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.    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:

   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."

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]

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.)

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.

[Dom]

Hm, sorry.  Sometimes I nest thoughts together strangly and they come out as a mess when I type them.  Let's try this again.

I meant to say...when I write, there's two types of pacing problems I can have. 

One type happens within a single scene or chapter, where the action just keeps going and going and going, and because the sentences are short, it runs together like you described in your original post.  In the end, you have a scene that fits on 1.5 pages, but the same scene, if it was written by another author, might take up 4, or 10 pages.  The 1.5 pages, since it's so short, goes by very quickly when a reader reads it, too quickly for the reader to process.

The other type of pacing problem has to do with the overall story.  IE, maybe you have the first two chapters down, and they read ok when you stop to read them, but the next three chapters drag on, before you hit the middle of the book where a lot of action picks up again.  Those three dragging chapters might be considered a pacing problem, but it's more of an overall-story pacing problem, as opposed to a more "local" pacing problem.  Make sense?

Addressing the first type of pacing problem, the "local" or "intra-scene" pacing problem, where short sentences run together...I brought up the "show don't tell" rule, and narration.  "Show don't tell" is a common writing "rule" that gets kicked around writer's circles.  A lot of new authors write about things that happened "off scene" in their story, instead of "showing" the reader what happened directly.  This tends to make a story rather boring, because you are "hearing" the story "second hand", instead of "watching as it happens".  Sometimes that rule gets pounded into a writer's head too firmly, and they end up "showing" everything, with little to no narration.  This can cause pacing problems.

"Telling" is narration.  It's the text you write when you say, "Thirty days ago the storm killed my city.  It crawled out of the sea like a stringy underworld kraken and devoured everything I knew like a starving dog cleaning out its kibble bowl."

 "Showing" is action.  It's "I watched from the second story as the storm surge rose up and breached the wall, hitting the concrete with a slap.  It scared me, and I trembled near the window, wanting to hide, but too frightened to look away."

If you have too much "showing" going on, and your sentences are short, you end up with a laundry list of events that happen.  I've found that as a reader, I start reading faster and faster and faster when I've managed to do something like this, and it totally screws up the pacing.  If you have something like this happening to you, you might be lacking bits of narration, where you step back from the action for a moment, and insert some sort of thought or summary related to the scene but not directly involving step-by-step action or dialogue, to bulk it up.

When I'm having this problem, I go back in, and between lines of dialogue or actions or events happening, I insert opinions that my point of view character is having.  Say the character is running down the street after an enemy.  You might pause to note that one of the neighbors plants marigolds in the cracks of the sidewalks, and that your character feels it makes the neighborhood weird, before going onto the next action, where the enemy pulls out a gun from his pocket.  Inserting this little note about the sidewalk or something your character notices or some opinion on a subject that your character has pads a scene and bulks it up.  It breaks up the action, and bulks the scene up so everything isn't just happening on top of everything else.  It spreads out the events that are happening so the reader can catch their breath.

I don't know if this is what's happening to you, but I've had it happen to me, and this is one of the things I do to combat it, which is why I'm throwing it out here...

Anyway, here's hoping I make some sort of sense this time.    I'm being fairly abstract, so...::shrug::

[terroja]

I think what's happening in my work, while different, is similar enough that your advice will come in handy. Thanks much.

[Kalshane]

Dom has a point about trying to get inside your character's head more and give the reader an idea of what the character feels about what is happening to him, rather than just an endless list of what happens.

As an aside, however, I would hesitate to mention the marigolds during a chase scene, unless they're relevant or you're intentionally writing an off-beat tale. Otherwise your reader might get confused trying to figure out why the marigolds are important and lose track of the real story or get annoyed that you're discussing marigolds then.

Compare: "The mugger sprinted along as if the hounds of hell were on his heels, rather than a slightly pudgy college student with a big stick. Granted, Marcus thought, the stick had some intimidation going for it, but the hell hounds wouldn't be struggling against a stitch in their sides, and have that whole sharp, nasty teeth thing going for them on top of it. Not to mention the fiery eyes of doom angle. Given the choice, three out of four common thugs would probably pick the guy with the stick."

Versus: "The mugger took a hard right, ducking between a set of houses. Marcus glanced at Mrs. Henderson's marigold patch as he passed. They certainly were a cheery addition to the otherwise drab and uniform neighborhood."

