Writing Pacing!

We have yet another writing info post for you all today. Here we’re going to talk about pacing and why it’s important! This is a little hard to explain so please bear with me for a bit!

What is pacing?

Pacing is basically the momentum of the story. How fast or slow events move along to the stories climax and conclusion. This is what keeps the pages turning. But it’s also a double edged sword. You don’t want it to be too fast or two slow. If it’s too fast, it’s harder to and easy for people to get confused because of needed to absorb info so fast. And if it’s too slow, then it’s boring and people probably won’t want to finish it. You can easily compare this to your favorite series on tv. If it’s had seasons, you can probably tell anyone which seasons were good and bad. A lot of the time, seasons are bad due to pacing. If something felt really boring or unneeded, then the pacing was likely very very slow. If it’s super confusing and made next to no sense then it’s probably really really fast. The key is consistency. Let’s say your writing a book with ten chapters and each chapter introduces a plot point. Then chapter 7 rolls around and it introduces three plot points at once.

Whoa what? No, no that’s not good pacing. Assuming chapter five was the mid way, that chapter should have the biggest plot point. But you have limited content for a story. Putting all those points in chapter 7 means the last three chapters will have less content to work with and go by much slower than the others in comparison. You’ll likely try padding them out with detail in a attempt to make them match. But that’s much more noticeable to readers than writers think. Let’s look into some more aspects of pacing to get a better idea.

Elements

1.Word count.

Easy way to think of this: Too high of a word count usually means super slow pacing. Too low of a word count usually means way too darn fast pacing. that writing a lot doesn’t always mean that the writing is good. Word count is a rather mute point with writing and really all comes down to content.

2. How you enter and leave scenes

Enter late and leave early. Enter late by skipping anything unneeded. If your character gets stabbed at the end of a chapter, the next should start with someone already doing something about it. Either they’re gearing to rush to the hospital, or someone is already attempting first aid.

3. Writing style.

This is what stops people from skimming. Be sure to have variety in your sentences. If all of your sentences are the same length or super long with lots of fancy words, things go by slow. Mix up long and short sentences and avoid doing lots of repeats. Don’t put “He/She said” at the end of every piece of dialogue or start back to back sentences with the same word. Repetitiveness is agonizing to read.

4. Rising and falling action

People can only handle so much action. Every single chapter you have shouldn’t have someone dying, or a fight happening. Because that gets tiring. Every once and a while you need to give the readers a break. This is done by either building up to another action point, or having the characters and plot respond to an action point that has already happened. Taking these breathers in between big action points can really even out pacing without overwhelming the reader.

5. Relevance

Look at each scene you have. If it isn’t developing a character, moving the main plot forward, or showing important information, then try to cut those if you pacing is slow. This is what many of the fandom community refer to as filler. Filler is the ultimate killer of pacing.

Act structure

Even if you don’t use detailed outlines for your drafts or go into a lot of writing blind, this is still super important and useful. Act one is obviously the set up and the introduction of whatever the conflict is. This is also where the bulk of world building takes place and the basic establishment of your characters. You want this act to be relatively fast. A slow beginning is a boring beginning. But at the same time, don’t make it so fast that we get the characters entire backstory and world building all in the first chapter. That’s called steamrolling. Steamrolling plows through info to get it out of the way and the reader will either skim over it, or not any of it because it went by way too quick.

Act two is the middle part. This is arguably the hardest place to keep pacing consistent. This is because this is where the turning point of the story is supposed to be. With act one being the conflict, act two expands on the conflict. It raises the stakes and puts into perspective just how far the hero will have to go to solve the issue. If your hero’s quest is to save a princess, this is when they find out the castle isn’t just guarded by a dragon on top of a volcano. But also there’s an army of skeleton knights that can’t die, and the dragon is completely immune to magic. So your mage, (who you were banking on slaying it) is basically useless now, after going through all that trouble it took to get that powerful lightning spell. Whatever was at stake before? Make the stakes even higher here. This is where things can get dangerously slow. Because this is meant to build up act three (the finale) but still be more engaging than act one. This should also test the way your characters react to new things and question what they previously thought.

Act three is where everything falls apart and then resolved again by the end. This act is like rolling down a hill. It’s going to pick up speed as it gets to the end. But you don’t want it to be too fast clearly. This is where stakes and conflict collide. The main confrontations or fight happens with all the complications and usually doesn’t go as planned. That original plan they had to kill the dark overlord? It didn’t work. Oh no, what now? This should also mirror back to ideals from act one. Because this is where they revisit the problem of act one. What has changed since then? Do the characters feel the same? If there’s no change at all, then that means you need to take another look at your second act.

Ultimately you’re pacing should fluctuate between fast and slow. Like a story curve! You know those diagrams you always saw in middle school english class that no one paid any attention too? Yeah that thing. It’s good to put this on paper can really show you where your rising action and falling action should be. Start with the inciting incident and from that point on have rising action till the midway climax. This is climax is the main this that changes things in the story. Many people confuse this with the insisting incident and try to have a climax of an incident they didn’t introduce yet. The inciting incident is what puts the story into motion. But the midway climax should be what changes the perspective of the inciting incident. Like if the the inciting incident is a girls house getting burned down, and she starts looking for who did it. But then the midway climax is that she finds out it was burned because it was cursed and sucking the life out of the people who lived there. But if you try to start with the midway climax and have more story after that, there’s no real added perspective to gain from starting that late in. The characters have less of a chance to grow and change in their mindsets. Don’t hinder opportunities for development!

That concludes the post on pacing! Hopefully you found it somewhat helpful! Stay tuned for the next installment and see you soon fellow explorers!