Day 13: Pacing Part 2

In yesterday's post, I discussed how the pace of a written work can be controlled by increasing or decreasing the level of detail added, though that wasn't the only determining factor. Remember that pacing is relative, and it should change based on what is actually going on in the story. A fast paced novel usually needs to hang on the action, where a lot of stuff goes on in short period of time. To capture that, it might need a lot of detail at a certain moment, but this doesn't slow down the story as a whole. On the contrary, by slowing down at the right time, it makes the pace of the story as a whole even faster because the focus is on the action. Speeding through the action to get to something like a conversation on the other hand, could make the story feel much slower because it hangs around at the part where not much happens. Or worse, it could feel out of time completely, leading to the dreaded inconsistent pacing. Today I want to cover some examples of how I like to keep the pace of a scene in mind as I'm writing and editing, and show you exactly what I mean about how slowing down at the right moment can actually increase the overall pace of a scene. Let's get into it!

The first thing I try to do with a scene is identify the parts that I want to slow down and take my time with, and the parts that I can fly by without delving into them. It can be easy to get lost in the scene feel like the main character must be followed moment by moment, but this can lead to a strange sense of pace where even mundane details are given the same attention as the primary focus of the scene. I'm going to use a couple of excerpts from my novel in progress Oneiromancer to highlight my point here. There may be some little spoilers, but these excerpts come from the first chapter, so I don't think it will ruin anything too badly.

The first excerpt below is from chapter one, right after the main character Clara discovers that her car (lovingly nicknamed named Su) is in no shape to take her to work.

The nearest stop was a good 20 minute walk, and the minimum hour long bus ride destined her to be late. As she walked, she fumed about Su, and the weather, and the state of her life. By the time she made it to the stop her mood was in the gutter and all she wanted was to turn around, trudge home, and collapse in the bedding on the floor. Maybe she could have that dream again and feel herself being obliterated repeatedly. She made it to the stop and sat heavily on a bench to wait. All by herself, she had no choice but to let her mind wander until the bus arrived. It inevitably took her to dark places.

See how I skip past the 20 minute walk that nobody in their right mind would want to read about? There's just one sentence between her starting the walk and her arrival. I could even do this if I wanted to:

The nearest stop was a good 20 minute walk, and the minimum hour long bus ride destined her to be late. By the time she made it to the stop her mood was in the gutter and all she wanted was to turn around, trudge home, and collapse in the bedding on the floor.

I might actually make this edit because there's really no need to give the extra detail about how she feels on the walk over. The next sentence immediately lets you know that her mood was only getting worse during the walk. I want this part to be as fast as possible because the reader doesn't really need to know about what's going on during the walk other than her mood getting worse. Nothing important happens, so why spend words on those moments when I could spend them on something else?

This next excerpt comes pretty soon after the first. Clara boards the bus and takes notice of the man sitting across the aisle from her. He says some strange things that she can't quite understand, but their conversation is interrupted.

His eyes flicked to the window behind her. Terrified gasps and shouts from the other passengers made her rubberneck just in time to see it coming. Her shocked cry was lost in the cacophony of screeching metal and shattering glass as the semi truck smashed into the bus. The impact launched her into the stranger and he took the brunt of it with a loud grunt. The semi tipped the bus and gravity sent them sprawling. One arm got twisted awkwardly behind her back in the chaos, and she felt something make a sickening pop. She thought she might have screamed, or maybe not, a fuzzy sensation made it hard to tell, but having been knocked senseless did little to numb the pain. Glass and loose carry-on came raining down onto the pair of them, and the big man beneath her cried out. He’d caught a shard of glass in the head, and a spurt of blood muddied his shiny scalp.

Here I take what probably lasts about 5 seconds and write a complete paragraph to cover it. I want as many juicy details as I can get because this action really grabs the reader compared to a walk and a bus ride. More happens in less time and so the pace slows down. Overall though, I'm hoping the chapter reads as fast paced because it doesn't take much time to get to the action. The main point I wanted to round out with this post that I couldn't quite get to yesterday is that slowing things down can actually make things feel faster. In fact, if I didn't slow down for this part, it would feel really, really weird. Here is an earlier edit of the chapter where I was just getting all the events down without any pacing in mind.

I sat heavily in the only empty seat next a huge, oddly smiling, bald man near the front of the bus. He beamed at me as I tried to ignore the creepy bastard. The bus rattled forward. My guts were in knots, I felt like vomiting, and I knew that there was no way in hell I was going to have a good day at work or even a nice date. I had nothing to do but wallow in my mysterious misery for the next 20 minutes of bus ride.

“Fuck!” I shouted as I turned to my left hard enough to put a kink in my neck. I looked just in time to a semi-truck plow straight into the side of the bus. Without any time to react I just went limp. The impact was several seats behind me but I was launched to the opposite side of the bus anyway. The awful screech of rending steel harmonized with the screams of the passengers, including my own. I was dashed against the windows, then the roof, as the bus simultaneously rolled and bent in half. Finally, it screeched to a halt.

This feels wonky because the pacing is bad. The bus crash just kinda happens. There's no time for the reader to realize what's going on, and instead you get an incredibly jarring moment where the bus gets hit. Notice that even with just a couple of sentences to introduce the crash the first excerpt feels smoother.

His eyes flicked to the window behind her. Terrified gasps and shouts from the other passengers made her rubberneck just in time to see it coming. Her shocked cry was lost in the cacophony of screeching metal and shattering glass as the semi truck smashed into the bus.

Versus

“Fuck!” I shouted as I turned to my left hard enough to put a kink in my neck. I looked just in time to a semi-truck plow straight into the side of the bus.

It's also a good show vs tell moment, but that's a topic for another post. The main point of action here is the semi truck crashed into the bus, but just delivering this line alone doesn't have much impact (heh). I want it to be sudden, but at the same time just randomly saying the semi truck crashed into the bus feels weak. Instead I slow the moment down so there's enough time for the reader to get the same terrifying realization Clara gets. It's subtle, but the pace is different and it makes all the difference between the two excerpts.

Additionally, the results of the crash (Clara getting thrown into the stranger) have less impact in the unedited excerpt because I don't linger on the correct details for long enough. In the original, Clara just gets thrown around a little. You may see in your mind's eye that she gets tossed, but nothing really happens. The pace is too fast, and the moment is skipped right over. In the newer version though, I focus in on the details to slow the moment down and show you exactly what the bus crash does to both Clara and the stranger. It has much more appropriate pacing given what is going on, and therefore it feels a lot more realistic and dangerous. It's better at pulling the reader into the world, and that's exactly what I want from this moment in the first chapter.

I hope these examples give you something to think about. I may revisit pacing in the future because it is such a complex topic and honestly I just really like talking about it. I'd like to do a series of posts like this one where I cover a certain aspect of the craft and delve into some examples. I think it makes for good reading and it helps me understand my own writing of course. Let me know what you think about this two-parter, and whether you'd like to see more.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley