The Importance of Pacing
When writing a novel with suspense, which let’s face it, makes for a better story regardless of the genre, things get tricky fast. I thought this part of writing a book would come as naturally as breathing once the story started to unfold. But what I discovered is the art of pacing which can make or break a moment. It is an art because pacing rides a fine line – keeping characters and readers on the edge of timing the twists in a story to be both believable and unanticipated. I’ve found that the more I overthink it, the easier it is to fall into the trap of writing something that is too outrageous to fit the story, which can take a while to come back from, or even worse, a boring interlude.
Man of us have had this experience; sitting in a lecture hall or classroom so bored out of our minds that the entire focus of the moment is how to keep our eyelids open. Often this has little to do with content and a lot to do with presentation style. I’ve also had the experience of being completely drawn in to a topic that I didn’t have much interest in, simply by the pitch and pacing. Talk about an ideal learning environment! But I digress…
Pacing is as important to a story as the names we choose, or the subject we write about. In my previous post I talked about the importance of outlining in the evolution of a series. Pacing is another factor that cuts across the story arcs of each scene, book, and the meta-story which ties them all together.
Pacing is the pulse of a story. As my stories unfold I start to feel that beat like the rhythm of a jazz riff. It keeps the story flowing from scene to scene and the characters and plot developing as we move through them. It’s taken me a while, and writing several books to get a good sense of that pulse. It isn’t always apparent and sometimes feels more like a wild fusion number that I’m not totally comfortable with, but I’ve found that staying true to that beat from dialogue to characterization, is as critical as any other part of the story.
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