The pace is the speed at which the story unfolds, how quickly or slowly the events take place within the narrative. Proper pacing is essential if you want to hook a reader into turning the page long into the night or if you want to develop your character’s depth enough for the reader to have empathy for them. Both require different aspects of pacing. Understanding how to slow the story down or speed it up is crucial to success as a writer.
When to Quicken the Pace
When should you quicken the pace of your novel? Leading into the climax of the story is an obvious place to quicken the pace. You might also choose to start your novel off with a quick pace, hooking the reader with action. Maybe your previous chapter had a lot of introspection or internal monologue, and you feel it’s the right time to get things moving again. The choice is yours. So, how would you quicken the pace of your novel?
Tips For Quickening the Pace of Your Novel
- Shorten sentences to create urgency. Shorter sentences are easier to read and keep the reader engaged. It’s also better for skimming through, which readers tend to do when the pace is quick.
- Keep description to a minimum. Only describe what is important to the story and the action within. Unnecessary descriptions slow the story down.
- No Internal Monologue. There isn’t usually a lot going on when a character is deep within their own mind. Save this for when you want to slow things down.
- End Chapters on a cliffhanger. This will keep the reader engaged and turning the page to see what happens next.
- Have quick dialogue exchanges. Quick, snappy dialogue will read quicker and move the story along faster.
- Use shorter chapters. This will create the feeling of a lot happening in a short period of time.
- Get in and get out of scenes. Don’t linger in a scene longer than necessary. To create a quickening pace, start at the action and end it sooner than you think.
- Skip ahead. Don’t be afraid to skip ahead, skimming over the boring events that happen. Does your character drive to the next scene? Don’t write a scene with them in the car. Instead, skip ahead to where they are already at the location.
When to Slow Down the Pace
You don’t want to have an unrelenting pace to your novel cover to cover. Don’t get me wrong, we all love to be hooked by a fast-paced story, but you don’t always want that. There are times when you want to slow things down. For instance, when your character got out of an exhilarating scene that had the reader’s heartrate beating out of their chests. Maybe you want to focus on character development. Or maybe the main character just learned about something that alters the course of the novel. How do you slow down the pace of a novel?
Tips for Slowing Things Down
- Inner monologue tangent. This is the time to get into the character’s mind and let out their thoughts.
- Use longer sentences and paragraphs. Longer sentences take longer to read, therefore, slowing down the pace of the novel.
- Longer Chapters. A long chapter can slow down the pace of a story by causing the reader to linger.
- Linger in a scene. There are scenes that are best kept short, but here, you’ll focus on letting it stretch out.
- Detailed description. Remember when we said to keep the description to a minimum to keep the pace moving quickly? This is exactly the opposite. Describe the scene using multiple senses.
- Use complex language. Break out the thesaurus or that word you’ve been holding onto and use it. Complex language takes longer to absorb, slowing down the reader, and leaving them lingering in your brilliance.
Examples of Novels with Good Pacing
The Lockwood & Co. series by Jonathan Stroud is a good example of how to pace your novel. Each novel starts with the psychic detective agency (Lockwood & Co is agency’s name) in the heart of an investigation into a paranormal event. It starts off quick, hooking the reader with action, before slowing down so you can get to know the characters.
Stephen King is a master of the slow building horror story. The Shining is a personal favorite of mine. Jack Torrance seems like a normal, but flawed husband and father at the beginning of the book. It slowly builds to a terrifying climax.
My Pacing Issues
I have thought a lot about pacing over the course of the last year or two. I know in hindsight that Reel Ghosts, my debut novel, suffered from pacing issues. It’s too slow in the beginning chapters, taking longer than needed to get to the main part of the story. I tried to rectify that with The House That Wasn’t There, which I believe I did, for the most part. Yet I focused so much on keeping a fast pace that I forgot to stop and linger occasionally. The end of the book suffered because of it. With my current work in progress, Cult of the Macabre, I’m focusing on landing somewhere between the two novels, with a slow building plot with a satisfying ending.
Conclusion
Pacing is the key to both hooking the reader and making sure they have spent enough quality time with your characters to appreciate them. There are times when you will need to speed things up and slow it down. Knowing when to do so is half the battle of this beautiful thing we call writing.
Thanks for reading,
Stephen M. Roth
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Stephen Michael Roth 