Well, I finished the Mistborn series. This wouldn’t be of particular relevance to this blog, if it weren’t for the author Brandon Sandersons lectures on Writing, which I can now continue to watch and review on this blog.
Hooks and Transitions
When writing episodic stories, or stories with chapters, sections – in short: Any story long enough to contain pauses for the audience between its parts – those will need a way of blending them together. A transition is needed to the next part, hooking the audience anew, drawing them in again. Brandon Sanderson, when asked about this, advises to end the previous chapter with a kind of “in the middle of the action” state while balancing that you also need to end enough things – otherwise the audience doesn’t get enough of a closing.
Here the master explains it himself:
Today’s project tried to implement that.
A Short Story: The small Fox
In my meta-quest of finishing begun projects, I tackled an old piece of story in verse-form. It’s about a small fox going on an adventure but also, sadly for any non-german reader, in german. And since poetry isn’t that easy to translate for me, I’ll have to leave you at that.
But for all knowers of German: Have a look.
So, how did I implement transitions there?
Firstly, I ended in states that concluded a chapter while at the same time setting up an interesting state for the next one. For example in chapter 3 the small fox slept, but is surprised and waked up by dark figures, seeming scary to him. This is a nice end to the chapter which is titled “The village” and does, indeed, introduce the village, but it also makes the reader interested in the plot of the next chapter: How will the fox handle this situation?
Secondly, I used a structural device to convey the feeling of a closure despite the content being a “hanging note” (one might also say: cliffhanger):
I guess the main trick to this art is to provide something drawing you forward while at the same time giving you enough closure that you pardon the writer/designer his cliffhanger of sorts.
Conclusion
So far, Sanderson hasn’t failed to provide me with new thought material. I’m curious what else his lecture series has to offer me.
Until then, have a good time!
Gregor Sönnichsen 