The first one--though probably taking a much further detour down smartass lane than it sounds like you're going for-- does, IMHO, work better for the chase scene because even though it's not directly about Marcus chasing the mugger, it's a commentary on the situation. The second has nothing to do with the situation at hand, and commenting on the marigolds is better served in a slower scene and/or "establishing shot" sort of situation unless you're trying to be the next Douglas Adams and regularly go off on amusing tangents.

Of course, not a professional,  so my opinion is hardly gospel.

[Dom]

I agree, the marigolds was a bad choice of example.  But yeah...it was 2AM!

[terroja]

I do my best work at 2AM. Looking over the chapter again, I realize that the pacing is actually better than it is in most of my other chapters. I was just being a deluded nitwit yesterday.

[Kalshane]

I agree, the marigolds was a bad choice of example.  But yeah...it was 2AM!

Well, like I said marigolds have their place. And your point was a good one. I just wanted to mention the whole relevency angle. I've seen people try to add "depth" to a scene and end up being distracting instead.

[novium]

I would find someone who loves you and reads a lot. Then, ruthlessly take advantage of them and force them to read the offending chapter. This may seem like a cop out, but let me explain.  This sort of reminds me of my first attempts at 10+ page essays... at least, from what you said, I think i had a similar problem. I would have more than enough to say, but I had a really difficult time with how to pace it; what to expand on, what to keep concise. The first few page or two would be ok. But then i'd start drawing out a few points way past what they should have been and interspersing them with facts fired at high speed. It made the damn things very disjoined and jarring, and let's not even get into the ugliness of choppy and overly-flower-y sentences.

Someone who is more of a reader than a writer should be able to point out "you drew this out too long, i found it dull" or "i want to know more about this, it went by so fast I don't understand it..." or "you need something to segue from this topic/sentence to that one."
from that, i'd look at the shaky sections and work out an outline (serving as a timetable of sorts instead of as an inspiration).  I am not recommending this as a permanent solution, but I think after successfully editing a monster chapter or two into shape, you should be better off when it comes to writing/pacing/editing them yourself (and in your head).

anyway. that's my two cents, and whether it's value for money...well, i can't say. but best of luck

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? 

[Cathy Clamp]

I know you withdrew your initial concern, but one of the things I use to help me with pacing is to think of the book as a "made for TV" movie. I don't know if this'll work for you, but it does for me. Each chapter is a scene in the overall broadcast. At the end of the chapter, there's a commercial break. The goal of the chapter end is to ensure that the reader turn the next page (or in the case of a movie, return to the set after their bathroom/snack break.) My overall goal is for the reader to NEVER put down the book until it's done.

IMO, the pacing is wrong if there's an opportunity for the reader to put down the book. Whether that reason is because it's going at such a breakneck speed that they need to catch their breath, or it's moving so slowly that they can pick it up again at a different time and not lose the flow.

In a fast moving scene, you might consider the commercial break in the MIDDLE of the scene--at a "cliff-hanger" spot where they don't know what will happen next, rather than ending with resolution of the momentary crisis. Make 'em think, "Oh, just a few more pages before I turn out the light... I just want to see if the car goes over the cliff."  Then you've got them for good. 

If the pace is moving too slow, then speed it up with a "temporary crisis" that has nothing to do with the plot--very much how Jim suggested in his blog entry about the "swampy middle". Some movement forward, whether it has to do with the primary plot, is often enough to get things moving. I just added in a bit where one chapter felt swampy so I had a furniture delivery show up when the heroine is exhausted and wants nothing more than to go to bed. She'd forgotten about the delivery in the press of the crisis. But it was a bad spot for the READER to hit the sack and I got to beef up a secondary character through a two page conversation (that tied into later events and added a "da-dum" ending on the chapter.)

Just a few random thoughts... 

[Darrington]

I know my reply won't be nearly as in-depth as some of the other great ones presented here, but I thought I'd add in a word or two from my experience.  I used to have massive issues with pacing (I've gone to the other side of the spectrum since at times) when I first started out writing.  I was going through things too fast, some of that 'show don't tell' stuff. Some. Ha.  Lots.  Anyway.  I ended up fitting more detail into the scene, describing surroundings and thoughts and such (okay, now I realize I'm going into the same information as some of the others on here), and that helped pace it a bit more.  Of course, now I can get stuck in adding too much detail into some scenes, and make it drag on forever.  And the sad thing is, I still on some level believe it's necessary, in some of my writing at least, to include that...

Anyway, there's some of my thoughts on the subject.  Even if the issue's been resolved already, thought I'd just chime in.