#on pacing

[lady-fey]

Pacing is the art of telling a story as quickly as possible without it feeling rushed or like you've left something out.

[nyeto]

fooled around w chess club folk

talked to paul a bit planned for thursday loosely

love is patient so

should i ask him to stay w me longer that day?

i dont want anything i just want warmth and his presence

but if its too fast should i consider that

or just giv him the chance to say no

[nyeto]

dont wanna wait more till the next interaction

patience is hard

just want some commitment

a promise of no eternal ghosting lays me to sleep

i want to know if this will work and when

[redaloves]

Pacing is the speed of your story. Not the length. ;)

[redaloves]

I’m going to write something up myself on pacing but I found an interesting website that had some great articles/posts/whatever-you-wanna-call-it.

Felt like sharing for those who love reading about writing technique stuff. :)

Pacing can be manipulated and it should be--to best serve the story. If you looked at the story’s pacing on a graph, it would resemble an askew EKG. The rhythms wouldn’t be uniform. But there would be definite rhythms. As a story progresses, the intensity should grow stronger. The obstacles become more difficult, the setbacks and consequences of the characters= failure to fulfill their novel goals are harder to overcome. This constantly growing intensity is why so often you’ll see books published where the early chapters are longer and more dense, and later chapters are shorter and more dramatic. As the characters/readers move through the novel, they pitch and roll. Take two steps forward, and one back. Climb a little higher, and then stumble again. And on each successive attempt, it’s harder to climb and they meet with more resistance—inside and out (internal and external conflicts). But they keep going and, at the moment when it seems they (which has become "we" because the author has succeeded in accomplishing reader identification by using our emotions and we now feel "we" are the characters) can’t succeed—we’re body-slammed—and then the unthinkable happens. We find the key to the forgotten door that was foreshadowed earlier in the novel. We use the key, and struggle . . . and struggle . . . and, finally, we taste success. A writer relies on skill to develop the right pacing for each individual project. But also relies on instinct. On the author’s inner ear that tests the rhythm to make sure the flow has the right sound and intuitive feel. At times, instinct and learned skills will be at odds. Go with your instincts. There isn’t a writing rule that hasn’t been successfully broken. The trick is in knowing them, and knowing when to break them. Know when to shift and speed up or slow down your novel’s pacing.   

Full article here - check it out, has some great techniques and information on when to slow your pacing or when to speed it up and how.

[tarysande]

On Pacing

Every once in a while someone'll send an ask or a fanmail and I get paragraphs into a private reply... and then just think, "Good lord, I will make a post about this, and then I'll be able to see what I said later."

Bandit-queen-chaos asked me about pacing (for them it was in the context of comics, which I have very little experience with, so if anyone else has more to add, or different things to add, please feel free).

So, I'm coming at this from the POV of someone with experience in fiction (mostly novels, with some screenwriting and playwriting). Pacing? Is hard. At least for me, characters are actors who enjoy hogging the spotlight; they'd sit and talk about the weather for eighty-two pages if I let them, and, alas, those eighty-two pages of weather-talk (unless it is a story in which the weather is really, really important) are probably going to slow the story down to a crawl. Or, worse, make it start sliding backward.

With original fic, pacing is extra important because you're creating the source material. You're choosing the important bits and (perhaps reluctantly) killing the darlings of scenes that aren't quite necessary. So, how to tell what's necessary? Because that necessity is where pacing is born.

A story is a beginning, a middle, an end. That's the biggest picture; the broad strokes. Then it's time to start blocking in the scenes: again, in pretty general terms, you want a glimpse of life-as-it-was, followed by an inciting incident that changes everything and forces your protagonist to step into the action. From there you've got rising action, usually a setback or two, some reveals of information (usually spurring on further action) and ultimately the climax and denouement. I know it sounds basic; it is. I mean, most fiction follows some version of this formula.

The key is in the details. The magic is in the details. That itty-bitty brush you take out to paint sun-dapples on leaves or droplets of seafoam flying above a wave. It's easy to get carried away. The details is where those eighty-two pages of weather will come from, if you're not careful.

