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Dancing on Coals Online Workshops
http://www.dancingoncoals.com
Showing posts with label Pacing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pacing. Show all posts
Aug 7, 2014
Mar 10, 2011
Pacing the Page
Let’s talk now about pacing the page.
The biggest culprits that slow down the pacing on a page are unnecessary wordiness and repetition. Avoid repetition of information already provided to the reader unless it’s absolutely necessary for clarity.
She crossed to the table and sat. She linked her hands together on the table and met his gaze. His hands rested on the table, so close to hers they could have touched easily, but he made no move toward her.
feels slower to the reader than:
She crossed to the table and sat, linking her hands together and meeting his gaze steadily. His hands were so close to hers they could have touched easily, but he made no move toward her.
or
She crossed the room and sat, linking her hands together on the table and meeting his gaze steadily. His hands rested just inches from hers, so close they could have easily touched if only he’d made a move toward her.
Can you feel the difference between the first example and the second? The first and third? The first example is okay, but when you compare it to the third you begin to recognize a kind of “sludgy” feeling that comes from using the word repeatedly. Using it once enhances the picture while keeping the pacing tight.
She tucked her notebook under one arm and slung her purse over the other arm.
Now remove just one word:
She tucked her notebook under one arm and slung her purse over the other.
Can you feel the difference there?
Using too many adverbs and adjectives can leave your work feeling cluttered:
Slowly, she descended the steps. Her hands trembled violently, and her breathing was ragged. She watched, scarcely breathing, as shadows of the two men danced on the wall. Suddenly, a shot rang out. She screamed shrilly and realized that she’d given herself away. She turned back as quickly as she could and raced rapidly up the stairs, praying that neither of the men had seen her.
That’s okay, right? Okay, but not great. In fact, -ly words can often be a signal that you’re telling more than showing. Check out this substitute:
One by one, she crept down the steps. Her hands trembled and her breath caught in her throat. She watched in horror as shadows of the two men danced on the wall in front of her. Just as she reached the landing, a shot rang out. A shrill scream tore from her throat before she could stop it and she knew she’d given herself away. Frantic now, she turned back and raced up the stairs two at a time, praying the whole time that neither of the men had seen her.
It’s rare to find any sentence in a first draft that can’t be restructured and made tighter.
The mood you want to evoke will have a lot to do with which words you choose and the pacing you use on a particular page, or paragraph.
Action scenes, scenes filled with suspense, will often need shorter words and sentences to create the right mood.
Action scenes, scenes filled with suspense, will often need shorter words and sentences to create the right mood.
Romantic scenes might need longer words and more fluid sentences to create the right mood.
Movie makers can use various senses for invoking mood and atmosphere. They have script, they have visual action on the screen, and they have a sound track. When we write, we’re creating both the movie and the soundtrack for our stories, but the only tools available to us are words.
Use them wisely. Be lavish when that’s called for to create the right mood and tone. Be sparing when necessary. Remember that it’s the journey you create for your readers that matters.
Listen to the whispers of instinct that warn you when you’ve become repetitive or tell you that you’re moving too fast. Your own fiction instinct will be your most valuable tool when it comes to pacing if you’ll just pay attention to it. It’s the paying attention part that creates problems for most of us. We tend to shrug off those nearly silent whispers and talk ourselves out of our instinctive responses.
Learning not to do that just because you’re reading your own work is a vital step in learning to control the pace of your stories.
photo credit: Oh Winter, let's get married via photopin (license)
photo credit: SPECIAL SET – 16x hi-res Neourban Hipster Office: via photopin (license)
Mar 7, 2011
Pacing: What to Include. What to Cut.
Weak turning points mean for weak scene goals and languid pacing.
Smooth pacing, with turning points and major events staggered evenly throughout the book, is far more likely to keep readers turning pages than stop-and-go pacing, in which very little happens for many pages and then, 100 pages from the end, everything gets tied up in a bow as the author rushes to meet her page quota.
Whether you’re a plotter or an organic writer, it may be difficult to pace your story smoothly without keeping these things in mind as you write.
One of the most common mistakes writers make in the early stages of their careers is to include “scenes” that serve no useful purpose within the story. The writing may be fine, the descriptions vivid, the use of imagery artful, but there is no compelling reason for the scene to exist.
The author may have conceived the idea and is now unable to let it go. She thought it would be so great to show the hero and heroine having lunch together in the piazza she visited during her recent trip to Europe. She took photographs and conducted research, and now she's dying to set a scene there. But if nothing new happens, no new information is shared with the reader, the relationship between the characters doesn’t change in any meaningful way, the scene may not belong in your story.
