Craft tip# 14 Bridging The Gap
If your character crosses the bridge it best matter
Bridging the Great Divide
When I started this Substack, I had a few goals in mind. I wanted to build a following around writing, talk about craft, and, yes, promote my book like the humble literary menace that I am.
What I was not expecting was the sheer influx of support from subscribers.
Not polite, distant, algorithmic support either. Not the kind where someone taps a like button and vanishes back into the digital fog like a Victorian ghost with Wi-Fi. I mean real support. People reading closely. People responding thoughtfully. People asking sharp questions about craft, fantasy, character work, and the specific kind of narrative suffering that only appears around chapter twelve when your plot starts making threats.
Somewhere along the way, this little corner of the internet became more than a place for me to yell about writing into the void. It became a genuinely strange and lovely community built on craft advice, bubble tea recommendations, caffeinated survival, fantasy nonsense taken seriously, and the mutual understanding that sometimes the only thing standing between you and a complete creative collapse is a good sentence and a suspiciously expensive drink.
Which, for the record, is still a much better use of my time than auditing medical claims.
There is more emotional damage here, sure, but at least it’s interesting.
So when I asked what kind of writing advice you wanted next, and an alarming number of you answered, I paid attention.
Which means one of two things: either you trust me, or we are all collectively avoiding our drafts together.
Either way, I appreciate you.
Especially Trashlett , Strawberry Girl and finally Jayne Fell for suggesting this article about Bridge scenes.
Thank you,
Alex🧋
There Are Two Kinds of Bridge Scenes
When I first thought about this question, the first thing that came to mind was Star Wars.
More specifically, the kind of scene where someone says something heroic, poetic, or philosophical about the good and evil of the Force, steps onto a narrow walkway over a bottomless void, and gets cut down mid-sentence as if the universe has poor comedic timing and a personal vendetta.
That is one kind of bridge scene.
The other is the kind most writers accidentally produce in drafts: a character moves from one place to another, nothing happens, no one changes, and somehow this is the version that survives editing.
Which is impressive.
Because it is also the version doing the most damage.
Both scenes technically bridge something. One bridges life and death, often with enough operatic family drama to power an entire trilogy. The other bridges time, place, and location.
Only one of them actually matters.
The problem is that most writers start the scene before it becomes interesting and leave long after it stops being useful.
They give you the setup.
Then the movement.
Then the aftermath.
Then the emotional equivalent of watching someone put on their shoes in real time.
And because the events connect logically, they assume the scene is working.
But “A leads to B, which leads to C, which causes D” is not automatically drama.
Sometimes it is just a well-organized way to be boring.
The writer has plotted a sequence.
What they have not done is create pressure..
Under Pressure: Pushing Down on Your Character
Writers love to show how characters move. Apparently, I also love taking a David Bowie and Queen song, dragging it into a craft article, and praying to thirty-six different gods not to get sued by either estate.
But unlike the song, most of these scenes do not, in fact, know what pressure is.
They just move the character across rooms, across cityscapes, and across emotional arcs that never actually happened.
To the writer, movement feels like progress.
It is not.
Readers do not care that your character traveled unless you are writing The Lord of the Rings, erotic🌶️ fan fiction, or some deeply unwell retelling where Bilbo, Frodo, and Samwise leave the Shire early because one bad decision got horny, developed plot relevance, and now the journey is doing all the “narrative work”.
Readers care what changed because they traveled, and if the answer is “nothing,” then congratulations: you have written a commute.
How Do We Bridge the Gap?
A transition scene is not about movement.
It is about pressure between two opposing states.
You have:
who the character is at Point A
who they need to become at Point B, or where they need to be
The transition is where something interferes.
Something:
interrupts
reveals
escalates
or costs them something
If none of that is happening, the scene is decorative.
And decoration is where pacing goes to die.
The Three Things a Bridge Scene Must Do
A transition scene only needs to earn its existence in one of three ways.
1. Change the character’s internal state
They leave anxious.
They arrive committed.
They leave in control.
They arrive already slipping.
If the emotional state is identical, you wrote filler.
2. Introduce new information or stakes
Not background. Not vibes.
Actual information that changes how we understand:
the world
the problem
or the people involved
If nothing new is learned, you stalled the story politely.
A new point of view can help here, but only if it changes what the reader knows or how they understand the danger. If your second POV only repeats the same event from a different angle, you did not raise the stakes. You duplicated the scene in a new outfit.
3. Apply pressure
Something goes wrong.
Or almost goes wrong.
Or will definitely go wrong the second they arrive.
Tension does not wait for the “main scene.”
It lives in the hallway.
Let’s test this out!🧋
Example One: Frodo Leaving the Shire
Frodo leaving the Shire is not interesting because he walks.
It is interesting because of what that walk does to him.
Point A:
Frodo is a sheltered hobbit with a problem he does not fully understand.
The transition, the road out of the Shire:
he realizes he is being hunted
the Black Riders appear
the world stops feeling safe
the weight of the Ring starts becoming real
Point B:
Frodo is no longer just going somewhere. He is already in danger, already chosen, already unable to go back.
The walking is not the scene.
The loss of safety is the scene.
Example Two: Luke Leaving Tatooine
Luke leaving Tatooine is not interesting because he gets on a ship.
It is interesting because of what forces him to leave.
Point A:
Luke is restless, naive, and still imagining a larger life.
The transition, between staying and leaving:
he meets Obi-Wan
he refuses the call
then returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead
Point B:
Luke does not leave because he wants adventure anymore.
He leaves because there is nothing left to stay for.
The travel does not matter.
The irreversible decision does.