I don't know how other people figure out what important details to include, but for me it comes down to asking questions. 

What happens in this scene?

What's different at the end than at the beginning?

What new information does this scene give the reader?

How does this scene advance either the plot or highlight necessary character development? (Sometimes this can be subtle; not everything is explosions. But it needs to be specific.)

What happened before this scene and what happens next? Looking at those points, is THIS scene actually necessary? (See above questions, re: new information and/or character development.)

Is this scene too much like any other already-existing scenes?

When reading through the scene is there a place where you stop? Pause? Get bored? Go make a cup of tea? Because that is the place where your pacing has failed you: good pacing means someone's with you until the end of the scene/chapter/section. 

Here's where ruthlessness comes in. All scenes should be driving the story onward. "The characters talk" isn't enough action to propel the story forward. If you can even start to say, "Well, maybe this isn't necessary..." it's not necessary, and you should cut it. Ouch. I know. 

It is harder to pace a WIP than a complete piece. Because completed drafts can be edited. ALL HAIL EDITING. Editing gets a bad rap, sometimes. Maybe because it's not perceived to be as much fun as that initial creative process that spills out on the page as a draft? Me? I love editing. I love refining. I love taking something that, sure, maybe looks okay and getting to make it look great. Again, I don't do this as much with fanfiction as I do with original fic. I write a lot of WIPs with fanfic, and although I edit each chapter, posting as I go means I don't get to buff and polish the entire work. Original stuff gets edited on every level, from the broadest to the finest details. Multiple times. And from multiple angles.

As to the specifics of pacing a comic? Well, you've got pictures doing a lot of the talking for you; let them do the heavy lifting. Let them show to avoid having the words do the telling. Start with your basic broad strokes (beginning-middle-end), and then go back to that grade-school inciting incident-rising action-climax formula. Boom, you've got a story. Add details sparingly, and keep them important. Ask those questions. Let things be simple before you make them complicated, especially in the beginning, when you're figuring things out. There'll be plenty of time for sprawling epics with millions of characters and a dozen subplots later!

[not-poignant]

How do you get the pacing of your stories to work out so well? I know that you outline, but how do know whether a scene/chapter will be longer or shorter than you think? I've been working on a multi-chaptered work, and I know when I want certain events to occur, but a few times, I've been stuck trying to find ways to fill up needed space before I get there. ~MK

If you’re writing and feel like you are just trying to get from major point to major point (or sometimes you feel like this), then generally, whatever you write between those points will be boring and/or poorly paced.

Stories aren’t just the major moments, and some will argue that stories aren’t even the major moments, but the smallest ones. I.e. the moment before a sex scene where the characters are getting onto the bed - Gwyn scrambles and it’s always a bit ungainly, and Augus is always graceful. You say things, significant things in those moments, and you have to learn how to want to say them about your characters, because that’s where you find the pacing between the bits you really want to tell, or the characters really want to tell.

For example, the trows were an example of an element I employed to keep some of the ‘in between’ moments more interesting. They quickly became some of my favourite non-verbal characters. Two befriended Augus, and they’re mischievous and fun and like that he’s Unseelie, because they have Unseelie cousins and they miss them. Or, we get that sweet scene where Gwyn goes to them to leave them coded messages so they can still feel like they’re stealing their silver even though everyone knows that they are not.

In between moments give scenes like…Gwyn listening to Augus sing and realising he’s in love with him. That ended up being a major scene coming out of something really small that was a ‘space filler’ (though I cringe at the term, because if you’re writing filler, don’t write it. Like, skip ahead. Put in a chapter break. DON’T DO IT.)

Actually yeah here comes my main point - don’t ever, EVER write space filler or filler of any kind. Ever. Change your narration style if you have to, tell the audience there will be jumps in the timeline, but - and I say this as a writer who is perfectly aware of how much she writes and rambles in her works - don’t write filler. If you ever feel like ‘this is the stuff I have to write to get from point A to point B,’ STOP WRITING IT and critically reassess why it’s making you feel that way.

