Pacing - The Most Important Part of Any Story
Pacing Can Make or Break Your Story
Does that sound kind of scary? Good!
You should be afraid of writing an ill-paced story, because if the pacing is off in your tale— then you will lose your reader.
I know I’m not alone in thinking this, and I am not the first person to talk about this fact, but despite the body of work out there on pacing, it’s a mistake we all make. I’ve seen it often with people who are new to writing, or writers who forget to take their time. They will forget their pacing fall into this mistake without even noticing.
I’ve certainly been guilty of it before, and likely will be again, but I work actively to combat bad pacing and to improve both my writing and the reader’s experience. It’s always a point worth reiterating, and though I’ve mentioned in in several other blog posts of mine, I wanted to discuss it again today in more detail.
In this post, I wanted to outline some basic things I use to adjust the pacing in my stories, talk about why pacing is important, and how to identify if your pacing is too fast or too slow. This is all just my experience with pacing in stories, but if you have another tip I’m missing here, please let me know!
How to Identify Bad Pacing and Why It’s Important
We’ve all seen pacing that’s too slow or too fast- books we had to read in school that seemed to drag on and on, a TV show where, out of nowhere, a character makes a 180 and murders someone they love, or a movie where you have no idea what you just watched.
All of this is symptomatic of bad pacing. Sometimes, it’s the result of poor editing decisions. Chunks of movies and TV shows cut for time. Other times, it’s a writing error - this is what we are trying to avoid. No writer can control how their work is edited or pieced and parted out, but we can always do our best to write the best that we can, so it’s more likely our vision will remain true.
Whatever the work is— a book, a short story, a script— pacing is important to all of them, and no matter how grammatically correct or interesting the idea is, bad pacing can turn away readers. It can kill a good plot line, or make a story dead in the water before your ideas have had the time to shine.
We should venture to have a balance of all elements, pacing, world building, proofreading, character development, and setting, of course. But if pacing is off, it will affect how your readers feel about your tale, and not in a good way.
You can have the most interesting, well described setting in the world, but if you spend too long talking about the environment, and you forget to move along the plot, your pacing will be off. You can have great characters, but if you don’t have those characters doing anything, your pacing will go off. Pacing is important to keep your story moving! Emotional investment will be dashed and discarded otherwise, and it’s something you’ve probably experienced yourself as a content consumer too! If things move too fast, important details maybe omitted, causing confusion in consumers, and if it’s too slow, they’ll get bored and stop caring.
The last thing any writer wants is to put in so much work, only to have people lose interest or be dissatisfied.
So first, let’s talk about some examples of media with bad pacing - so we know what to avoid.
For example:
Media with Bad Pacing But Good Ideas
The Call of Cthulhu
The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings Appendices
Game of Thrones - Season 8
How I Met Your Mother
Media with Good Pacing But Bad Ideas
The Proposal
SAW Movies (all)
Twilight
The Fast and Furious Series
Now the difference between these two categories should be clear, the ones with good ideas are long lasting, but almost universally described as difficult to consume, disappointing, or both! The media with good pacing but bad ideas tend to be simple or shallow, and while the average viewer may enjoy them, they’re far from universally loved. Granted, no work is loved universally— but, again, we want to make our work the best it can be.
But the media with good pacing and bad ideas, either ideas that are simple, mundane, wacky, or unbelievable, are just fine! They’re widely consumed, lauded for their entertainment value, and generally a good time. They may not be the most amazing, deep, wonderful, moving media ever, but they’re something people enjoy.
These examples, they’re too slow or too fast, and they make for a challenge for consumers. Some people like that challenge, such as in the case of Lovecraft’s work, or the Appendices, but in other cases it proves to be frustrating and disappointing (can you tell I’m still upset over GoT?). We don’t want to be responsible for creating disappointment or frustration (unless, perhaps, it’s with one of our characters).
Imagine if we worked to merge the two, give good ideas snappy pacing and appropriate time to develop and a satisfying conclusion, you’d have the ultimate piece of work!
Something interesting and immersive that’s a joy to read and universally accessible.
Like a good ride in Disney World, a work like that would be a delight to millions. That’s our goal, always. To share our ideas with the world, and to delight our readers.
So how do you know if your work falls into one of the above?
Sometimes, it can be hard to see, we work so hard with out noses to the grindstone, that we become too close.
First, take a step back, go work on something else, and then come back to it! Time away can make flaws more clear, and give you time to figure out how to fix them!
Then, re-read your work entirely. Beginning to end, every page.
Experience your work as a reader would, and ask yourself honestly, “Was that good? Am I satisfied with what I read?”
Then, fix whatever problems you found!
If you’re still confounded, find yourself a beta reader you can trust, someone who knows what pacing is, and ask them what they think! If you’d like, point out specific things you’re trying to work on so they can keep an extra eye out for those items as well. Don’t overwhelm them though! You don’t want to make them feel like they have to catch every little thing. Just let them come to you with their findings, and accept them graciously.
Then fix them!
The great thing about a draft is that you can change anything and everything about it still. You’re in complete control, so don’t worry if you do find something wrong— just take the time to fix it, and it’ll all be good!
How to Fix Bad Pacing
Alright, so now you know: Find it, fix it!!
But then… How do you go about fixing it?
There’s no hard and fast way to do this, it will depend entirely on your story and how you like to write, but there are a couple of basics that might help you as you go through this process. Like any leg of the editing process, it can take some time, but the results are worth it.
Re-read your work again, and look for any spots that move too fast, or aren’t explained well. This is especially helpful if your pacing is too fast because often we forgo needed explanation to get to writing the next exciting part, but having an appropriate amount of ‘fluff’ in-between action scenes help readers avoid cognitive whiplash.
Are things moving too slow? Cut unnecessary descriptions, and consider adding in dialogue. Don’t add in dialogue just to add it, but use it as an opportunity to reveal something about your character or their motivations. People perceive dialogue as inherently more interesting, and it’s a good chance to make the reader laugh!
Have a passage you like, but you’re not sure if you need it? Copy the passage into a new document and save it for later! Then you don’t lose the writing entirely, but you can take it out of your story and see how it changes things! Sometimes you’ll find that you may like how it came out, but that it’s bogging down your story. If the opportunity comes up later, you can always work it in down the line, but I find often that sometimes even if I really like something… I don’t need it, so I don’t keep it.
Does it bring you joy? Yes, you read that right. KonMari the shit out of your writing. If it doesn’t bring you joy, how is it going to being a reader joy? Don’t use this as an excuse to be overly critical on your writing— often our writing is better than we give ourselves credit for. But make sure that you like what you’ve written, that it serves a purpose and you’re happy with it. If you’re not… Change it! Delete it! Say thank you and remove it! You know in your gut what’s best, so follow your gut!
Don’t Give Up
As with anything - it takes practice! Writing is hard deceptively so, but it’s also easy— all you have to do is… do it! Do it again and again until it gets easier and easier. Slog through the hard parts, and emerge on the other side with a clear idea of what you’re doing and who you are as a writer.
Learning how to pace your tale is one of the harder parts of writing, because it’s so nebulous, but it can be done! I promise, you’ve got this… so keep going!