Pacing

[flighty_dreams]

Between the Lines by Jessica Page Morrell is easily my favorite book on writing. It's a snowy day here and I'm just sitting at home, so I thought I'd share an excerpt from the chapter on Pacing:

Pacing differs with the specific needs of a novel, story, or segment of fiction. A far-reaching epic will often be told at a leisurely pace, although it will speed up from time to time during the most intense events. A short story or adventure novel might quickly jump into action and deliver drama. Pacing is part structural choices and part word choices, and uses a variety of devices, like flashbacks and sequels, to control how fast the story unfolds. When driving a manual transmission car, you choose the most effective gear needed for driving uphill, maneuvering the city streets, or cruising down a highway. When pacing your story, you choose the devices that move the scene along at the right speed.

Writers hear many warnings about moving too slowly through events, causing the story to sputter or bog down. But fiction can also rattle along at a breakneck speed, leaving readers unsettled. The delivery and pace of fiction requires variety and a thoughtful approach. Not every novel can move at the same tempo, and not every scene can unfold at the same clip. Sometimes fiction needs to slow so that the impact of what is happening or has just happened can be appreciated by the reader, and sometimes it needs to race along like a runaway steed.

The author also lists the speed of literary devices:

Action: fast
Exposition: slowest, sometimes so slow it's deadly
Description: slow
Dialogue: fast/super fast
Summary: super fast
Transition: medium

None of this stuff is terribly surprising, but it's presented in such a thoughtful way that it makes you think. Or at least it does for me.

Anyone have any suggestions for books/authors that they think have done a great job with pacing? Or have any other thoughts?

Anne Bishop's The Invisible Ring gets me addicted every time I read it, the Stephanie Plum series is always crazy, and Dan Brown (overrated as he may be) certainly delivers on pacing. There are so many great examples, but I'll restrain myself.

There's also a section in this Pacing chapter talking about genre fiction vs literary pacing, and I have some thoughts on that vs online writing, but I figured I'd hold off, unless anyone wants to hear about it. ;-)

Comments

[lunasblues.livejournal.com]

I like Lois McMaster Bujold for pacing. When I pick up a book she has written, it doesn't get set aside until I am done with it.

And for writing advice, though it's mostly intended for nonfiction writers, it's hard to beat William Zinsser's "On Writing Well." I read it yearly and underline often.

[flighty-dreams.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've never read that author. I see she writes romantic fantasy though? Those are a fun mix, I enjoy them. :-) I'll have to check her out. Some other romantic fantasy books I've read are Sharon Shinn's Mystic and Rider and some of Moira J Moore's Heroes series. What's fun about the latter too is it deals with bonded pairs, a Sword and a Shield (mage), and in this series it's the girl that's the warrior while the guy is the mage.

I've heard of that one, and certainly seen it in stores. Seems to be a classic. I'll have to give that one a look as well. Thanks for the recs. :-)

[lunasblues.livejournal.com]

I guess some of her books are romantic fantasy, but I really consider her more straight science fiction, her Miles Vorkosigan books, at least. If you like fantasy, start with "The Curse of Chalion." If you prefer sf, start with "The Warrior's Apprentice."

Enjoy!

[flighty-dreams.livejournal.com]

Ah okay, I just looked her up and happened to see The Sharing Knife series by her, and that's what it was labeled. I guess that particular series is fantasy, but most of her stuff is SF?

I have a TBRead pile 30 books long at the moment, but I'll get to her eventually! ;-)

[fran-fic.livejournal.com]

Pacing is really hard when you are writing I think. I do think about it when I write, but I can't say that I am really 100% fully aware of what I am actually doing when it comes to this, a lot of it is on instinct, sort of... I don't know if that can be good in some cases, or if it's bad.

But when I think too much about how I should pace things I get terribly insecure about it and can't get a word down.

I agree it depends on many things, just as the book said. Not least does it depend on the reader, I think. No matter if you manage to pace it 'just right' for the genre and the type of writing different readers will still percieve it differently. Some are simply more impatient as readers than others.

Personally I usually like things a bit more slowly paced both when I read and when I write. It does depend on what it is, yes, but generally...

[flighty-dreams.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pacing is a tricky thing when writing a long story. I think at least to a certain extent, pacing has to be organic, because it is too connected to other things, such as writer style, tension, suspense and point of view. So yeah a lot of it is just listening to your characters and figuring out your plot, and somewhere in the mess of it all in the back of your head you are subconsciously making pacing decisions.

If instead you are making very deliberate decisions about pacing, then things are much more likely to come out forced, rather than letting them develop organically. I think what it comes down to is, besides some very important decisions when you're doing your major plotting, pacing should be an instinctive thing during your first draft. The deliberate pacing decisions should be made later, when you're editing, and you realize X scene doesn't work, or you need to fill in more of Y here, etc.

Of course that doesn't solve the problem of making sure you're pacing is okay while posting a WIP...

Yes, that's true as well. Readers will tend to skim parts they don't like even if they like the book overall, simply because the style of that genre isn't the type they prefer.

The book says that genre fiction is generally faster paced than literary fiction. It says: "Literary fiction focuses more on language, character development and inner conflict. Theme is often important, and endings can be more ambiguous than in genre fiction."

Hmm, I can see some similarities to online fiction there, ironically. :P

[fran-fic.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a pretty good description of how it usually is when I write. That is just how things have become, and I don't always think through these things in a very deliberate way. I don't think about it at all I guess when writing the first draft, no. I change a lot when I edit stuff, yes, but I'm still rather insecure about pacing and many other similar aspects of writing. And that's true, it's even trickier when you're posting a WIP. Sometimes you can't really tell what pacing you need until you have the whole picture.

Yes. I think comments made on 'Spliced' show this rather well for example, how people percieve pacing. I remember someone was rather impatient with that some things between Alex and Matt progressed slowly, whereas I had not been thinking about the progress being frustratingly slow in the same way at all. So it's hard to see what is the right pace for the story when people can percieve it so differently.

Hmm, I can see some similarities to online fiction there, ironically. :P

Actually... yes :-)

[flighty-dreams.livejournal.com]

That's a good sign then! You've found your writing rhythm--it's all those years of practice paying off. ;-)

Yeah, you're right. For some ppl it feels like it's been forever and ever and things are going so slow, but other ppl are fine with it. I think the individual's preferences definitely play a role in that. What it comes down to is writing the story at the pace you feel is right as the author... and yeah, you can always change it in editing later...

[triptyx.livejournal.com]

Mhh I have a book that I think has incredibly good pacing, it still has me reading it from beginning to end now, as 17 years ago when I 'discovered' in my parents library:
The author is Friedrich Dürrenmatt and the first book I read was The Judge and His Hangman, but the sequel is also very good, Suspicion. Both are in written in German, I dont know if they suffer from the translation, and both are detective novels, I dont know if you like that.
Both have very fast pacing, but they slow down for characterization and inner conflict, as you quoted in your response to Fran.

As an example in slow paced but, in my opinion, very good pacing are the novels of Sharon Kay Penman, she has nice historical novels (British History), and historical mysteries in her Justin de Quincy series.

[flighty-dreams.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've never heard of those. They may have been translated in English and just haven't been talked of much, who knows. It sounds good, that there is a balance for character development and inner conflict--as much as I do enjoy some action, those are the things I really am most invested in in books. I'm all about the characters. (As if my writing doesn't show that. XD Low on plot, heavy on characters!)

I'll have to look those up too. :D