What Is Writing Pace And How to Use It in Your Story

When it comes to books, you may have noticed that you read some stories faster than others. You may have heard the great pacing of a text that this or that author has, and still have a vague idea of what they mean by it. Well, good news are that you can regulate the pacing of your stories too.

Authors as Nietzsche, Joyce, Octavio Paz, great authors, always refer to the music in a story. Of course, there is a great deal of musicality in language, but there is also rythm. When we are speaking about pacing what we mean is a certain feeling of speed that your reader will perceive as he reads your text. Imagine that action scene in a book when you simply keep going, faster and faster, even risking skipping some words as you read to know what happens. You know, the epic battle of Aragorn against the orcs trying to save his friends, the feeling of urgency.

Now think of one of those long scenes where the character starts thinking about whatever it is in the plot that went wrong, the deep thinking moment that makes time feel slower and thoughts deeper. Those two examples combined are what make the pacing of a story. With time every author develops their own sense of pacing, it does not matter if it is an action novel, a romantic story, etc., you need different rythms so it does not become a monotonous, grey block of text.

Fast pacing

If you have read Ernest Hemmingway’s stories you might have noticed they are kind of fast reading without leaving the deep insight and great meaning of the story aside. Mostly this is due to his sentence work. As writers there is always a need to refine the craft, and giving each sentence a well-thought structure is not going too far (If you have read Emma Donoghue´s The Room or John Banville´s The Sea, you will notice what a perfectly thought sentence feels like).

Hemingway was a trained journalist, used to deliver information clearly and thus his sentences were somewhat short and straight to the point. This also might be a reason why he was able to write great short fiction stories. He used the exact words he wanted without description that was not needed.

Another example of how the rythm goes faster is to increase the amount of action involved in the scene you are working on.

An example of this are action movies: there is always something happening to the characters, and it works the same way when you are writing. To do this is think of scenes of Die Hard or mission impossible, the explosions in the back, people running, maybe screams, there is a lot involved happening at the same time. Using more verbs (action) and less adverbs (describing the verb) can do the trick when writting.

For example:

1.- She ran through the forest, heart pounding in her chest.

instead of:

2-.She ran through the dark, dense forest, heart pounding furiously in her chest as a desperate bird trying to escape her ribcage into the night sky.

The first one is shorter and precise. It is fast going and keeps us wondering what will happen next, we need to know. The second one is more adorned, takes longer to read and slows the pacing, it gives a lyrical feeling of how running away might feel like. Both are fine, is a matter of what you are trying to achieve in your story.

Slow pacing

Slower pacing, on the other hand, has long sentences, which tend to be descriptive and lyrical. An example of this is Tolkien’s chapter 3 “Three is Company”, where almost everything is a descritpion of the shire and what the hobbits will soon be leaving behind as well as Frodo’s thoughts:

To tell the truth, he was very reluctant to start, now that it had come to the point. Bag End seemed a more desirable residence than it had for years, and he wanted to savour as much as he could of his last summer in the Shire. When autumn came, he knew that part at least of his heart would think more kindly of journeying, as it always did at that season. He had indeed privately made up his mind to leave on his fiftieth birthday: Bilbo’s one hundred and twenty-eighth. It seemed somehow the proper day on which to set out and follow him. Following Bilbo was uppermost in his mind, and the one thing that made the thought of leaving bearable. He thought as little as possible about the Ring, and where it might lead him in the end. But he did not tell all his thoughts to Gandalf. What the wizard guessed was always difficult to tell.

This description allows the author to invite the reader into a reflexive mood; in this example it also helps us understand what Frodo is risking if he stays in the shire and what he is leaving behind. We get to know the internal world of the character while the external world is in a sort of pause, or no great action is happening.

Put your own mix

Even in an action story it is important to allow the audience a little breath and slow the rythm a bit. Same happens with long introspective stories, we will eventually need some action or high emotion place where we go faster. It is like music in the sense that it is through combination that we can develop a writting pace that will keep our readers engaged with the story.

Of course there are many examples of how these combinations work. You might need to mix short and long sentences, long scenes and short scenes, action and introspection, to achieve a well written story. Other stories can be just long, deep and lyrical as happens with James Joyce’s Ulysses, or some stories that are short and highly intense as happens often in short fiction. Authors experiment all the time with it, and it might even change what genre are you writing.

Of course, it will all depend on what you are trying to achieve with your story. What is important is that you know how to do it and why you are doing it. Experiment with sentences at first and give them to a friend to see if they read it fast or slow, maybe that adverb is not necessary and is making the pacing slow where you want it fast. It is all about constant experimentation,

Mel