Pacing, for me, is one of the most difficult scene-building techniques to learn. It's not what happens, but how long it takes to happen and what to dwell on AS it happens, that presents a problem. Get it wrong, and your readers can drop off the branch waiting for things to finally resolve. OR they can feel cheated because events come to a too-sudden conclusion and their emotional investment gets chopped off at the knee. It's especially problematic when the cathartic/climactic scene is something that happens very quickly in real time. Somebody gets shot and killed. A flash of enlightenment changes everything, etc. Do any of you have problems with this kind of thing? If so, how do you handle the issue of pacing in your own writing? How do you strike the happy medium between slo-mo floating towards each other along a beach, and an explosion that obliterates the story's central issue in a second or two?
I use a pacing technique I call "the hourglass." This is just like it sounds. To keep the pace of the story quick enough for the reader, I use short sentences on each side of a particular spot in my story where I need to slow things down so the reader understands either the magnitude of what is happening, or some major details. Just the other day I wrote a scene that involved a BLEVE. This is a type of major explosion, which I needed in my story to allow some smoke to be pushed out of the way in a scene so other things could be seen, kind of like how you can use explosives to put out a really bad fire because the explosion consumes all the oxygen of the fire. But how do you describe that? It is over in 1/2 a second? Well to make the action seem real, I use short sentences to depict a lot of action, and give the reader the sense of urgency. But if I kept doing that without the hourglass technique, the reader could easily miss a detail hidden in that fast paced wording. So I add in detail...lots of detail...and slow the story pace way down. I let the reader envision the propane tank shuttering from the release of gas out of the small valve. I let them smell the smoke of the forest fire as it roils across the blistered paint of the propane tank. I let them hear the explosion of a hemlock tree as the resin within reaches its flash point. I slow the pace way down with lots of detail even though in real life the moment in time is a fraction of a second. With this technique, I can then detail what exactly was destroyed by that BLEVE. A few sentences later, I pick the story pace back up, with less detail and the story flows on. With this technique, the reader does not get overly bored reading. They got the most important details and feel they got a slow-motion film for the most destructive part, and then they are back up to speed. And for me, the writer, I was able to make sure my major points were not missed. It even adds impact to that small section of the story.
That's interesting. I would never have thought of using short sentences to achieve a push, but also adding in extra detail to slow it down. I know that short sentences do increase urgency, but the notion of adding in more details or description of what is actually happening ,while keeping the sentences short, is one I'll definitely try. I can already sense this would work. It would keep the interest high, but increase the time for something to take place. Sounds like the writer has things under control with this method. Thanks!
Yes, I do. Monolithic naval-gaze scenes are never my problem. My typical issue is the latter - too little, too fast. I use a technique spiritually akin to the snowflake writing method. Instead of engaging the scene or chapter as problematically short and sudden, I instead look it as nascent. Once I know what the scene is going to do (plot progression, character progression, etc.) I sit on the initial bullet train for a bit and look to see which cars on that train want expansion, want filling out, which naturally slows the pace. To deploy a different metaphor, like a raw egg, I can't really describe what a good chapter with the correct pace for that particular moment in the story "smells" like, given the infinite variables, but I can smell a bad one from a mile.
Ummm...welllllllll...yes and no. (Directed to Jannert) The choke point...the squished glass in the center of the hour glass vial...those sentences can be longer, drawn out, and full of descriptors, because in just like "show, don't tell", when you do that too much, it bogs down the story. That is the effect that a writer wants here though, but surgically so, not an entire scene of it. That way the details were not lost. In my scene a passenger train is barreling down a track, not knowing a forest fire is racing at them at the same time. All the lead up sentences to that point are fast, and short, to give the illusion that something big is about to happen. But then with so much smoke, nothing can be seen, until... The propane tank used for the switch heater, blows up. As it does the smoke blows out of the way, and the engineer can then see the broken rail he cannot roll over. In this small segment of the story, I go into great detail and longer sentences to slow the action down. I cannot afford to have the reader miss the crux of the novel. The track was deliberately damaged to cause a train derailment! But then once that point is made, it is a darn train derailment after all. Everything happens fast, so I pick the pace back up with shorter sentences, and less descriptors. My readers have seen train derailments on the news, and in movies before, they can fill in the gaps. There is no need to slog through descriptor words of chaos, it is chaos after all. The red parts of my text indicate the wider, top and bottom parts of an hour glass. The blue represents the pinch point where I slow the story down. That is why I call it the hour glass technique to story pacing. It is not the end all, be all of story pacing, but it can be used successfully in various parts of a novel or story. I would say, in a 80,000 word novel, in 2-3 places...its a tool to have in your write technique toolbox.
