Story Pacing & Why It Matters
Greetings and salutations Scribblers! I hope everyone is feeling good and taking care of themselves. Drink your water, get some rest, keep taking your meds. Whatever you need, keep making time to do it. Today’s video is going to tackle the element of Pacing in a novel. We’ll talk about what it is, why it’s important, and give you some strategies to improve the pacing in your manuscript.
So first, what is pacing? In writing, pacing is how quickly the narrative moves from start to finish. You’ve probably read books that were slow to start, or maybe get bogged down in the middle, or you’re wondering if the author forgot to submit a chapter because all of a sudden it’s over and things just wrapped up too quickly. If you’ve ever experienced these things as a reader, then you’ve noticed that the pacing of the novel felt off.
Now, it's important to note that sometimes, a novel is moving slow on purpose–there are different styles of writing and different cultural conventions, so you always need to take things like that into consideration. Sometimes it is the pacing, and sometimes it’s just that you aren’t used to that style or the writing conventions of that style or genre. So always keep that in mind and think critically about why the pacing of the novel might not be working for you.
A great way to understand the basics of pacing is to use a plot graph. If you look at the exposition, it’s pretty level–this is a steady part of your novel, not fast, not slow–just right and it doesn’t last too long. Next we have the inciting incident and the rising action–this is sloping up, so it’s growing, it needs to keep moving at a steady marching pace. We get to the top of the arc and we have that dark night of the soul–it levels out and we linger there for a minute developing that tension that’s going to drop us into the falling action and propel us to the resolution.
You’ll notice there are usually more events and things happening in the rising action than in the falling action, but they get equal weight. The rising action is often going to get more page time, it's’ going to be roughly 50% of the novel. But the falling action happens slowly, most writers will really slow down that pace and let us linger and wallow in the character’s anguish and despair as they lose all hope and try desperately to overcome their obstacle. Another way to think about it how in movies, we get to that final battle or Frodo having to throw the ring into the fires of Mount Doom and everything slows down, we get those long shots of character expressions or the slow-motion action shot. This is done on purpose and using pacing means you’re doing it on the page too.
As the writer, it’s important to be able to anticipate what your audience is going to want to go by quickly and what they’re going to want to linger in and enjoy. There is no magic formula to learning this and there is no tried and true constant answer. It’s going to vary based on myriad factors. One of the best ways to learn about pacing is to read a lot of books and specifically look at whether you thought it was too slow, too fast, or just right. It’s a bit of a Goldilocks situation, right. If you have reading buddies and they’ve read the same books ask how they felt the pacing was. Whether you feel the same or different, you’ll get to discuss why and those discussions are what really lead to learning. You can also look at a reading tracker app like Storygraph. One of the questions it asks when you leave a review is how you felt the pacing was, so you can compare your response with other readers.
Hitting those pacing beats will really make an impact on your reader. If you move forward too quickly they’ll get frustrated and maybe even feel confused because there isn’t enough there to satisfy them. On the other hand, you don’t want to get so entrenched in the details that your reader feels bored. This can border on info-dumping which is something you generally want to avoid.
So how can you ensure that you’re keeping the pace moving forward and not getting stuck? One thing you can do is to look at each scene and ensure that it is providing new and intriguing information about the character and plot–if you’re seeing redundancy in your scenes, your pacing might be too slow.
Another tip is to pare down your character’s movement to the essentials. For example, if they’re coming home from work, we don’t need to know every detail of them walking in the door, taking off their shoes at the door and changing in the slippers before hanging their keys on the keyhook and picking their briefcase back up so they can walk down the hall and into the kitchen where they open the fridge and get out the water and put it on the counter then go to the cupboard and get a glass…you get the idea. Instead you could potentially skip right to them getting water and leaning against the counter after a rough day at work.
Remember–it depends on what you want to emphasize and the experience you want the reader to have. I notice a lot of writers start out this way on their first ever manuscript. A lot of the page time is dedicated to telling us what the character is doing without including internalization or emotions. It starts to read a bit like an incident report. So part of pacing is keeping the balance of painting the picture of what the character is doing while also trusting the reader to make logical connections based on typical behavior patterns. You can also sometimes sum things up in a single telling line–Sally went through the motions of getting ready for bed. As she snuggled under the covers….
In this example, we’ve skipped over Sally changing into pajamas, brushing her teeth, or doing her nightly skincare routine. We probably don’t need that–what we do need are her thoughts as she goes to bed and processes the fact that Kelly just broke up with her.
If you’re a visual learner like me, you might want to pick up a copy of your favorite book, get out your highlighters and post it flags and have a go at dividing the book into sections. I did this early on in my writing career with VE Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. I created a spreadsheet that went chapter by chapter keeping track of chapter length vs the amount of time that was passing in the novel vs what part of the novel it was. I use the four act structure to plot, so I deconstructed this novel to look at what chapters and pages fit into each act.
My big takeaway was that the first three acts of the novel cover weeks–a lot of time goes by, but the last act, that falling action covered less than 24 hours total and was given about 100 pages of real estate in a 400 page novel. There were also 30 pages devoted to the main fight between Kell and the Dane Twins. This was fascinating to me and know once I get through a few drafts, I evaluate how much page time is being given to each part of my plot. In most cases, now that we’ve spent 300 pages getting to know our characters, the reader wants to get into the nitty gritty of their struggle and their choices.
Like I mentioned before, pacing is definitely one of the goldilocks of writing. What’s just right for one reader might be too slow or too fast for another. The best thing you can do is to get feedback on your manuscript from your trusted writing friends and to have discussions about other novels where the pacing did or didn’t work for you.
The Scribbler’s Den Revision Course–Take your Manuscript from Zero Draft to Hero Draft has a section that addresses the pacing of your novel by walking you through creating a reverse outline as well as taking a practical look at the actual time your novel takes by creating a calendar of events. Both of these exercises are part of the course.
As always, your mileage may vary! Take what helps and leave what doesn't!What are your tips for keeping the pacing on track in your writing? Let us know in the comments below!
