McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Pacing
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. :D 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.
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