Getting from Here to There: transitions in creative writing

Photo: Nur Andi Ravsanjani Gusma

by Ellen Santasiero  |  October 2026

Often our Forge students admit they have produced several pages of what they think is disjointed prose.

When we read their writing, sometimes we determine that they, in fact, have got two or more separate pieces started, but other times we see that they just need technique.

In writing, we get from here to there by creating what we call a “transition.” At times we want or need to change geography or era, perhaps to provide backstory—like suddenly have our main character show up thirty years earlier in 1990s Hackensack. Other times we need to change theme or point-of-view. A good transition will make sure our readers get from one place to another in a pleasurable, sense-making way. Some techniques work better in fiction; others in nonfiction.

In a piece of nonfiction where thoughts meander on the page, getting from here to there thematically can be achieved by a simple technique, as seen in a passage by Caryl Pagel in her essay “Lost in Thought.”

Pagel opens the essay with an extended description of her aimless walks around Chicago (to take breaks from writing) and the trance-like state such perambulation induces. What she really wants to muse on are photographs by Harry Callahan, whose work consists of images of 1950s women who look like they are in a trance, and which Pagel analyzes for fifteen more pages. How does she get from here to there?

On page three, she writes, “Around and around the city I’d pace … and it was during one of these walks that I recalled the work of Harry Callahan … ” (emphasis mine)

The bold text above shows how Pagel transitions from discussing her own trance-like states to those of the women in Callahan’s work. Sometimes writers can’t believe transitioning can be this easy.

In his marvelous 1933 essay “In Praise of Shadows,” Jun'ichirō Tanizaki demonstrates a technique we love. He selects an image, or a word, that appears near the end of one paragraph, and uses that same image or word at the beginning of the next.

(emphasis mine) (20)

The essayist pivots from discussing artwork to discussing architecture. Not a huge leap thematically, but without this choice, the transition from one paragraph to the next might be abrupt, and, importantly, would be most unfitting in a meditation on the virtues of softness. Moreover, Tanizaki’s consistent use of this technique throughout elevates “In Praise of Shadows” to poem-like heights.

White space, almost always used in poetry, can work in prose, too. A half inch or more of space between two sections in a work of prose signals to the reader’s brain that a change is a-coming. They pause. And in pausing, they are prepared for a shift in place, time, theme, or point-of-view.

We ask students to experiment to see which technique works best for their particular vision, and that’s where the real learning happens!

If you are unsure how to move from here to there in your work, join us in January 2027. We’ll be helping writers do that, and much more! theforgewriting.com

Sources:

Pagel, Caryl. Out of Nowhere into Nothing. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2020.

Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō. Vintage Tanizaki: In Praise of Shadows. Translated by Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker, Stony Creek, CT. Leete’s Island Books, 1977.

Anecdote or Story?

Mike Cooper – September 2026

There is an old rule in writing: “Write what you know.”

Whether you’re writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, you’re writing based on experience and observation. Bear in mind, though, that “what you know” includes everything you can possibly imagine. Look at the work of Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft, for example.

Regardless of whether you’re reporting or inventing, if you want to publish (make public) your work, you’ll want it to come out in the form of a story. We expect story. We learn from story.

We share what we call “stories” with friends and family all day long, which is great—it’s how we communicate and bond—though a lot of the things we tell each other aren’t full-on stories:

·      My teacher brought a snake into class today and Alex Johnson fainted!

·      I opened the cupboard and your favorite wine glass fell out, but I caught it just before it hit the counter! My heart was racing.

·      They didn’t have any ramen in the pasta section, but then I was walking through the Asian aisle, really by accident, and lo and behold, there was an entire section of it.

·      I met your mother when we were at school: she was going up the stairway and I was going down. Our eyes met and we both smiled at each other. The rest is history.

An anecdote (from the Greek anekdotos, meaning “unpublished”) is “short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.” An anecdote is something that happens.

Stories, on the other hand, have structure: beginnings, middles, ends—inciting incidents, complications, climaxes, resolutions, meaning, and significance.