Whenever we include something in the story merely to indulge ourselves, we’re in danger of negatively impacting the story. A scene without purpose will bring your pacing to a grinding halt.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, it may be helpful to think in terms of firsts. The first meeting, the first real conversation, the first time the teacher calls our YA protagonist to task. The first awkward moment at soccer practice, the first meeting between neighbors. Whenever you begin to repeat information, you risk slowing down the pacing of your story and losing the reader’s attention.
It’s a matter of choosing what to show and what to tell.
Always show the scenes with the greatest emotional impact. (e.g., show the scene where the character learns her father has died, not the scene where she’s thinking about how she found out that he died or the scene where she's telling her best friend how awful it was.)
Beginning writers have a tendency to skip the scenes with real emotional impact and tell us about them later in scenes that have little or no emotional impact. It’s a natural tendency for most of us because writing strong emotion is difficult. Being honest to an emotionally brutal moment isn’t easy. If we’re uncomfortable with the emotion, we may decide it’s more comfortable to just tell about it later. We may not even make the decision to avoid the emotion consciously. But remember that when you write this way, you slow the pacing of your story almost beyond salvation.
Make sure to show the scenes which identify the characters’ patterns for us. Once you’ve shown the characters sharing an intimate Sunday morning breakfast after making love on Saturday night, you can tell us they did it again later.
Within the scene itself, don’t rush. If you’re writing a short book, don't skip on the detail that will make the book feel rich and lush. Instead, be more judicious in your choice of scenes to include, and then summarize the others.
Allow time to set the stage through the point of view character’s emotional filter. Don’t skimp on the sensory texture. You will gain nothing by rushing through this process. Don't drag it out, either. Set the stage, but don't waste time on repetition and lengthy introspection.
Allow time to make sure your character’s motivation is strong enough to carry even the most skeptical reader through the scene. Remember, not everyone will automatically react the same way your character does. You may think that any rational, thinking, reasonably intelligent woman would kick her husband to the curb if she caught him cheating on her, but there are a whole lot of women out there who wouldn’t, and for more reasons than you and I can probably imagine.Allow time to convince your reader that this is the only action your character can make--or at least that she believes it is. Skimping on the motivation will make your pacing sputter and jerk.
Allow sufficient time for the conflict play out. Another common mistake I often see is the tendency to rush past conflict. In the planning stages, the scene appears emotionally intense but when it's written, it turns into nothing special, either because the author is afraid of letting the characters face their conflict or, since the author knows what's going to happen in the scene, she lets the character move to the resolution of the scene too quickly.Skipping the conflict not only makes your story's pace suffer, it short-changes the reader. Approach each scene as if you didn’t know what the eventual outcome will be and let your characters react appropriately. If you can do that honestly, you'll begin to feel when you have enough conflict to fuel the scene.
photo credit: PA050153 via photopin (license)
photo credit: Medo via photopin (license)
Smooth pacing, with turning points and major events staggered evenly throughout the book, is far more likely to keep readers turning pages than stop-and-go pacing, in which very little happens for many pages and then, 100 pages from the end, everything gets tied up in a bow as the author rushes to meet her page quota.
Whether you’re a plotter or an organic writer, it may be difficult to pace your story smoothly without keeping these things in mind as you write.
The author may have conceived the idea and is now unable to let it go. She thought it would be so great to show the hero and heroine having lunch together in the piazza she visited during her recent trip to Europe. She took photographs and conducted research, and now she's dying to set a scene there. But if nothing new happens, no new information is shared with the reader, the relationship between the characters doesn’t change in any meaningful way, the scene may not belong in your story.
Whenever we include something in the story merely to indulge ourselves, we’re in danger of negatively impacting the story. A scene without purpose will bring your pacing to a grinding halt.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, it may be helpful to think in terms of firsts. The first meeting, the first real conversation, the first time the teacher calls our YA protagonist to task. The first awkward moment at soccer practice, the first meeting between neighbors. Whenever you begin to repeat information, you risk slowing down the pacing of your story and losing the reader’s attention.
It’s a matter of choosing what to show and what to tell.
Beginning writers have a tendency to skip the scenes with real emotional impact and tell us about them later in scenes that have little or no emotional impact. It’s a natural tendency for most of us because writing strong emotion is difficult. Being honest to an emotionally brutal moment isn’t easy. If we’re uncomfortable with the emotion, we may decide it’s more comfortable to just tell about it later. We may not even make the decision to avoid the emotion consciously. But remember that when you write this way, you slow the pacing of your story almost beyond salvation.
