Pacing is the speed at which your story moves across the pages. Naturally, a heart-pounding thriller has fast pacing and literary introspection creeps along at a snail’s pace. All other plots are somewhere in between.
I always thought pacing comes from the way the story unfolds, and that is partially true. You can’t make a nail-biter out of a no-action plot, or perhaps literary geniuses could. I don’t aspire to try it. I’d rather write stories that have some action, and I’d rather read those, too. Enough said.
The truth is, a writer can artificially speed up or slow down the story. Most of us do it inadvertently, by bogging down the plot with too much back story, too much setting, or irrelevant rambling. Been there, done it.
Let’s talk about how to pace on purpose though.
John ran down the dark alley. He jumped over bags of trash. His heart pounded in his chest. When he arrived at the warehouse door, he pressed the handle and threw his shoulder into the rough wood. He leaped up the stairs while the crash of the door against the wall still reverberated in the stairwell. The gray walls streaked by in a blur. His shoes only vaulted off from every second step. His heart hammered. Floor 10. His thighs burned. Floor 12. His lungs ached. Floor 14. One more flight. As he ran, he reached into his jacket and pulled out his revolver.
Flows pretty quick, doesn’t it? Because I have John running? Yes, of course. But I used writer’s pixy dust on it, too, to help speed it up in your mind. How? Short, choppy sentences only take a fraction of a second to read. I bet your eyes flew over that at a good clip. I also left out as much description as I could. I gave you just enough setting to picture where John was and what he was doing. Everything else had to go. No stopping and smelling the roses. No wondering why there was trash in the alley or why the warehouse door was unlocked. No mental chit-chat.
Ok, what about if I want to slow something down on purpose? What if all this action is making me reach for my blood-pressure pills? No problem. We put all the stoppers back in. Let’s continue John’s running scene from where we left off.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out his revolver. Floor 15. The huge, bright orange number stared back at him as he stopped in his tracks. He had to slow his galloping heart before he continued. His left hand shook, he’d be a lousy shot if he burst through that door now. John flipped out the drum of his weapon to verify that it was fully loaded. He couldn’t face Bugsy, the infamous crime lord, with nothing but good intentions. He breathed deeply as the neon light overhead hummed its monotonous tune. The gun lay cool and smooth in his pulsing hand. Mary. John hoped she was ok, that she was not on the other side of this door, not in Bugsy’s clutches. Mary. His heart picked up its pace again. No, it would be better not think of his feelings for her right now. He had to keep his wits together. One more deep, satisfying breath before he checked if his hands still shook. His left was steady, the blood no longer rushed through his ears. He set his palm on the handle and turned.
The second scene only takes about a minute or two to play out. But it felt longer, didn’t it? Why? Internal thoughts, setting descriptions, longer sentences. It took time to read it and that automatically inserts a mental space into the story. I cannot insert too much though. Otherwise, the reader forgets where we are and what we are doing, thus wasting the preceding perfectly good, heart-pounding action scene. I also had to keep the internal thoughts on topic. With the mention of Mary, I added another reason for John to get right whatever would happen next, which raises the stakes/tension. Having John think of something random and unrelated would have squashed that.
The rule for pacing is usually faster is better. For action that is easy, for the rest, be mindful of it. Read what you have written with pacing in mind. Does it drag? Do you ramble? Make sure you trim that down so the plot won’t get stuck in exposition mud and your readers have to walk home by closing the book. Permanently.