There’s a difference between ‘I don’t want to write this scene because it’s hard’ and ‘I don’t want to write this because I just want to get to the good bit.’ Your whole story should be good bits! If it’s not, learn how to fall in love with your story again. All of it. And your characters especially, because they will get you through those gentler, more subtle bits that other people might write off as filler. They are some of the most enriching spaces you can have in a story! Sometimes I wish I had more space in which to just…write my characters gently doing things - polishing armour, reading a book, looking up at the ceiling in thought, having a conversation that seems insignificant but isn’t, because it’s telling us something about that character.

I don’t often know how long a chapter will be really. There have been ones I thought would be short, and ended up 7000 words longer than I’d planned (my current chapter is doing that to me, a lot have), and then there are chapters that I think will be really long (usually towards the end) that end up several thousand words shorter. There are scenes that I think need to be long, and it turns out they don’t need to be because the characters say everything in a few lines. There are scenes that shouldn’t have happened because they weren’t planned for, but then characters do what they want, usually while flipping the bird and laughing at you at the same time.

I do outline, but three paragraphs per chapter is not enough to really see the twists and turns in the labyrinth that is a multi-chaptered story. That really only does let me know the ‘big bits.’ That being said, I even chapter plan for small moments, to anchor and ground me. I suppose that’s because, to me, there’s no such thing as an original plot really. So the big bits are always derivative of what’s gone before - epic high fantasy, and so on. That’s why I live through the characters, because your original characters (or your original takes on pre-existing characters) are your own, unique, and belong to no one else. So…those spaces where I’m spending time with the characters or in an original setting are my own, and I cherish them.

But… some tricks in the meantime, so you can learn how to avoid writing filler wherever possible:

- jump ahead. Use breaks in your chapter. I use a single asterisk usually at the end of conversation, teleportation, rest, or a decisive thought by a character. I.e. Gwyn thinking ‘I’m determined to do this’ is a good place to put a chapter break and skip ahead.

- If it feels boring to write, it will be boring to read. Remember, boring is different to hard. I have things I HATE writing because they’re hard for me (scenes with more than three characters - I’ve just struggled over a six character scene which I loathed, because urgh, six characters in a scene), but that’s not boredom. Boredom is ‘I just want to this next, exciting bit.’ Put the scene out of its misery, euthanase and start again. You can want the exciting bit, but the bit in front of you should at least be interesting, relevant or gently meaningful.

- Forget about pacing. A story paces itself. I don’t know…maybe that’s not true for everyone. I don’t ever think about pacing and I’m always surprised when people praise me for it because I really don’t try to pace my stories. I just write what I enjoy writing, and follow what I want to see the characters doing. If pacing comes out of that, yay!!! So I’m not sure you need to try, really. Characters generally want to tell an interesting story, I mean we all do! So if you have a plot, and you have your characters, and you don’t write anything that makes you feel bored or like ‘I need to get to the next bit’ your stories should self-pace.

- Really actually the only trick is to unlearn ‘how do I fill up space before I get there.’ I’ve never written like this because I hate it. I hate the feeling of wasting my time. And if the only thing you want to write is one really big scene, write it, get it out of your system, and go back and find other things in the story to write. I once had to write a whole novel out of order (no, really), so I could get the ‘big exciting things’ out of the way and learn to love my characters for their smaller, more intimate moments (as well as the settings and a few other things). Sometimes that big scene fills your head and it’s all you can think of - get it out of your system, truly. It doesn’t matter if you need to rewrite it later, your writing brain will thank you for it.

Ah okay, well I have no idea if any of that helped, and I apologise for rambling. I’m laughing at the fact that for a writer that basically writes STUPIDLY LONG WORDCOUNTS, I have a ‘don’t ever write filler’ policy with all of my writing.

Imagine if I did though, we’d all be here literally for a thousand years.