Make sure to show the scenes which identify the characters’ patterns for us. Once you’ve shown the characters sharing an intimate Sunday morning breakfast after making love on Saturday night, you can tell us they did it again later.
Within the scene itself, don’t rush. If you’re writing a short book, don't skip on the detail that will make the book feel rich and lush. Instead, be more judicious in your choice of scenes to include, and then summarize the others.
Allow time to set the stage through the point of view character’s emotional filter. Don’t skimp on the sensory texture. You will gain nothing by rushing through this process. Don't drag it out, either. Set the stage, but don't waste time on repetition and lengthy introspection.
Allow time to make sure your character’s motivation is strong enough to carry even the most skeptical reader through the scene. Remember, not everyone will automatically react the same way your character does. You may think that any rational, thinking, reasonably intelligent woman would kick her husband to the curb if she caught him cheating on her, but there are a whole lot of women out there who wouldn’t, and for more reasons than you and I can probably imagine.Allow time to convince your reader that this is the only action your character can make--or at least that she believes it is. Skimping on the motivation will make your pacing sputter and jerk.
Allow sufficient time for the conflict play out. Another common mistake I often see is the tendency to rush past conflict. In the planning stages, the scene appears emotionally intense but when it's written, it turns into nothing special, either because the author is afraid of letting the characters face their conflict or, since the author knows what's going to happen in the scene, she lets the character move to the resolution of the scene too quickly.Skipping the conflict not only makes your story's pace suffer, it short-changes the reader. Approach each scene as if you didn’t know what the eventual outcome will be and let your characters react appropriately. If you can do that honestly, you'll begin to feel when you have enough conflict to fuel the scene.
photo credit: PA050153 via photopin (license)
photo credit: Medo via photopin (license)
Feb 28, 2011
Drive your Story Forward
One way to identify your turning points is to watch the story for place where a new question is opened for the characters. They may answer one question, only to find themselves facing a new one. They may resolve one conflict, onto to find that the resolution uncovers a new challenge.
The purpose of the turning point is to drive the story forward, so make sure you let it do its job. The turning point should leave both reader and character wondering what will happen now.
There are some “givens” when we write genre fiction. The readers of a romance novel know the characters will get together in the end before they read the first word of your book. The readers of a mystery know that the murder will be solved and the sleuth will live to sleuth another day. The readers of a western know that justice will prevail. There’s very little question in genre fiction about what is going to happen in the end. That makes how they get there extremely important ...
And “How” translates into turning points.
How are you going to keep the characters apart believably for 300 pages? How are you going to get them past the conflicts that keep them apart at the end of the book? How are you going to keep the reader from guessing who did it—or why they did it—in your mystery novel?
Pacing is also determined by deciding what to include and what to leave out.
Readers are generally interested in the first time anything happens in your book. The first meeting between hero and heroine, their first real conversation, the first time they share their secrets, their first kiss, the first time they make love, the first time they admit their love for one another.
Readers are generally not interested in reading endless repeats of those conversations, kisses, and lovemaking sessions unless they’re also getting new important information with each repetition. When you look at scenes and decide whether or not to include them, consider how much new information you’ll be revealing to the reader. If you’re not giving them enough new information, seriously think about leaving the scene out and summarizing the action at the beginning of the next important scene.
What kind of new information are we talking about? We’re talking about new pieces to the puzzle. A substantial piece of character development. A new secret previously unknown to the reader.
For instance, if you reveal the heroine’s entire past to the reader in chapter one, or let the heroine reveal it to her best friend in chapter two, when she reveals her past to the hero in chapter four, the whole chapter is probably going to feel redundant and slow to the reader. Your pacing will suffer.
If, however, you let the heroine and her best friend discuss her past in general terms in chapter two, build suspense by alluding to her past in chapter four and again in chapter six, by the time the heroine tells the hero everything in chapter eight, the reader will probably be eager to learn all the details.
Sometimes this works best if you decide where you want to reveal the Big Secret, and then work the other details in from there—sort of backward plotting. Whether you calculate it on paper or just think it through in your head, working backward can be a valuable tool for pacing.
Remember also that your characters will have specific goals for each section of your book (the chapters or pages that fall between turning points.) If, for example, your character begins the book with a goal to shut down the horse trainer’s business at the end of his lane, then his specific scene goals will reflect that goal until the first major turning point.
At the first major turning point, the story must dramatically change directions. So perhaps the character learns that the woman who owns the horse training business is a single mother who is struggling to support her children. Now, he feels like a complete jerk. How can he put her and her children on the streets?
