How Do You Bridge The Gap Between Two Cool Moments In Your Novel?

What do you do when your novel has a cool moment , followed by another cool moment … but something kind of boring has to happen in between ? Your lineament have to travel somewhere or make something . How do top authors cover this ?

Once again , we were golden to win over some of our favorite author to answer our dorky query . So how do you bridge the space between two utterly nerveless moments in your novel ? Here ’s what the experts say …

David J. Williams , author of The Mirrored Heavens and The Burning Sky :

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Writing with an ensemble cast of main characters has its disadvantages , but one of the big plus is that it makes it gentle to maneuver past this kind of trouble . The entirety of the Autumn Rain trilogy is cutting back and forth between ( wide separated ) points of view , pore on the highlights of each “ plot vector ” , whether that ’s in a magnetic levitation burrow beneath the Atlantic or in a bio - dome in the eye of a lunar fortress . This was a deliberate determination , in that I often see myself skimming page of various books to get to the Next Cool Moment , so when it came to writing MIRRORED HEAVENS , I wanted to leave anything skimmable on the press cutting room trading floor . That being enjoin . . . sometimes “ downtime ” afford hidden opportunities . . . . are there deduction or clues to the situation that two characters can speak about ? Is there an opportunity here for more exposition or a newsfeed , or some kind of macrocosm - construction ? If the answer ’s no , then just fast - forward as much as you need to ; readers will forgive almost anything keep open being bored . Screenwriters are taught to get into view late and get out of them early , and there are times I wish more novelists did the same !

Rebecca K. Rowe , generator of Forbidden Cargo :

All it takes is two favored mouse - more sound than we are and willing to explicate a few things over a repast . That ’s in - between the destruction of planet and some potential mental capacity - dicing if you ’re hitchhiking across the galaxy à la Adams . block that , there ’re always the gravediggers . Sure , their raillery construct us laugh , a relief between the gloomy scenes , but they also give Hamlet and us vital information … .

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Of of course , we ’re in it for the slaying , the sex , the quest and the chase ( and for us SF geeks the surprising thingamabob it make for each ) , but we ’ll outride for the meals , the muddy treks and the subdued smoking . That ’s when we reveal our type : how she holds herself ( does she skip or take the air with her toes crushed in brake shoe too tight ) , what she say or does n’t say , and what others say about her before and after the deed . A conversation , a present moment of reflexion or just calculate ( what she sees , what we see her miss ) may answer . In our fiction , as in life , we find it ’s those in - between multiplication that matter most .

Ken Scholes , author of Lamentation , Canticle and Long Walks , Last Flights , and Other Strange Journeys :

Moving from Cool Thing A to Cool Thing B in a novel … . I think this is a hard interrogative sentence for me to answer because I do n’t think in terms of Cool Things in books . I ’m thinking about the characters and what they ’re struggling with , what they ’re learning , where they need to go , and I let things open a bit organically . My Cool Things ineluctably grow out of the interaction of my grapheme with the conflicts they ’re facing . Still , one thing I ’ve recently read ( compliments of Stephen J. Cannell , the TV writer ) is that when you ’re stuck in the middle mess of the 2d act , it is often helpful to work out out what to do next by imagining the POV of the antagonist and plotting the story from there , letting that character acquaint the complications that my protagonist(s ) must face up . I ca n’t vouch for it as I ’ve not used it as a method , but it pique my curiosity and I ’m run to try it the next sentence I ’m stuck .

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