John and Craig welcome the new year by discussing the art of transitions. They go beyond screenplay-specific terms to examine the psychology of moving through story beats.

We cover the history of screenplays, the different ways to think about a scene, and how to create a punchline for each scene.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we talk about transitioning out of conversations in person and on the phone.

Links:

• Blog post on Transitions
• Scriptnotes Episode, 446: Back to Basics at 03:57 of this episode
• Scriptnotes Episode, 493: Opening Scenes at 26:06 of this episode
• Scriptnotes Episode, 89: Writing Effective Transitions at 44:12 of this episode
• A Trip to the Moon the 1902 Science Fiction Film by Georges Méliès
• The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
• Ron’s Gone Wrong
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Henry Adler (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao, (with a segment produced by Stuart Friedel!) and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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You can download the episode here.