
On the other hand, you can't show every step your character takes,
or every
second that passes as he moves from spring to winter.
For this exercise, in 300 words or less, move a character from point
A to
point B or from one time frame to another smoothly and quickly, without
losing your reader in the transition, or bogging your reader down with
excess prose.
Florence Cardinal's wrap-up
Posted on: Sun, 22 Apr 2001
This has been a fantastic week. I don't believe Rheal has posted the
stats,
but I'm sure they are high.
You all did a very good job with the transition exercise. Many of
you did
the exercise as a flashback, and what is a flashback, after all, but a
time
transition into the past. Most of you brought us back to the present
again.
One problem I found with several of the exercises was a difficulty
in
dealing with the tense when using a time transition, but I'm sure this
will
come in time.
I hope you all enjoyed this exercise as much as I did, and good luck
as we
move on to Patricia's tone exercise.
Flo
Florence Cardinal's wrap-up (Feb 5 2002)
This is the second time we've run this exercise, and again, it has
brought
forth a great bunch of SUBS and CRITS. Some of the stories moved us
across
great distances, both in area and in time, and some in both. Some have
done
it better than others, but all who tried have done a reasonable job.
Transitions require a delicate balance to come off well. If we move
the
character too slowly - show his step by step walk, for instance, from
his
house to the post office, detailing every corner he turns, every sight
he
sees, no matter how ordinary, our reader may drop the story out of
sheer
boredom.
On the other hand, if we move the character too quickly and without
smooth
transition words - The next day, a week later, fifty miles down the
road, he
got off the plane four hours later in Paris - we run the danger of
leaving
our readers not knowing where they are.
I hope this exercise has helped to illustrate that point.
Flo
Rhéal Nadeau's wrap-up
Posted on: April 27, 2003
The transitions exercise is always an interesting one - my thanks to
Florence for writing this one in the first place.
The submissions this week covered (as always) a significant range:
moving physically from one place to another, or moving from one moment
in time to another, or both.
Naturally, some of the submissions were more successful than others.
Which means that some were less successful, of course. A common problem
was presenting a static situation where previous or future transitions
were hinted at (or simply told, not shown), but did not really come to
life. In some cases, this involved an attempted flashback - where the
previous events were simply stated, without giving the reader a real
chance to jump along and fully experience those events.
As was the case when we ran this exercise before, many of the
submissions used flashback as the transition mechanism. There is no
doubt that a flashback deals with a transition, even if doing it
backwards, going from *now* to *then* rather than the normal story flow
from "then* to "now*. I don't know what to make of this, actually. I'm
sure it's related to the nature of the exercise: flashbacks are common
in writing, but not *this* common. Does the restricted nature of the
exercise make it harder to deal with a narrative progress forward from
point A to point B? Or conversely, does such a narrative present fewer
(or alternately, less interesting) writing challenges?
I don't know the answer to those questions, and to the underlying
questions of what we choose to write about, and how we choose to write
about it. Actually, we'll never know the answers to those questions -
but they are useful questions for us to think about.
Rhéal
Florence Cardinal's wrap-up
Posted on: February 3, 2004
Not too many subs this week, but you made up for it in critiques.
Most
of the subs were well done, some even startling in their excellency. A
few were a bit bumpy, but that was to be expected, and if you did a few
critiques, you may have gotten the hang of it.
Transitions - a way from getting from one place or time to another.
You
don't want them too abrupt so you jar your reader out of the story. On
the other hand, neither do you want them so long and dragged out that
you lull your reader to sleep. As in so much of writing, you have to
strike a happy medium - not too much, not too little. We hope this
little exercise has helped you master the trick.
Florence
Web site created by
Rhéal Nadeau and
the administrators of the Internet Writing Workshop.
Modified by Gayle Surrette.
|