PACING with Shannon Donnelly

PACING...

What speeds up a story or slows it down? There are actually gas pedals and brakes in story telling that help you control the story’s pace. Why do you need pace control?

Too slow a start and you never really hook the reader into the story—it’s boring before it’s even begun. Same goes for slowing things down in the middle—the reader may put down the book and never go back to it. And if the ending is slow, that reader may end up thinking the story was weak, even if you had a killer beginning and middle.

Too fast a pace and you can wear out your reader—or, worse, lose them with confusion and a lack of caring. The biggest danger of this is at the beginning of the story. But this can happen any pace where the story takes off like a rocket, leaving readers behind.

Now getting the just right pace is a unique task for each story.

Some stories need a little more leisurely opening because they are relaxed, intimate character studies—the pace needs to tell the reader to slow down and enjoy the world.

Other books need more speed. Thrillers or action stories have to sweep readers away.

To carry off the pace you need, you have to know the tools to control pace.

What slows a story:

• Backstory
• Flashbacks
• Narrative Description
• Lyrical Prose

Notice that the words “backstory” and “flashback” both have the same word within—BACK.  That tells you these techniques take the story backwards—to do that, they stop the forward pace of the main story. Put a flashback in too early and you risk losing a reader who is not yet fully engaged. Put in too long a flashback and you may also lose the reader—or you could end up with a reader more interested in the flashback than in your main story.

Backstory also stops a story’s forward pace—but you can use a little backstory (at the right place, which means not in the middle of a critical scene) to slow the pace just a touch. Backstory generally fits more comfortably into just before or after a scene—or in places where you need a sentence or two to give the reader vital information to clarify action/events, but not so much that you completely stop the forward momentum. If you think of backstory like brakes, you want to tap lightly instead of slamming the pedal to the floor and holding it there.

Narrative description and lyrical prose are also tools that can help ease a reader into scenes or smooth transitions. But they slow things down. Long sentences do the same thing. So you want to be careful with these. Put a lot of this into a scene and you’re dragging down your pace. But, if you don’t have enough, or leave them out, you can end up with incredible fast pace and utter reader confusion. I see this a lot with fledgling writers who are striving for a fast opening—they get that, but there’s so little description that the reader doesn’t get a chance to meet the characters or settle into the world. There’s not enough for the reader to have reason to care about the characters, and not enough information to start buying into and seeing the world.

Both narrative description and lyrical prose also can be a great way not just to ease readers into a world—particularly into a historical or alternate reality setting—but to also set the mood. If used wisely, they can help you slowly build tension and set the tone of the entire book.

What speeds up the pace:

• Dialogue
• Conflict/Tension
• Showing (Action)
• Clean, tight sentences

As you can see, all the things that speed up pace also create strong scenes. The trick here is not to weave in things that will drag your scene’s pace down. And this means:

* Action needs to have emotion. If you just show a character doing stuff without any emotions underneath, it tends to fall flat and leave readers not really understanding why the characters are doing what they’re doing.

* Conflict needs to matter. Tension in conflict comes from either the reader having more information than the characters have, from an uncertain outcome, or from the suspicion of a bad outcome pending. This is why misunderstandings offer such weak conflict—the reader knows the misunderstanding will be cleared up so there’s no tension. The best conflict always carries within it dire consequences that really matter to the main characters.

* Dialogue has to be punched. Fictional dialogue has to be better than the way folks really speak—you need those lines that we all wish we’d said but only thought, or only thought about later. Instead of watching your favorite movies, turn up the sound, look away from the picture and listen. Better still, go to some plays where dialogue matters more than anything else. Or listen to some great radio dramas. Listen for how the dialogue is dramatized—how every word is made to count. Snappy dialogue with layers of subtext under the words, with wit and strong characterization, takes a lot of work—but nothing moves a story faster.

The biggest danger to beware is putting backstory into any character’s mouth—you can do it, but remember you’re risking slowing a scene. (You also risk the character sounding stiff and awkward since very few folks go around talking backstory in real life.)

Some backstory in dialogue may not be a problem if it’s crafted to fit the character’s voice, mood, and comes with emotions attached. Also, if you’re at a place in the story where the reader needs a little bit of a breather, or if you’ve made the reader wait so long that the reader is ready to kill to finally get that backstory. But do this too early in your story and you could kill your story’s pacing.

This is obviously a lot to think about, and you can’t really manage all of this in first draft. This is why I do an edit to read the story aloud and look at the pacing (of every scene and of the overall story).

Am I moving too slow, too fast? Am I pushing too much detail in (too much lyrical prose or narrative description)? Are there too many characters around (meaning more description to introduce them to readers, which slows things down)?

It's easy to tell a sagging story—it gets boring and my attention wanders. If I’m bored, it’s going to be worse for a reader. I flag scenes and spots that need work—the pacing read is not the time to fix things or I’ll lose the sense of pace that I have for the overall story.

If the pace is too fast, the reader can't follow events and characters—it becomes a confused mess. That becomes another spot to flag (I also have early readers and if they flag spots as confusing, I know I need to look not just at the words, but at the overall pace in that scene).

When the pace is right, the story clicks.  The reader can follow with enough interest to keep going, and it all has an inevitable feel to it.

Shannon Donnelly's writing has won numerous awards, including a RITA nomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the "Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer" contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA's Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: "simply superb"..."wonderfully uplifting"....and "beautifully written." 