A really great place to use this pacing tool I call the hour glass, is in scenes of amicable domestic relations. A lot of writers fail in giving the reader what they want in this scene because they describe every body movement to get the deed done. That gets really slow and monotonous when the action is supposed to be anything but that! Yet, if the writer skips right over some aspects of this scene, the reader feels cheated. By using the hour glass technique, a writer can possible please the reader. They do that by quick, short sentences leading up to most aspects of the intimate act, but then...say at the moment the characters "join as one", or alternatively, "release ", it can be slowed down to get the emotion involved, and the details of the act itself. But then as the story continues, the descriptive words drop off. The sentences get shorter, and the pace picks back up. In this way, the scene is not a slog of slow paced wording from first kiss to sleeping soundly. But keep in mind, the pinch point could also be where the couple do first kiss, if the writer wants to make the focal point of the scene. (This post was written in such a way as to appropriately accommodate a potential younger forum readership)
I was thinking more in terms of the kind of plot where, say there is a good guy pursuing a bad guy through the novel. Eventually they confront each other, as the reader has been led to expect they will. If one of them just shoots the other without any fanfare (which might suit the plot) the reader may end up feeling a tad annoyed. Yet if you don't want them to stand and have that yak ...why did you do the bad things, oh because of this that and the other, bla bla bla, etc, before the shooting starts ...how would you pace that? So the reader doesn't feel cheated of the big moment they've been building towards for the entire novel?
Oh, okay...my bad... In that case you could use another technique I might employ, but you can only use it once in a novel or story because once it is used, the reader is wary of the technique. Typically this is used at the apex of the story. This is something called "Backpacking". This is where you load your character's backpack up with a host of expectations. So in your highlighted situation, the backpacking would involve making expectations by the character. Lets say it is a female character, and she is being approached by the bad guy as she is held hostage. There is already a bit of tension because the reader is not sure what is going to happen. So in this technique of backpacking, we tell them. Through conversation or via thoughts of the character we interject a few expectations. The female character expects that the stalker is going to strip her clothing off. She expects to get touched. She expects him to kiss her...and she is going to let him. She is going to entice him. She is going to draw him in, and then...knee the guy in the crotch when he does, and grab his handcuff keys as he is writhing for pain! (I like to pick 3-5 things and put it in the characters backpack) along with one plan to get out of the situation they are in. So you give these expectations up with the reader. You do not let them wonder for themselves...you tell them just what is going to happen. Amy could tell by the way the man had put on her handcuffs that he was attracted to her. She could see the look of lust in his eye, and knew she could use his sexual weakness to gain her freedom. She could picture it now, him strolling over to her, his hands, striping off her clothes so he could see her...all of her, and Amy had every intention of letting him see. Every intention of making subtle advances...touches even, and she would even coo as he did, so that he would be inclined to touch her more. That would be her way of drawing him in closer, maybe even for a kiss, she knew she could fake a kiss, at least for a moment when she kneed him hard in the crotch so she could grab his handcuff keys and free herself as he rolled in pain on the floor... They know what is going to happen. The anticipation is absolutely riveting. They are emotionally invested because everyone cheers for the underdog... And then the plan fails. With this writing technique, it HAS to fail. The main protagonist cannot win because you need the element of surprise. That pure shock to the reader. Because you see, they knew what was going to happen, they just did not expect failure to play into this at all. The underdog always win in stories....right? What happened???????? And that is where the hook is set. The reader is defeated along with the character. They feel it emotionally when the stalker deflects the knee to the groin, and instead pulls out a set of leg irons to put on the woman! Now she is really trapped. Suffering snot balls! NO!!!! Here the technique I describe is done, but as a writer, you cannot leave the reader emotionally drained. Through fine wordsmithing, you get that woman out of that spot through another crafty means the reader never suspected. They expected her plan...the backpacking of expectations...to work. But she lost the battle, but yet with one more plot twist, she is on the cusp of winning the war. And your reader is right along with you as you move the story on. No boring the bad guy got killed scene. You backpacked your way to an intense confrontation.
The above sounds goofy because it was a quick set up to describe the technique of backpacking. Written well, it really adds a lot to a scene.
Pacing is not something I concern myself at all with when I'm in the process of writing a first draft; I just get the words out. Sometimes I think the pacing is off and betas think it's fine, so I wait for feedback on that and then go from there. If pacing is a real issue and keeps coming up as a problem in novels you write, it might benefit you to do some work before writing and actually pace everything out in a story board (but I never find that helpful). It really is something to worry about once the novel is finished and if you're having problems knowing when to introduce things/have face offs look to your betas for guidance.
I tend to find the pacing sorts itself out. In a slow scene, such as a character waiting at a bus stop, he may reflect on previous events and notice details in the scene which might otherwise go unnoticed. So long as the statements are interesting in their own right, (either because of the subject matter of the way it's described) this shouldn't be a problem for the reader. Action sequences would have short sentences, with minimal details, to convey a sense of urgency. As for climactic scenes that happen quickly, I try to make them not happen quickly. Someone being shot doesn't have to die immediately. They can be wounded and bleed out, passing in and out of consciousness. Will they survive or won't they? Rather than a sudden revelation, a character can finally piece together the elements of the mystery. He could do this one piece at a time, realizing his previous misconceptions. If you can't find a satisfactory answer to your question, change the question until you can.
@DriedPen -- I like the whole backpack approach you mention. Just curious if you learned that in a creative writing class or something? I've sort of done this before without realizing it, but now being aware of it and knowing how to do it and what it does is pretty helpful. I'm going to try this out intentionally in the story I'm working on. I can totally see that overusing it could kill its effects, but I'm coming up on a spot where it might work great. Thanks for this bit of advice!
