McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Pacing
terroja:
Does anyone else find themselves pacing things way to fast? I find that I say in one page what would take most writers 10 and what would take Stephen King 100.
I don't think this is always a problem. I start nodding off when writers dedicate more than two sentences to describing something, so I tend to only ever give any given character or object in my novel a single sentence of description wherever such brevity is possible (though I do, of course, dwell on fun things like eviscerations).
The downside is that sometimes--especially in the longer chapters where a lot is happening--this pace can be exhausting. I wrote a 4000 word chapter the other day (4000 words for a chapter is positively epic by my standards) and no matter how I tweak it, I can't make it read like it wasn't written by an overzealous crackhead. By the 1000 word mark, every sentence is crashing into every sentence the follows. Reading it feels like running a marathon where the hurtles are all placed three inches apart.
Is there any way I can fix the pacing without making the chapter boring by my own standards?
Dom:
Ha! I've had this happen to me. Totally know what you mean. :D It's caused (at least for me) by the fact that I can read a gazillion times faster than I can write. So I take a good hour to write something I'll read in 30 seconds. So the pacing can get warped.
I've found, for me, making sure I use appropriate punctuation and paragraph-ing will help slow it down a little. For example, if the character speaking or doing something pauses while they are doing that, indicate that with the text. (You might already be doing this). While it won't totally slow things down, it will do so a bit because the reader will pause slightly when the text says there is a pause.
I, personally, have borrowed a technique from Terry Goodkind where I put notable sentences in their own paragraph. Here's an example of one of my opening paragraphs:
--- Quote --- There's a place in rural Illinois in the cornfields between Chicago and Champaign where if you asked the locals if they believed in the supernatural, they would tell you that they knew a Satanist that made devil's food cake that was positively demonic. And they'd grin a little when saying it. If pressed, they'd roll their eyes and tell you you've been watching too many Hollywood films if you believed everyone living the rural life was a backwards illiterate hick. The internet brings everyone together and spreads information and knowledge, don't cha know? And so what if most of the internet connections are still dial up (since DSL is impossible and cable isn't laid down yet, and might never)? It just means it takes a bit longer to pirate the latest country and western song.
Wink.
There really was a Satanist around who made a mean devil's cake. My mother.
"I can hear your teeth rotting," my friend Jay's grandmother said, reaching across the little table to pick up the sticky knife and cut herself a generous slice of double-chocolate fudge devil's cake. "But I don't have any teeth any more, so this is ok for me."
--- End quote ---
Note how the middle two lines are in paragraphs of their own, pretty much. Doing that slows down the pacing a bit.
The second part is to "bulk things up". I do that by adding descriptions if needed, adding character thoughts on the events happening (ie, the character might have a peanut gallery in their head), and adding narration.
::thinks::
::thinks some more::
I keep wanting to ask you if I can see a sample. Would you be against posting or IMing a sample of a few paragraphs so I can see what you're doing? I, and others, might have a better idea of what you should do to fix this if we can see how fast you're going. (If you don't want to, that's ok, just a suggestion.)
terroja:
--- Quote from: Dom on August 28, 2006, 04:55:09 AM ---I keep wanting to ask you if I can see a sample. Would you be against posting or IMing a sample of a few paragraphs so I can see what you're doing? I, and others, might have a better idea of what you should do to fix this if we can see how fast you're going. (If you don't want to, that's ok, just a suggestion.)
--- End quote ---
I don't think the pacing problems would be evident from a few sample paragraphs. You'd have to read the whole chapter, and that's a lot to ask of someone. But I don't mind sending it to you if you'd be willing to help.
Dom:
So it's more of an overall-pacing thing, rather than an intra-scene pacing thing? My pacing problems tend to show up within a few paragraphs...it's sort of like tripping while going down a steep hill; a few false steps and suddenly you're jogging, then tumbling, then falling down the hill.
How much narration do you use? Narration as in, you sum things up in a few paragraphs, rather then going action-by-action as it happens? I've noticed it's easy to get pacing problems if you keep doing "show, don't tell" too vigorously and don't put in enough, or proper, narration in to balance it. If you follow that "rule" too strictly, you end up showing EVERYTHING, and you end up with action after action after action so you end up just running along too quickly with no pause for breath.
(Am I making any sort of sense?)
terroja:
I'm afraid I don't quite get what you're saying.
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