Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Slow?

Down on Porthmeor Beach in St Ives last weekend the surfers were struggling to catch the waves. They were small and irregular - the surf was elsewhere. When the surf is good the surfers paddle their boards way out into the bay and wait to catch a wave. The really good surfers ride the wave for a while then drop back off it just before it breaks, so they don't get either caught up in the surf or washed far onto the beach - it's a long struggle through the waves to get out to the point where you started from.

It's beautiful to watch the good surfers. They have a rhythm and fluidity in the way they ride the waves. Short stories can read like a series of waves coming into the shore, each wave starting small then building up into a crescendo. A good short story will have a series of those waves running throughout the narrative, each wave separated rather than crashing into each other all in one whoosh, then leaving the surfer stranded without impetus.

It can be summarised in one word: pace.

You need the slow build up, then the crescendo - a moment of drama or tension. Then another slow build up, then another moment of tension, and so on. Sometimes the crescendos might be close together, sometimes further apart - you don't want the rhythm to be too regular or it'll become predictable. But that's the basic principle: slow build up; moment of drama; slow build up; moment of drama etc. Or, slow, slow, quick! quick! slow.

But - and this is where it gets complicated - you want the drama to be part of the slow bit. Imagine your character is going to open a box that may (or may not) contain a poisonous snake. They would slowly approach the box. They might listen for hissing. They might try the weight of the box. They might put on gloves. They might slide their hands over the box. They might imagine what will happen when they open the box and the snake flies out...

All this is slowly building up to the moment of drama when - quick! quick! the lid of the box flips open and the character sees: nothing. Tension drops, and we're back to slow, slow again.

What it isn't is slow, slow as we hear about the character's bus ride into town and how rude the conductor was to them because they didn't have the right change, and then they trod in a puddle on the way to the office, and the receptionist blathered on about what they'd done that weekend, and then they got to their office, scanned the threatening letter attached to the box and quickly flipped open the lid to discover a king cobra. Which bit them.

For the surfers, choosing the wave to ride is part of the skill. Choosing where to go slow and where to go fast is part of the skill of being a writer.

The Tale of the Canadian Pilot

There was once a Canadian who'd been a pilot in WWII. When he reached retirement he decided he'd go to England and try to track down the nurse who'd looked him after when his plane had crashed and he was in the burns unit. He'd always remembered her because it never hurt when she put the drops in his eyes. He had her name, and the area in N Wales she came from, but nothing more.

He planned his trip carefully, budgeting for a six month stay - surely he could find his gentle nurse in six months. He arrived in N Wales and went to the local newspaper. Perhaps, he explained to the girl on reception, he could speak to a reporter. No need, she replied brightly. I think you're talking about my second cousin. Hang on, I'll ring my mum. Five minutes later, and he had his nurse's phone number.

It's a romantic story, but it ends way too soon, both as a tale and in real life (the six month trip being now redundant). How much better if he'd had to struggle in the search, the quest twisting and turning though red herrings, false hopes and loose ends, until at last, when all hope had gone - there she was!

Delaying gratification is a useful trick with story writing. Never make it easy for your characters, always make them struggle, always make them wait. Even a simple thing like needing a pen to jot down a phone number can have a little bit of tension - will there be one at the bottom of the bag? No? Yes! It's a bit like fancying the unobtainable boy who always keeps you guessing. Readers will love you for making them wait. So the warthog from yesterday's blog...he got away.

PS The nurse was my mother. She and the pilot met again after fifty years. They didn't fall in love. Another reason why fiction is sometimes so much more satisfying than real life.

Flashback - Work of the Devil

I am on a one-woman campaign to eliminate flashback from writing. I don't understand the when it usually makes writing soggy and dull. Don't do it! Writing is partly about controlling pace. Action and dialogue speed it up, reflection and description slow it down. Flashback stops the novel dead in its tracks, like forcing a speeding car into reverse. Why? Because it's already happened. When you read you want to know what's going to happen next. With a flashback you know. Think how many stories have an underlying Will they, won't they? premise. If you use flashback, you've lost it.

I recently workshopped a student piece. It opened with a scene of the main character on her way somewhere, then went into flashback for the rest of the chapter going over the previous 24 hours. It was well written, but the tension was lost - we already knew the character was going to get in the car and head off for her destination, because the writer had said so at the beginning. It's like telling the punchline before you do the rest of the joke. It doesn't work.

Worse are those flashbacks where the character settles down to have a jolly good reminiscence like some great-uncle at Christmas beginning with 'I remember those lovely holidays we used to have at Gran's...' For some reason, they're often inspired by train journeys and as the character drops off into a dream of times past, so do we.

Of course there are exceptions. Donna Tartt's The Secret History gains a lot of tension because we know from the start that a main character is going to be murdered by one of the others. But we don't know who murders whom until the end. Anita Shreeve's The Pilot's Wife uses flashback to unravel the story, but each flashback section advances the plot with information the reader didn't know until that moment. So flashback can work, but the chances are more likely that they're losing tension and pace. Don't do it!