Her work has been on the top seller list of Amazon.com and she recently published Paths of Desire, a Historical Regency romance, of which Romantic Historical Lovers notes: “a story where in an actress meets an adventurer wouldn’t normally be at the top of my TBR pile; but I’ve read and enjoyed other books by this author and so I thought I’d give this one a go. I’m glad I did. I was hooked and pulled right into the world of the story from the very beginning…Highly recommended.” Paths of Desire and her other Regency romances can be found as ebooks with on all ebook formats, and with Cool Gus Publishing.

She has had novellas published in several anthologies, has had young adult horror stories published and is the author of several computer games. She lives in New Mexico with two horses, two donkeys, two dogs, and only one love of her life. Shannon can be found online at:

sd-writer.com

facebook.com/sdwriter

Twitter/sdwriter

I hope you will join my class

POV: It’s Not Just a Point of View

Hosted by

Fantasy-Futuristic & Paranormal

Romance Writers

This 4 WEEK class starts Sept. 3rd

For more information click HERE

TOP TEN PACING TIPS by Alicia Rasley

1. Fast is not the only pace! There's measured, slow, leisurely, contemplative, intense, depending on the story and genre. Even inside the book, you can (and probably should) vary the pacing of scenes in different parts of the book for different purposes: Slow down to create suspense, speed up in the climax.

2. Use linking devices, especially the theme and motifs, to connect the three major acts of the book and provide propulsion forward in the plot. A fast-paced plot especially benefits from story links, first, because they help the readers make sense of what's going on by reminding them of the goal and journey, and second, because they leave something in that scene unfinished and unresolved, and that makes the readers need to read on to provide closure.

3. Pacing has a "meta" aspect in the structure of the entire story, but is "carried" by individual scenes. Pacing often requires preparation to get the reader anticipating and dreading what's to come. Scene sequencing (a sequence of scenes that are like a mini-story, rising to a climax/turning point) can increase the pace. For example, you "set up" a conflict in Scene 1 and 2 of a sequence, make danger/action inevitable in Scene 3, and then have it "explode" in fast-paced, high action in Scene 4.

4. Pacing is all about a propulsion forward in the story, so anything that "pulls" the reader into the next scene or makes her speculate about the future will quicken the pacing. The most important technique is to make the reader ask a question in one scene and then postpone the answer for another scene. Another (at the start of the scene) is to have the character state or imply a scene goal, and the attempt to get the goal during the scene and the ultimate success or failure will provide the "pull." For real power in pacing, use Jack Bickham's scene-ending questions (especially "no, and furthermore") to keep the goal pulling the reader and character through more than one scene.
• Yes, but.
• No.
• No, and furthermore.

5. In action scenes, use inter-scene links (like scene goal/question and magic rule of 3 related items or events in the scene) to pull the reader forward, and to give coherence to what might otherwise be a bewildering sequence of action. And you might think about showing emotional motivation and reaction in scenes, so that each major scene event has an emotional component affecting the main character's journey or some aspect of his/her relationships in the story. That gives the "velocity" some thematic depth too.

6. The end of the scene is crucial for pacing. Don't end a scene on a resolution (except maybe the last two scenes in the book), but on some question or issue that won't resolve until at least the next scene. If the scene ending is too "complete," add some tiny question or doubt at the end.

7. Within a scene, to quicken the pace, go physical, tangible, concrete. Whenever you go abstract and "mental," you're slowing the pace down because thought is slower (in rendition) than action. Emotion, by the way, is usually done in a slower pace, as the characters and readers need a bit of time prepare to feel and then contemplate what feeling felt like. So if you're ever told that there's not enough feeling in your story, or that it's "superficial," slow down the pace in emotional scenes and take your time.

8. Use "moments of grace" (like tender exchanges or quiet revelation in conversation) to provide pacing variety and intensify the reader's emotional investment in what is to come. These quieter, slower-paced scenes are especially effective right before a scene of high action.

9. As you revise, aim for the "cleanest" scenes, that is, clean out any unnecessary diversions or distractions, emphasize coherence in metaphors and motifs, use ambiguity deliberately to create suspense but not accidentally to confuse. Try to anticipate reader reaction and use that to tell you what improves pacing and what slows it down. Even a moment's unplanned and inessential hesitation—"Wait. He looks up at the sun? I thought we were inside"—is enough to "break the fictive dream" and slow the reading way down. Make sure there's a clear and logical chronology in the events of the scene. Flashbacks, especially short ones, will disrupt the forward momentum by throwing the reader out of time, so you might want to avoid them in the scenes you mean to be fast-paced.

10. Strong, meaningful sentences are all-important so that the reader won't start skimming. Clarity is essential here because the second readers have to go back and puzzle out what a sentence means, the pacing stops. But also, generic, "voice-less" sentences will bore the reader, and even an instant of boredom is death to pacing. Every word has to count to add to that sense of urgency that makes for effective pacing (of any speed). So challenge yourself to seek out and find the bland, vague, generic, do-nothing sentences and either delete them or improve them.

I hope you will join my class 

Intensive Pacing Workshop--
Two Weeks to the Page Turner
hosted by

Fantasy-Futuristic & Paranormal Romance Writers.

This Two Week Class starts July 2^nd.

For more information click HERE.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alicia Rasley is an award-winning, best-selling writer of women's fiction and regency romance. She teaches writing at two state colleges and in workshops around North America.
Her Website
Twitter:  @aliciarasley