Transitions

With my current novel, I've made a concerted effort to avoid scene jumps (or time jumps, if you will). Number one, executing a broad jump makes for a sparse story, and that's been a consistent criticism of reviewers. In my defense, those reviews involved my novellas, which by their nature are short, but a novella writer still needs to write a fat story.

I hadn't intended to write another novel, but in trying to "fatten up" a novella that really went nowhere, I kept coming up with new ideas that intrigued me. Those ideas, combined with my new resolve to fully flesh out my narrative, led to what may in the end be an average-sized or possibly a short novel ~ I haven't done a word count yet, and I won't until it's finished.

So focused am I on not repeating past mistakes, I've pushed past my natural inclination to end a scene, then flash forward. It hasn't always been easy. This story is chronological (or what I'm sardonically calling a travelogue). There is no "two months later". I suppose my justification for that is, the main character is living a life. Doesn't anything happen to her in those two months that's worth noting? Is she hibernating?

My dearth of transitions, however, leads to lots of question marks in my head. How can I avoid time jumps but still make the narrative interesting? Too much internal monologue feels like cheating. Oh, I see. She spent the weekend "thinking". I suppose my only hard and fast rule is, every scene needs to count. Therefore, maybe nothing big happens, but at least it should be something interesting.

The place where I left off yesterday is nagging me to do a time jump, though. Maybe I'm just itching to get to the end, or more likely, I don't have any good ideas for what should come next. I finally completed the scene regarding the MC's mentor's secret being revealed, and I played it out quite fully (meaning: too long?), although what happens to the mentor afterward is currently open-ended. Because I honestly don't know what happens, and more importantly, how it could involve the main character. I paint myself into corners like this all the time. 

So, my main character arrives back at her apartment after a marathon day (and night) with her mentor, and naturally, she falls asleep. Fine. Then what? She awakens to find she's missed an entire day, and the sky outside her window is dark. Now she's hungry, but she's packed away all her belongings, including pantry items, for her move. She decides to walk the five blocks to the convenience store, but the night is so refreshing that she takes the long way around, and you guessed it...she thinks.

I hate my characters thinking. What should they think about? To make the scene matter, it needs to be something weighty, or at least something revelatory ~ she suddenly connects something someone said to something else, and now it all makes sense ~ that kind of thing. Right now, I've got nothin'. If I'm going to keep her thinking, it had better be good. 

That's why transitions are hard, more so when trying to avoid time jumps. My main character wasn't thinking this, but I sure was: Can't I just skip ahead to two months later?

One thing I did do right, and I didn't overplay it: As she's exiting her building (in the dark) to walk to the store, she sees the shadow of a "cowboy-hatted man" walking in her direction. She turns and starts her trek, noting that cowboys don't scare her, but everything else does. That's it. A throwaway line? Hardly. I'm proud of myself for just letting it hang there.

MC was due to leave town and head for home, but now that she's wasted (slept away) the whole day, should she leave the next morning? Or should something else happen to keep her there? She's only got a few days left on her apartment lease; then she'll be homeless. 

Obviously, there are parts of the story left to be resolved. What's up with the mentor? Does her record label suddenly grant her a reprieve? Does she make one last-ditch attempt to reconnect with the man she's lost before she leaves town?

I've pretty much decided how things will go once she moves back; that's not a problem. It's all the things that come before it that I'm struggling with. Which is why I'd love to take the easy way out and...jump.

But I'll keep at it. "Don't jump!" as some old codger is known to say. Who knows? I could come up with something surprising, especially to me.