Scenes can sometimes overlap to the next episode of the story. When this happens, regardless of how long or short you want your scene to be, it needs to have a goal and conflict. The conflict can serve as a cliffhanger that continues in the next scene. This is how your scenes or episodes can interlock. In an interlocking scene, make sure that you address the hanging conflict into the next scene. Some writers would jump to a different scenario or a subplot and would resolve the main conflict later, but this rarely works. Build enough suspension without prolonging the reader’s agony. Continuity of scenes must connect where the previous scene left off. This method saves the writer time with information that the scene can do without.  

Plot: Esther, a poor mother of three children, wants to work as a domestic helper in the Middle East to provide for her children. Her neighbor Damian, notorious for shading dealings, offers to sponsor her finances so she could work abroad but on one condition: He wants Esther to serve as his drug mule. Desperate, Esther agrees to the deal.

This plot can fulfill three continuing scenes.

Scene 1: Esther checked in at the immigration department. Her movement was slow and calculating, and she couldn’t help but sweat. This was her first time to break the law. She felt for her stomach, worried about the ten condoms she swallowed, each containing ten grams of cocaine. It would cost her head if they found out.

There is no need to write an introspection of Esther or describing the process of how she would go about smuggling drugs into the Middle East. The last part where she checks in at the immigration sets the next scene.

Scene 2: Two immigration officers inspected her belongings, opening her luggage without so much consideration for privacy. They rummage through her stuff with indifference. Finding nothing, they asked Esther to put all her things back in her luggage. 

      “Miss, are you sick?” one of them asked.

      Esther smiled and shook her head, wiping the sweat off her brow.

      “Can you follow us this way, please.”

      Esther’s heart beat faster. What were they going to do with her?

The interrogation scene may be essential to build up tension, but it is not necessary to write everything taking place. The end of this scene triggers the beginning of another intense episode. 

Scene 3: A few minutes after forcing her to take laxatives, the immigration officers were scooping the condoms with cocaine from the toilet bowl. Esther was sobbing in the corner, thinking that she was done for. They would throw her into prison, set her up in a kangaroo trial, and she would face execution. 

All these scenes are connected. Where one episode ends, another begins using the conflict that connects them. This creates a fast-paced scenario without depriving the reader of any information they needed to know. It has managed to eliminate the unnecessary. This is only effective if the scenes follow each other. If the writer skips into a subplot, say, he writes a scene about Damian thinking about what has happened to Esther after Scene 2, the building tension will dissipate.