Pacing Tips for Fiction

Strong pacing is critical in a fictional story, but it’s one of the hardest elements to understand and master. That’s because there isn’t one “right” way to pace a story, nor is there one definable factor that creates tension (which directly impacts pacing).

And although pacing needs to vary depending on the purpose of a scene, the story still needs to be taut, keeping readers turning pages even in the “slow sections.”

No matter what genre you write in, it will serve you well to learn how to improve pacing. This happens on a macro level—in the way you build a plot and develop characters, as well as in the order of scenes and the way those scenes play out. And pacing can be fine-tuned at the micro level—on a sentence level, down in the verbs and the punctuation.

One thing readers will attest to, though: if a story’s pacing drags for too long, they’ll stop reading.

It’s Not Just about Action

It may be surprising to you to learn that tension really has little to do with what action is being undertaken by the characters. In fact, tension can explode from scenes that have little to no action. In this chapter we’ll look at the many facets of tension—in the story and in the reader—that writers need to pay attention to so as to avoid the pitfalls of this fatal flaw.

So how does pacing fit in? Pacing is the pulse rate of your story. At times you’ll want a slow, thoughtful pace. Other times a racing one. And those elements that create tension impact the pacing of a story. No tension means a sluggish pace.

Tension is what motivates your reader to keep turning the pages of the story. It grabs his attention and makes him want (or even better, need) to know what’s going to happen next.

Pacing is the rate at which a story is told, and it can vary from slow to fast depending on several factors—for example, the characters, the setting, or the scene’s action (or lack of it). While pacing is always present and tension isn’t necessarily, both require good storytelling if they’re to work in a writer’s favor.

Pack Scenes with Conflict and Emotion

A great way to keep up the tension and pacing of a story is the use of conflict. Conflict, or a character’s opposition with other characters or circumstances (or both), keeps a story interesting.

Emotional narrative invokes readers’ interest by allowing them to get to know a character and care about what happens to him. If a character’s thoughts and motivations aren’t shown, he seems more like a puppet just going through the motions.

When your characters are experiencing and manifesting strong emotions, that will help evoke emotional responses in your readers. When readers care about what happens to your characters, they’ll feel that tension, created by the need for a comfortable resolution to their problems.

Go through your scenes and find those sentences and phrases that show boring, mundane, or trivial actions, thoughts, or speech. Be sure you have all your scenes building to the important plot points with pertinent information that will engage your readers. Just cutting out those unnecessary bits will ramp up your tension and pacing overall.

Pay Attention to Rhythm

Rhythm can be hard to define, but at its simplest level it’s created by sentence length. Short sentences or phrases are flashes of insight, hammering action, stark realization. They feel like a caught breath, or, in rapid succession, a pounding heart.

Look at the rhythm at the end of this description: “They got the net over the rail and dumped it on the deck, silver fish flapping, detritus, and the person—a girl—a woman, young. Alive.”

On the other hand, long, complex sentences can create a feeling that everything is happening at once. They’re helpful to overwhelm or to create a sense of things spinning out of control: “Dark clouds were billowing over a choppy sea, the boat charging up and down the waves, when the words sank in. Through the spray and the looming storm Tyler saw it too—an arm, a flash of shoe.”

It’s a good idea to alter them. The effect is conflict: the long and the short warring with each other.

Go for sentence wording and punctuation that mirror the flow of the action—staccato or flowing. Effective rhythm can also be created through alliteration, assonance, and other tools from the poet’s bag of tricks. [check out this post on breath units to learn some unique tips on this perspective!]

If you keep these four tips in mind as you write and revise, your pacing will be strong!

1. Inner and outer conflict. First, overall, you want your pages full to the brim with conflict. Meaningful conflict. Showing a character fussing for a full page about her lousy manicure isn’t all that meaningful.

2. Engaging characters. If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a thousand times: if readers don’t care about your characters, if they don’t care what happens to them, they are not going to feel that tension. We want our readers tense. Worried, concerned, glued to the page, anxious to know what happens next. They aren’t going to feel that tension unless you do the hard preliminary work of developing and then bringing to life from the get-go those empathetic, unique, compelling characters.

3. Don’t bog down your scenes with a lot of boring stuff. What’s boring? Anything that isn’t interesting. I shouldn’t have to spell this out, right? When you read a novel and you find yourself drifting off, thinking about what to make for dinner, skimming over pages that you later realize you might have read but can’t remember, you know you just hit a boring patch.

4. Make sure every scene has a point. Ditch every scene in which nothing is happening. Or rework so that something significant is happening. I can’t emphasize enough how important a scene outline is to help you firm up your plot to ensure strong pacing.

I can guarantee you: if you make sure every scene is important to your story and serves to advance the plot, you will find your pacing and tension ramping up.

Try a Rewrite

If you’re writing scenes that feel as if they’re slogging through molasses when you want them to move quickly, with a lot of tension and emotion, try this: scrap the scene as it stands now. Rewrite it entirely, focusing on the senses, using strong verbs, and playing with rhythm that mirrors the action. You might be amazed at what you can turn out.

One last comment about pacing. Having a strong pace throughout your book doesn’t mean keeping everything moving at light speed. Don’t confuse pacing with speed. You need to have slow, reflective moments with your characters. Novels are a cycle of action-reaction-action-reaction. Things happen, characters react, process, make decisions (act), then more things happen.

You might think that in those reflective moments the pace has slowed down. The car chase is over, and now the hero is sitting in a chair in the hospital looking at the woman he loves, who is in a coma. Sure, the action has slowed down.

Remember what Hemingway said: movement doesn’t mean action. Similarly, lack of movement doesn’t mean lack of action. A poignant, heavy emotional scene in which there is little action can be as tense or even much tenser than that high-speed car chase. Why? Because you’ve gotten your readers emotionally invested in your characters. Make sense?

Pay attention to your pacing and work to make your readers care about your characters, who are always dealing with conflict and tension as they pursue their goals amid opposition. Whether slow or high-speed, pacing should be crafted deliberately, to keep your reader reading. And, don’t forget: take out the boring parts!

Need help with your pacing? Check out my critique and mentoring services! I can show you what needs better pacing and how to fix your pacing problems!

Featured Photo by Philippe Oursel on Unsplash