A Broken Bridge
To make this painfully clear, I took both examples and asked ChatGPT to give me bad versions of these scenes with the pressure removed.
In other words, I asked it to do what weak transition scenes already do naturally.
Bad Version: The Lord of the Rings
Frodo packed his things carefully. He made sure he had enough food for the road, a cloak, and the Ring, which he tried not to think about too much.
He left the Shire early in the morning. The grass was green. The sky was clear. Birds chirped in a way that suggested nothing bad had ever happened or would happen again.
Sam followed beside him. They talked about the road ahead and how far they might go.
They walked for several hours.
Then they kept walking.
Eventually, they left the Shire.
End of scene.
Notice what is missing. There are no Black Riders, no fear, no realization, no real change, no hero crossing the threshold.
He just moved.
He did not transform.
As much as I hate saying this, let us now butcher Star Wars.
Bad Version: Star Wars
Luke stood outside his home, looking at the horizon for a while.
He thought about leaving. He thought about staying.
He eventually decided to go.
He packed his things, said goodbye, and went to find Obi-Wan.
They walked to the ship together.
Luke got on board.
The ship took off.
End of scene.
There is no death. No stakes. No emotional shift. No reason the decision matters.
Nothing forces Luke to leave his home planet.
In both versions, the plot is technically intact.
Frodo leaves.
Luke leaves.
Nothing is “wrong.”
And yet nothing matters.
Because the transition was treated like movement instead of pressure.
This is what happens when you write the commute instead of the moment.
The characters arrive exactly as they left.
Which means the story did not move.
Only the geography did.
Spot the Problem
Let’s make this practical.
Here is a deliberately weak transition scene:
Mara left the apartment in a hurry. She took the stairs instead of the elevator, stepped out into the cold, and walked three blocks to the train station. The city was loud, and people hurried past her in every direction. She checked her phone twice, sighed, and boarded the train. Twenty minutes later, she arrived downtown and headed into the office building.
What is the problem?
Take a second and see if you can spot it before reading on.
The answer is simple: nothing changed.
She moved from one location to another, but:
she did not learn anything
nothing interrupted her
no new pressure appeared
she arrived as the same person who left
This is not a transition scene.
This is public transportation with punctuation.
How to Fix It
Here is one stronger version:
Mara left the apartment telling herself she still had time to back out. By the time she reached the station, her sister had texted three times and each message was worse than the last. On the train, she read the final one: He knows you took it. By the time she stepped into the office building, she was no longer going to apologize. She was going to lie.
Now something changed.
She did not just travel.
She crossed from hesitation into decision.
That is a transition.
What to Cut, Ruthlessly
You can almost always delete:
walking descriptions
travel logistics
neutral observations
“he went,” “she arrived,” and other padding pretending to be prose
Start later.
End earlier.
Or make the middle matter.
A Better Way to Think About It
A transition scene is not:
Point A → travel → Point B
It is:
Point A → disruption → Point B, changed
If you remove the disruption and nothing breaks, the scene was never doing anything.
Use a Scene Break When the Travel Matters, But the Steps Don’t
Sometimes the character really does change on the way from Point A to Point B. Fine. Keep the transition.
But unless the road itself contains the conflict, use a scene break:
Weak:
Jason left the apartment, got into the cab, looked out the window, thought about what Cortez said, checked his phone twice, and by the time he arrived downtown, he felt different.
Stronger:
Jason left the apartment.
***
By the time the cab dropped him downtown, he had already made the kind of decision that usually required alcohol, bad judgment, or both.
That version shows the travel mattered, but it does not force the reader to sit through the commute.
The Question That Fixes Most Scenes
When a transition feels flat, ask:
What changed between leaving and arriving?
If your answer is:
nothing
not much
vibes
Then the problem is not the prose.
It is the absence of consequence.
Homework for Writers Who Enjoy Suffering Productively
If you actually want to improve this skill, do not just nod at this article and move on.
Do this.
Step 1: Find one transition scene in your draft. Anywhere your character moves from Point A to Point B.
Step 2: Ask three questions:
What is their emotional state at the start?
What is it at the end?
What changed in between?
If the answer is “nothing,” good. You found the problem.
Step 3: Rewrite that scene in one of these ways:
add a realization
add a disruption
add a cost
or cut it down to one sentence
Step 4: Make it shorter. Cut at least 30 to 50 percent of the movement.
Be ruthless.
Step 5: End on change, not arrival.
If your scene ends with “They arrived,” you are not done.
End with:
a decision
a shift
a problem
Optional, if you are brave: post your before-and-after version in the comments. I might dissect it publicly for educational purposes.
No promises. No mercy.
Final Thought
In Star Wars, the bridge is where characters discover whether their confidence was justified.
In your draft, the bridge should do the same thing.
Not every scene needs someone falling into a bottomless pit.
But something should give way.
A belief.
A plan.
A mask.
A version of the character that was easier to write.
Because the story is not interested in how your character travels.
It is interested in what survives the crossing.
If you made it this far, you’ve probably written at least one transition scene where nothing technically happens but it felt productive at the time.
Be honest. We’ve all done it.
If you want more craft breakdowns, questionable life advice disguised as writing insight, and a community that takes both fantasy and bubble tea seriously, consider be a paid subscribing member.
If you’d like to support me (and my ongoing caffeine dependency), you can also order my sci-fi book Starforge, where characters absolutely do not get to travel peacefully from one place to another without consequences.
And if you’re feeling brave, drop your worst transition scene in the comments. I might fix it. I might make it worse. Either way, it will be educational.
Until next time,
Alex 🧋
