Does Your Story Need a Bridge? Probably Not

Think of writing a story as a series of big rocks in the middle of a rushing river. Ideally you'll be able to step from one scene to another, until you get from where you started, to the other side of the river, and then the story will be told in its entirety. However, sometimes you'll find yourself standing on a big rock, and the next one is just too far away for you to reach it. When that happens you might be tempted to backtrack, and to find a different way to get to the other side, or even to give up entirely on this particular narrative.

However, if you close your eyes and just take a sidestep, you may find that you end up right where you want your narrative to be without a lot of extra trouble.

There's more than one path to success.

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Bridges and Jump Cuts

If you think of a story like a pearl necklace, the pearls are the major plot points and important scenes. The string that holds them all together are the bridges. However, while some scenes are easy enough to build a bridge between, others are so far apart that any bridge that could connect them is going to feel too big, too clunky, and just too much to get from point A to point B.

However, the magic of books means that you can just end the chapter at one place, and pick right back up somewhere else. Instant teleportation, no bridge required!

Onward, to the next chapter!

Let's say, for example, that you're writing a detective story. Your P.I. just ended up shooting a gangster who was trying to kill him. This is a major, pivotal moment in the case, and it shows that he's getting close to something. Unfortunately, the next scene you have involves your investigator back at his office and talking with a surprise witness who wanted to come clean, feeling that things had gone too far.

And sure, you could have a whole scene where your private eye talks to the cops, gives his side of the story, turns over his gun as evidence, catches a cab home, makes himself dinner, and turns in to bed... but if none of that is important to your narrative, you can end the chapter with the light bleeding out of the enforcer's eyes, and then start the next chapter with your P.I. kicked back in his desk chair, looking over his notes, and trying to put the details of the case together, and thinking about what went down last night.

This is the story equivalent of the old radio drama's classic line, "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..."

Now, I'm not saying that bridge scenes aren't useful, and that you should eliminate all of them entirely. However, the key to a bridge scene is that it needs to feel important to the narrative, and it needs to add to the ongoing story in an organic way. If your party of fantasy adventurers has important discussions while on the trail to their next destination, for example, or we get important character building moments, then that bridge is something you should definitely keep. But if it's just a bunch of text to walk your reader from one location to another, with nothing of consequence happening in between, then it's best to cut that text, and just do the textual equivalent of a jump cut.

Your book, and your readers, will thank you.

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