I REALLY hate to say it, but the best writing strategy I've begun to use is skipping the transition scenes.
Like. Skipping them.
We don't need to know how they walked across the room, just cut to the other side of the room. Just immediately jump there. You can make it smoother, but if you focus on the walking part it's going to feel clunky and you'll get stuck.
In my current project I have a part where she's cleaning up her friend after he fell face-first during a race through the forest, and while I could've talked about how she did it, I just jumped to when she was done.
AND IT FLOWED. SO NICELY.
Right after it is a location change, and I applied the same strategy there too.
Now, this is a first draft example where I'd reword some of it, but I think it gets my point across.
They're not cutting through undergrowth and walking and chatting, they're just there. Last detail from old location, first detail from new location.
Before I started getting jumpy with scenes, I would have definitely tried to figure out a way to not skip between locations at all- to have the camera on the characters the entire time without pause. I'd describe the walk, which is the least important part.
In reality? We don't 100% need their casual conversation. We need either the banter or the plot, and without that, it just drags. So by cutting out the strolling or bickering as she cleaned him up, I skipped it! And it worked!
Think about a movie or a video: it's edited to the highlights. If you've ever watched a YouTuber post a video that had prior been a stream, you have the like 6-hour stream cut down into 30 minutes. It flows nicely but it's not every single second captured, nor are all those removed seconds necessary for audience understanding, even if the chat said something funny.
Minimize your detail first, add that long walk later if you decide it becomes important, but the big scenes don't need a bridge until you finish the big scenes themselves: otherwise, you're about to get nowhere.