His new goal might be to convince her to move back to Cincinnati, near her parents. This would be a win-win situation for him, right? So his specific scene goals for the next section of the book will support his new goal . . . at least until the next turning point when he learns that the heroine has a very good reason for not going back to Cincinnati.
Planning strong turning points which make the story shift direction makes it possible to have strong scene goals. Strong scene goals make for strong disasters. Your scenes begin to have purpose, and your story begins to move at a page-turning rate.
----------
Dancing on Coals Online Workshops
http://www.dancingoncoals.com
The purpose of the turning point is to drive the story forward, so make sure you let it do its job. The turning point should leave both reader and character wondering what will happen now.
There are some “givens” when we write genre fiction. The readers of a romance novel know the characters will get together in the end before they read the first word of your book. The readers of a mystery know that the murder will be solved and the sleuth will live to sleuth another day. The readers of a western know that justice will prevail. There’s very little question in genre fiction about what is going to happen in the end. That makes how they get there extremely important ...
And “How” translates into turning points.
How are you going to keep the characters apart believably for 300 pages? How are you going to get them past the conflicts that keep them apart at the end of the book? How are you going to keep the reader from guessing who did it—or why they did it—in your mystery novel?
Pacing is also determined by deciding what to include and what to leave out.
Readers are generally interested in the first time anything happens in your book. The first meeting between hero and heroine, their first real conversation, the first time they share their secrets, their first kiss, the first time they make love, the first time they admit their love for one another.
What kind of new information are we talking about? We’re talking about new pieces to the puzzle. A substantial piece of character development. A new secret previously unknown to the reader.
For instance, if you reveal the heroine’s entire past to the reader in chapter one, or let the heroine reveal it to her best friend in chapter two, when she reveals her past to the hero in chapter four, the whole chapter is probably going to feel redundant and slow to the reader. Your pacing will suffer.
If, however, you let the heroine and her best friend discuss her past in general terms in chapter two, build suspense by alluding to her past in chapter four and again in chapter six, by the time the heroine tells the hero everything in chapter eight, the reader will probably be eager to learn all the details.
Sometimes this works best if you decide where you want to reveal the Big Secret, and then work the other details in from there—sort of backward plotting. Whether you calculate it on paper or just think it through in your head, working backward can be a valuable tool for pacing.
Remember also that your characters will have specific goals for each section of your book (the chapters or pages that fall between turning points.) If, for example, your character begins the book with a goal to shut down the horse trainer’s business at the end of his lane, then his specific scene goals will reflect that goal until the first major turning point.
His new goal might be to convince her to move back to Cincinnati, near her parents. This would be a win-win situation for him, right? So his specific scene goals for the next section of the book will support his new goal . . . at least until the next turning point when he learns that the heroine has a very good reason for not going back to Cincinnati.
Planning strong turning points which make the story shift direction makes it possible to have strong scene goals. Strong scene goals make for strong disasters. Your scenes begin to have purpose, and your story begins to move at a page-turning rate.
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Dancing on Coals Online Workshops
http://www.dancingoncoals.com
Feb 24, 2011
Keep up the Pace
What is pacing? In the language of storytelling, pacing is the rate at which your story is told. Pacing determines whether your book will be a long, luxurious read or a quick one. Whether it’s a page-turner people say they can’t put down, or whether it’s a book they’ll read slowly and leisurely.
That’s the easy description, but just knowing that isn’t enough for most of us. Just what is the right pacing for our book, and how do we control it?
Of course, we need to be familiar with the type of book we’re writing in order to understand the best pacing for that particular story. Readers of action-adventure books don’t want to be slowed up by paragraphs filled with introspection and description, while readers of most romance novels—even the new breed of romances such as romantic suspense and romantic adventure—expect a certain amount of introspection and description. But those hybrid romances are still better when the pacing is faster than in a traditional romance. Cozy mystery novels fall somewhere in between the two. Mysteries considered hardboiled lean more toward the action/adventure genre.
A writer who doesn’t have a clear feel for the pacing of her genre will not only do herself a disservice, but quite possibly set herself up for failure.
There are many tools we can employ to control the pacing of the fiction we write, whether we’re talking about the pacing of the book as a whole, the pacing of a page, a paragraph, or a sentence. It’s not enough to worry about the pacing of the book. The pacing of the individual scenes, the page, and the paragraph are equally important.
But let’s start with the big picture and then move in for the close-up.
