Moving Your Characters Around

Think about passages in which your characters must move from one place to another.  Then write some sentences where you make these moves clear.  For example, walk some characters from the kitchen to the backyard or vice versa.  Try a few sentences where your character moves from a safe place to one where she will have to explain herself if she is discovered.  Or write a brief transition from the car after a long, solitary drive to a party full of hostile strangers.

Often writers want their scene changes to be unobtrusive.  Some novelists even divide their chapters like scenes in a play, with a new chapter beginning every time a change of scene is called for.  That way writers can skip unexciting sentences, such as "She drove the station wagon to the bank."

On the other hand, stage directions can do more than move characters around; they can also help establish personalities or advance a plot.  "She twirls her cigarette in the ashtray until the long, red ash is shaped into a cone."  Is she dangerous, scared or both?  

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