There’s a rhythm to storytelling. Sometimes it’s a rapid movement that pushes you to the brink of excitement; other times it’s an intimate dance that slowly builds upon your anxieties and expectations. This is called pacing.
The best storytellers know how to pace their stories. Do it too slow and you risk boring your readers; too fast and you can confuse them. Ultimately, pacing is all about how you keep your audience informed and interested.
What Is Pacing?
Pacing in literature refers to the speed at which your story unfolds and your reader experiences the story. This is determined by a number of factors, including:
- the length of your sentences and scenes
- the rise and fall of your plot points
- the rate at which you give readers information.
Basically, it’s how fast or slow you’re telling the story to your readers.There are two kinds of pacing in writing. Micropacing concerns itself with the actual prose of the narrative, looking at how fast the story is happening from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph.
Macropacing deals with the overall story. It includes the overarching story elements and how fast the plot is progressing from chapter to chapter.
Apart from your writing style and voice, a story’s pacing is also affected by the needs of its genre. For example, epic fantasy is told on a grand scale. As such, the majority of the story is told at a leisurely pace.
A thriller, on the other hand, is action-driven. It’s told at a rapid pace, constantly jumping from multiple elements to convey excitement.
8 Tips on Mastering Pacing
Pacing is one of those things that isn’t a single element but is rather something that’s brought forth by the combination of other story elements. Whether it’s about dialogue, sentence length, or structure, here are a few things you can do to keep your story moving.
1. Vary Sentence Length
Sentence length has an immediate effect on pacing. Think about it. You’re reading these sentences faster. There are fewer words. They are simpler.
Use short sentences when you want to rapidly give information. And because you’re quickly moving through sentences, you convey that something is or will be happening fast. This is why action scenes and dialogue often have short, punchy sentences.
On the other hand, you take more time reading longer sentences. They are more complex, containing multiple clauses that you have to parse together. Thus, you need to read them slowly and carefully to better understand what they mean.
Longer sentences are usually used for expository passages. They paint a fuller picture of scenes, characters, and settings. Often, these sentences build on each other, requiring you to read the entire paragraph in order to fully grasp their meaning.
This also extends to paragraphs. Shorter paragraphs have more white spaces, making them feel easier to read. Longer paragraphs are more crowded, signaling the reader that they should be read in a more leisurely manner.
2. Give Your Readers Breathing Space
Imagine a story where something dramatic seems to happen on every page. Readers are constantly confronted with information. It quickly becomes chaotic, leaving them unable to understand the narrative.
Too much of the same pace is tedious to read and write. Make sure that you mix in quiet moments in between your action scenes. Give your readers insight into a character’s thoughts and emotions, build on their relationships with others, describe more of your world, and so on.
These introspective moments are where your readers can digest the information you’ve just given them. They’re able to understand what’s going on and process how they feel about it.
Good stories are a balance between action and information. By making sure you have enough of each, you create a story that’s sufficiently detailed and entertaining.
3. Understand Your Genre
Let’s say you’re hungry and you spot a cookie tin. You open it up expecting cookies only to be disappointed when they’re full of sewing supplies.
It’s the same with genre. Readers have certain expectations when starting a book, mainly based on the blurb, cover art, and the genre it’s advertised in. And genre is often tied to its pacing and vice versa.
Readers pick up thrillers expecting that they’re fast-paced. It works for the genre because the rapid movement complements the dominant emotions a thriller wants to convey. They’re kept in a constant state of anticipation because the narrative doesn’t let them pause too long.
So when they get into a thriller and find it a slow read, they will likely be disappointed. While that doesn’t mean they’ll put down the book, it does become a huge obstacle for their reading experience.
Understanding why different genres require a particular kind of pacing gives you insight into how to write your story. Giving your audience the pace they expect incentivizes them to continue reading.
4. Utilize Literary Devices
Knowing when to use a literary device can affect the overall pacing of your story.
Cliffhangers are a good way to hasten the pace. When you leave out the outcome of a scene or chapter, the readers naturally want to know what happens next, so they immediately turn to the next page.
Meanwhile, flashbacks can be used to slow the story down by moving away from the main storyline. You essentially pause present events to give them details from the past that will soon become relevant to the narrative.
By using the right device, you can break the flow of a narrative, speed it up or slow it down, and even force the readers to keep moving forward.
5. Add Subplots
Subplots are a good way to slow down your story’s progress. The more subplots you add, the more time it will take to reach the conclusion of the main storyline.
Secondary storylines buy you time to further flesh out your characters and settings. As you reveal more details through these subplots, the readers become increasingly curious about how they tie into the main plot.
Just remember not to go overboard with the subplots. They should add to the main plot, not confuse or overshadow it. And make sure you tie up any loose ends by the time you reach your conclusion.
6. Map Out Your Story
Whether you have an outline or an already finished first draft, one way to look at your story’s pacing is by breaking it down into easily examined pieces.
Pick out the main events and lay them out in chronological order. If your plot follows a common structure such as Freytag’s pyramid, start by laying out the introduction, rising action, climax, and so on. You can stop here, or you can further divide them into more specific parts.
Doing this helps you better visualize at what points you need to either slow down or go faster. It also helps you see where the pacing needs to be reworked. There may be parts of the story where it’s either too fast or too slow.
7. Leave Out or Add Details
The level of detail you add to a story directly affects its pace. A common trap writers fall into is adding too much information, which bogs down the story.
Similarly, leaving out too much prevents the readers from forming an effective picture. This also slows down pacing because they need extra time to make sense of what’s happening.
Every detail you leave in should serve a purpose. Ask yourself whether everything you’ve included contributes to character development, world-building, or reader experience. The parts you identify as “no” are likely the ones that suffer from poor pacing.
Of course, it’s difficult to edit your own work. You’re attached to certain sentences, scenes, and characters. But sometimes you also need to kill your darlings to create a better end product.
8. Read Your Work Out Loud
Your sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters should be cohesive. Reading them out loud is a quick and easy exercise that ensures your scenes flow naturally into one another.
By simply adding sound to the words you’ve written, it becomes easier to identify awkward passages, abrupt stops, difficult to read sentences, and winding scenes. All of these interrupt your story’s pace because they make it hard for the audience to make sense of things.
Ask yourself where you need to slow down, pause, or speed up. Pay extra attention to the areas that lack impact or momentum. The fewer obstacles you give the reader, the smoother the pace will be.
The Importance of Pacing
Pacing is a story element that’s often overlooked because it’s not as noticeable as compelling characters, vivid settings, and memorable scenes. It happens in the subconscious; readers rarely realize it’s happening.
Pacing affects the mood of your story and dictates the flow of information you give to your readers. It helps you develop your central themes and ideas as you build your characters and setting. It also ensures that your story is always moving.
All of these factors influence your reader’s level of immersion. The more effective your pacing is, the more invested they become in your story.
Harry Potter, Elizabeth Bennet, and Han Solo didn’t become beloved characters simply because of their excellent characterization. It’s also in the way that they interact with their world and the other characters they meet.
Readers aren’t given a character profile containing every detail needed to understand these characters. Instead, their character development is paced, with the authors providing details as the story moves forward. This way, the information the readers receive takes on an emotional quality because they were part of the journey.
In short, narrative pacing isn’t just about the speed of how a story is told. It’s also about the experience you’re giving your readers.
Did you find this post useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