Often, anecdotes lead us to stories. Our memoir about a challenging time, or a thinly disguised short story written by a narrator that is really us but younger and with two different colored eyes and possibly set in a place we’ve only researched on Google (still “what you know”) often starts out as anecdote or “plot”: i.e., this happened and then this happened and then this happened.

That’s a great way to start. It’s what some folks call the “triggering subject,” or the thing that gets you wondering about the human condition—the thing you want to share with others. So we write that, and when we’re done writing it—if we want to “publish,” or make available to a wider audience—we try to figure out what it’s all about and how best to share it with others. That’s what some folks call the “generated” or “real” subject. In The Forge, we call it “aboutness.”

Now our job is to look at what we’ve written and become the editor, or as Zadie Smith says: the reader. And we make it into story.

That’s what we teach in The Forge. We’d love to have you join us and go through that journey with you. Classes start January 2027. Send us an email at theforgewriting@gmail.com and we’ll be happy to get you started.

The Importance of a Creative Writing Cohort

Irene Cooper

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Etymologically, the word cohort is a bit at odds with itself, linked to both war (Roman infantry) and peace (farmyard or garden). As creative writers, we’re typically pretty comfortable with tension and juxtaposition. There is energy in difference.

One of the core tenets in The Forge is community. Community—check out all those m’s. We dip briefly into the emotional impact of linguistics in the early weeks of The Forge program, wherein we learn that the pronounced ‘m’ is a voiced bilabial nasal, a sound that can evoke calm, imply intimacy, or express sympathy. Think: yummy; think: Om. It’s a great word, community, but does not perhaps get directly at the concept of cohort. Both words share a sense of commonality, of purpose; community and cohort are not at odds, of course, but cohort carries, I think, a whiff of competition. It gives edge.

Competition is not a word I love, to be honest—too susceptible to narrow binaries of win and lose, and too often an instigator of zero-sum thinking in art. Alone with our keyboards and the internet, writers can begin to believe that there are only so many slots for success, that one writer’s success means another’s failure. But creative writing is not a lottery.

It is not that luck—or timing, or some other serendipity— has no bearing on your writing success. I’d like to propose, however, that good fortune favors the writers who have prepared for success in concrete ways—practicing the art, reading reading reading, and yes, building a cohort of creatives with whom they can take the journey, fellow writers and artists who share a common vocabulary and support one another’s goals.  

Famous Cohorts

The Algonquin Round Table. Members: Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Ruth Hale, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Noël Coward, Harpo Marx, and others. Genres: playwriting, journalism, poetry, criticism, fiction, composing, illustration, performance.

The Bloomsbury Group. Members: Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot, and others. Genres: fiction, essays, economics, art, criticism, poetry, philosophy, publishing.

Stratford-on-Odeon, or the Shakespeare & Co. group on Rue de l’Odéon, Paris. Members: Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, others.

The Inklings included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

The Harlem Renaissance included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and many others.

South-Side Writers Group included Richard Wright and Frank Marshall Davis, Arna Bontemps, and Margaret Walker.

Also: the Beats; the Black Mountain College…the list goes on.

Find Your Creative Writing People

These literary and artistic cohorts read and listened to each other’s work and nourished each other’s art and careers. Many of the more famous cohorts pushed art and literature outside of their own circles and into the mainstream and collective consciousness. Did these artists all write the same things in the same way? Absolutely not, and that’s a key to their achievements, both individual and collective.

(Did many if not all of these groups bring the drama re: drinking, drugging, and assorted mayhem? Sure. Are we still reading and enjoying and talking about the work? Yes, yes we are. Was the mayhem instrinisc to the art? I can't speak for other artists, but in my view, art does not require self-annihilation, quite the reverse—another blog for another time...)

As the Romans might have said, ex unitate vires: in unity, strength. Find new strength in a writing cohort that cares about your work.

Ready to light a fire under your creative writing? Get in touch for a chat to see if The Forge 10-Month Online Creative Writing Program is for you. New cohort convenes in September 2026.