One of the big ways we control the pacing of our books is through the skillful use of turning points. What are turning points? They’re places where the story takes a dramatic and unexpected turn in another direction. When the story literally turns the corner.
From Point A to Point B, your hero may be annoyed by the heroine. At Point B, he is no longer annoyed. He turns the corner. His feelings change, and the story changes with it. From Point A to Point B, our spy hero believes that foreign arms dealers are responsible for the explosion outside the embassy, but at the turning point, he learns something that rules out the arms dealer as a suspect. It’s back to the drawing board for our protagonist, and the story changes as a result.
As a general rule, the more frequently turning points appear, the more rapidly paced your story is.
Notable turning points in a romance novel often include a first kiss. But if your characters are immediately sexually attracted, a first kiss, or even the first time the characters make love, may not be a turning point at all. Remember, turning points are those places where your story changes direction. If the story has been moving one direction because of an instant attraction and the characters move toward a logically anticipated step—such as that first kiss—the story hasn’t changed at all.
Think of turning points as those places that reviewers and readers often refer to as twists and turns. They’re the things that will hopefully keep the reader off-balance and keep her reading to find out what happens. If your story follows a predictable path—characters meet, characters are attracted, characters kiss, characters grow closer, one character discover the other’s hidden secret—and so on, the reader has no real reason to keep reading.
Turning points should bring surprises not just for the characters, but for the readers. Revealing a secret to the Hero that the Heroine has shared with the reader already isn’t really going to be a turning point in your story because even though the hero doesn’t know what’s coming, the reader does and she’s already anticipating the changes.
By skillfully weaving turning points from your main story with those from your secondary plot(s) you can keep even a long book twisting and turning with enough regularity to keep readers interested.
----------
Dancing on Coals Online Workshops
http://www.dancingoncoals.com
That’s the easy description, but just knowing that isn’t enough for most of us. Just what is the right pacing for our book, and how do we control it?
Of course, we need to be familiar with the type of book we’re writing in order to understand the best pacing for that particular story. Readers of action-adventure books don’t want to be slowed up by paragraphs filled with introspection and description, while readers of most romance novels—even the new breed of romances such as romantic suspense and romantic adventure—expect a certain amount of introspection and description. But those hybrid romances are still better when the pacing is faster than in a traditional romance. Cozy mystery novels fall somewhere in between the two. Mysteries considered hardboiled lean more toward the action/adventure genre.
A writer who doesn’t have a clear feel for the pacing of her genre will not only do herself a disservice, but quite possibly set herself up for failure.
There are many tools we can employ to control the pacing of the fiction we write, whether we’re talking about the pacing of the book as a whole, the pacing of a page, a paragraph, or a sentence. It’s not enough to worry about the pacing of the book. The pacing of the individual scenes, the page, and the paragraph are equally important.
But let’s start with the big picture and then move in for the close-up.
One of the big ways we control the pacing of our books is through the skillful use of turning points. What are turning points? They’re places where the story takes a dramatic and unexpected turn in another direction. When the story literally turns the corner.
From Point A to Point B, your hero may be annoyed by the heroine. At Point B, he is no longer annoyed. He turns the corner. His feelings change, and the story changes with it. From Point A to Point B, our spy hero believes that foreign arms dealers are responsible for the explosion outside the embassy, but at the turning point, he learns something that rules out the arms dealer as a suspect. It’s back to the drawing board for our protagonist, and the story changes as a result. As a general rule, the more frequently turning points appear, the more rapidly paced your story is.
Notable turning points in a romance novel often include a first kiss. But if your characters are immediately sexually attracted, a first kiss, or even the first time the characters make love, may not be a turning point at all. Remember, turning points are those places where your story changes direction. If the story has been moving one direction because of an instant attraction and the characters move toward a logically anticipated step—such as that first kiss—the story hasn’t changed at all.
Think of turning points as those places that reviewers and readers often refer to as twists and turns. They’re the things that will hopefully keep the reader off-balance and keep her reading to find out what happens. If your story follows a predictable path—characters meet, characters are attracted, characters kiss, characters grow closer, one character discover the other’s hidden secret—and so on, the reader has no real reason to keep reading.
Turning points should bring surprises not just for the characters, but for the readers. Revealing a secret to the Hero that the Heroine has shared with the reader already isn’t really going to be a turning point in your story because even though the hero doesn’t know what’s coming, the reader does and she’s already anticipating the changes.
By skillfully weaving turning points from your main story with those from your secondary plot(s) you can keep even a long book twisting and turning with enough regularity to keep readers interested.
----------
Dancing on Coals Online Workshops
http://www.dancingoncoals.com
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