100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019

Don’t use transitions to conceal information
Twelve ways to avoid making your reader hate you

As a writer, you have entered a covenant with the reader. The whole writing/reading process depends on the writer and reader having faith that the other will not violate the terms of the covenant. If the covenant were written out, it would contain a clause concerning transitions that would look like this:

Reader agrees that a transition such as “Sam drove to the church” can encompass all the routine acts of starting a car, taking left turns, etc.

In turn Writer agrees not to use such transitions to deprive reader of information that belongs to Reader.

In other words, you shouldn’t use the transition “Sam drove to the church” if later in your story you are going to mention that Sam had a horrible accident and killed a carload of lawyers while driving to the church.

Don’t cheat readers on the grounds that you wish to surprise them later in the story. Readers know the difference between being cheated and being surprised.