Pace - The Final Frontier?

I've been watching Homeland on television. It's been very good at keeping the tension going with a new twist at the end of every episode. 12 episodes = at least 11 twists, with possibly one more are the very end, all spaced out at regular intervals.

It's a lesson we can all learn from - me particularly as I've just realised that I've squeezed two of my major story moments into the same scene. Tut tut - I should know better. Still, at least I know what to do about it, which is not to hope that no one will notice/mind, but re-work the story at that point so that the two exciting story moments will be separated by a time of reflection.

I see other writers doing this. They cram the exciting events next door to each other so the reader doesn't have time to savour the new developments. It's good to have exciting events, but the pace needs to slow down in-between or the exciting events are diminished. Action, followed by reaction. Fast, slow, fast, slow. Fast, fast, fast is as boring as slow, slow, slow.

Think of sport. There's a period when a player or team loses all the time, then they start winning. We need the contrast of the win, followed by a loss, to keep our interest going. If they carry on winning everything then it becomes boring - I gave up on Wimbledon because of Pete Sampras, then Roger Federer. Watching Jessica Ennis at the Olympics will be much more interesting because she got second place last month, not the predicted first. And would cricket be exciting without those long, long periods when nothing much seems to be going on?

So when you're looking at your writing, check that there is both a good balance and variety between the slow bits and the fast bits. That's what pace is all about.

Drama Doesn't Have To Be Noisy or Fast

At the Get Writing Conference at the weekend I did a workshop for young people on creating story lines and was talking about pace and the need to get stories moving forwards. One of the students asked about this, citing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy as an example where nothing happened ie there weren't any gun fights or car chases.

Now, that's not pace. Yes, a car chase is fast, but pace in writing is not about the rate of speed, it's more about the tension. The latest James Bond Quantum of Solace had its quota of car chases and explosions but I actually dropped off to sleep while watching it because it lacked any tension.

Think about doing a jigsaw puzzle (or a crossword, or a Sudoko puzzle or anything similar). You start with a great mass of pieces all jumble together and slowly, slowly, you begin to work out which bit goes where. There are small moments of triumph when you get the corners fixed, and huge satisfaction when that piece you could never find a place for suddenly slots into its rightful place. It's completely absorbing while you're doing it and when the puzzle is finished you sit back with a sense of completion and a happy sigh.

It's that sense of satisfaction, that 'ahh' moment that we're trying to achieve as writers. The story unfolds as things fall into place, and they don't have to be noisy or fast to have tension or absorb the reader.

Pacing In A Novel

Learning how to pace your writing is an important skill, but the basics are simple: Sometimes go faster, and sometimes go slowly.

If you go fast, fast, fast, fast you begin to lose impact. It's like someone shouting all the time; after a while you switch off. If you go slow, slow, slow, slow, your readers will begin to drift off.

You need to go forwards in a mixture of fast and slow scenes, though not in such an obvious pattern as fast, slow, fast, slow, fast, slow which will become predictable. And as you get towards the end, the chances are that you'll have more fast scenes than slow ones.

So, what makes a scene fast? Usually lots of action and dialogue, and exciting things happening. A slow scene will more likely include a lot of internal thought and reflection on what's just happened.

If you're unsure, try listing your scenes on index cards. Then lay them out on the floor or a big table along an imaginary central line. Scenes above the line are fast (and the further above the line, the faster they are), scenes below the line are slow (and the further below the line, the slower they are). Ideally, your index cards should zig zag across the floor or table in a varied and unpredictable way.

This is an easy way to check your pace and see if there are any places where nothing much happens for a while (ie several cards together below the line) or if there are clumps of action and excitement (ie several cards together above the line). You can do it for each scene too, and it should show a similarly varied pattern.

And finally, you can check that all your best bits - the ones that you rate highest up the excitement scale - are spread out throughout the novel.

Everything needs to have light and shade and a change of pace to them. Think of a film like Die Hard. Yes, there are bangs and explosions and exciting stuff happening. But there are also sections where Bruce chats to the policeman in a reflective way, the calm before the next storm. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow or quick, quick, slow, quick, slow, quick - it doesn't matter what the order is so long as it is there.