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#7: Pacing

By KLCtheBookWorm - Posted on 17 January 2010

What the Heck is Pacing?

Pacing is an often overlooked element of a story. Have you ever put a story aside because it dragged? Were completely confused because of the rapid speed? Agitated because there was nothing but action, action, and more action? In short, pacing is the managing of internal pieces for the story's best interest (and the reader's continued pleasure).

There are two levels of pacing: the pacing of a scene according to what the characters are doing in it, and pacing the entire story by placement of scenes. Scene pacing determines if it is an "up" or a "down" scene, and that gives you a clue to where in the story structure it belongs. The ultimate goal of the story is to keep increasing intensity while giving the reader slight pauses to catch her breath.

So why have we left the discussion on pacing to the editing portion? Once you have your entire story completely written is when you can see the work as a whole and judge individual scenes against the rest. You're looking for everything that doesn't fit the story so you can cut it out of the way, and arrange what is left for the best effect. Short story or novel, every sentence counts.

Increasing Intensity

In Writing Tutorial #11, I explained that you need to have scenes and narration, but the majority of your work should be in scenes--no matter what the length of the final product. Scenes are the muscle of your story, and how you group them makes a difference on the pace of the story.

Most advice tells you to break up the action with slower scenes and leaves it at that. While technically true, it neglects the basic shape of your plot.

Your plot of steady rising to the climax, but that straight line is misleading. It should look more like this:

As you can see in this diagram, many of your scenes (whatever your judgment call is on how many) should move the story up, increasing the intensity. Then you place a scene that drops the level of intensity just slightly. For example: in Family, Friends, and Foes's fifth chapter starts with (1) Charley's upset chase after Throttle, leads into a (2) scuffle with a biker gang, drops to a (3) round of drinks and conversation between characters just meeting each other, and ends with (4) Sparks' abduction. Just in this chapter you can see how two scenes move up, a scene moves down, and the final scene of the chapter moves up again.

You read over the entire story, but what should you look for? Look out for long passages that only do one thing, like describe. Try breaking it up with dialogue. For very long chapters, look for anything that breaks the linear flow of the story is probably a good place for a chapter break.

Individual Scenes

Now you know you will need up and down scenes, but how do you know what scenes to use for which? That falls to the purpose of the scene. Each scene has at least one purpose (sometimes can have more than one) that the author wants to convey to the reader. The scene of Charley's chase after Throttle purpose was to give the reader background information on their relationship and to bring the adult Biker Mice characters to the tavern. Its purpose does move the intensity level up, but not as much as Sparks' abduction.

You decide on the purpose, and then you must decide if it should be "long" or "short." Length of the scene does refer to how long it is compared to the rest of the work. But when trying to decide the length, consider your readers' attention spans instead of pages. Novelist's Essential Guide to Crafting Scenes by Raymond Obstfeld offers these general guidelines:

When to go short:
Information dumps: plot - don't explain each small detail if the main issues have been dealt with. Try giving the information in a scene that looks like it has a different purpose.
Information dumps: technical - give enough detail to make the scene believably realistic, not to be a how-to guide on the subject.
Scenic descriptions - give the reader an impression, not smother him with details.
Erotic versus sex - erotic means the actual physical sex written out, and should be kept short so the scene doesn’t become comical. Sex scenes for Obstfeld are designed to show the nature of the relationship and focus on more than just the bed action, so usually end up longer.

When to go long:
Conversation - discussions that are designed to reveal character.
Emotional - don't end the scene at the heart of the emotional outburst. Keep going to see what the characters are made of.
Suspense - tantalize the reader by dangling the scene's climax just out of reach. (31 - 35)

Once you know the purpose of the scene, you can decide how you're going to convey that purpose. Once you know those two you can decide where it fits best in your plot.

Where these guidelines also help is when you have found a scene that isn't working in your plot structure. A rewrite of the problem scene using the guidelines can changed the format of the scene, yet still keep it true to its purpose and better fit it into the plot.

There are no hard and fast rules on how to determine if the pace is perfect. If you can get someone else to read aloud to you (a writing group for example), you can often find the problems in how they read what you have written. Pay attention to how your beta readers feel about the pace. Usually cutting out everything that is not necessary tightens the story. Going back over it with pace in mind reinforces that tightness.

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