Pacing is one of those illusive elements of the writing craft. You don't want to forge ahead at such a breakneck pace that your readers are gasping, but you also don't want to bore them on such a long amble that they put your book down and move on to the next one.
It seems like some writers are naturally blessed with the ability to perfectly pace a scene. They know when to slow down, when to speed up, and when to make time stop and hang in midair.
If you're not naturally blessed with pacing genius, how in the world is it something you can develop? This week, I'll share with you a few examples of ways to get your pacing under control.
First, my ultimate and overarching advice is to urge you to read. Read in your favorite genre, read outside it. Read anything you can get your hands on - whether it's a newspaper article or a five volume novel. Reading allows you to learn the pacing techniques of other writers firsthand. Some will be spot-on, others way off, and more still somewhere in the middle. If you read them all, you learn what works, what doesn't, and how to fix that in your own piece.
The second piece of advice is to understand your scene. If you're writing a romantic scene or a developmental moment in the plot, you'll want to slow down. If you're writing a chase scene with the killer, or a heated argument, you'll want to turn the pace up a notch.
Understanding what each particular moment in your novel needs is crucial. After you've identified, however, you then need to know what to do to get the desired slowing or quickening pace you're after.
Here are some ideas:
If you're slowing down - 1. Back up. Give readers descriptive passages of the setting, the characters, and what's happening. It's like panning the camera wide in a movie. We're able to see more of the surroundings so the shot can stay on the screen longer. There's more to hold our attention. 2. Get in their heads. Make sure you check in with your main character or other characters in the room and get their feelings, thoughts, and ideas on the page. This can be used to break up dialogue or to give readers a moment to digest the new plot information with the character.
If you're speeding up - 1. Get in the thick of it. Focus on the here and now in the scene. This is not the time for your protagonist to notice how long McFarlan Street is or to think back on the girl he met last night. Adrenaline is high, things are happening, and that's what your character and your reader care about right now. 2. The senses matter. Allow us to taste the blood of a split lip. Let us hear the roar of the approaching train. Give us the smell of the burning fuse. These concrete sensory images bring readers closer to the scene, and when you highlight the right sense with the right piece of information, the tension soars and your pace quickens.
One final snippet of advice: Write with your scene in mind. If you're in the middle of a fight scene, stick to short sentences - yes, even fragments. Strengthen your verbs and ditch all adjectives and adverbs - yes, all of them - to keep things moving.
On the flip side, for a slow scene, use longer, more fluid sentences and paragraphs. You can get away with more details and more adjectives and adverbs (though please try to cut as many as you possibly can. Remember the advice of the great Stephen King, "The road to hell is paved with adverbs".)
Above all, make sure you picture your scene while you're writing. If you're in tune with your characters while you write, they usually reveal the details, thoughts, senses and verbs you need at that given time. Remember, all you need to be a great writer is within you. You simply have to uncover it.
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