[Weekly] Pacing

[u/A_C_Shock]

One: Enter the Halloween Contest!

It is currently not that competitive, considering there are three whole entries. You have a strong chance to be top 3! Submit something! You have until the 23rd! That's like two whole weeks to perfect something!

Ok, ok. On to new topics.

Can we talk about pacing? How do you figure that out? What makes something work for one author but not for another?

I've read things I thought were slow and plodding that I absolutely hated. Some, I really like. Maybe it's the character...or a story that has a tighter focus so the plodding doesn't feel too slow.

Or on the reverse, I've read things that were too fast and had other people say they were glacially slow.

How do you figure out how to land that plane, so to speak? Thoughts?

[u/1800COCAINE]

Edit, if anyone would like to collaborate on a Halloween Contest Entry send a DM .

I’m writing a verse drama currently about the Duke de Orlean and the man in the iron mask set in 1669 at the palace of Versailles.

This is how I’m handling pacing at the level of story beats,

The Man In The Iron Mask

Plot of a Verse Drama in a Sonnet Format,
Premise, choice, action, fallout, new situation , choice, action (tragic).

Notes: Quatrain I, lines 1–4: SETUP (masked costume ball) Philippe is introduced as a curious person in every sense we can imagine.

Scene 1. It takes place in a garden at Versailles.
We establish that the person who will help Philippe
is a person who he loves, and that person cannot keep a secret,
which will cause their murder at the end.

1. ⁠A man is brought into Versailles imprisoned in an iron mask his identity is deliberately concealed by those plotting to overthrow France. (Premise).

2. ⁠During the costume ball Philippe and those closest to him become consumed by the question of who the prisoner is. Characters are shown as behaving curious as they are introduced.

How to show curiosity: Brainstorm Ideas. Dialogue as clickbait, hooks, shrewd discernment:

A. Demonstrate knowledge (guessing who is who at the masquerade) shows observational skills, gesture, movements, accents, class, taste.

B. But there is a limit to this knowledge (who is the man in the iron mask) the desire to know is the motive and cause to propel the plot.

1. ⁠The forces surrounding the prisoner make it clear that discovering his masked identity is forbidden and dangerous. ( Introduce the political Philosopher and a foreign Diplomat).
   
2. ⁠Philippe nevertheless determines that the truth must be known. (He enlist those he loves to help him uncover the secret) like the Chevalier de Lorraine.

(Plan a stratagem)

Quatrain II, lines 5–8: CHOICE & ACTION.

Notes: Direct opposition with the antagonist, verbal sparing, mirrors, mask, acting,

1. Choice: Philippe must choose between obedience to the existing order [political] and pursuing the truth with those he loves. ( there is very clear expectation given what will happen if he disobeys) [political fallout]

6.He chooses to know the truth, accepting the danger this entails to unmask the man in the iron mask.

Notes: Fight, murder, disguise,

1. Action: In a new disguise, Philippe and his allies overcome the protections surrounding the prisoner.
   [wild violence] [extreme] [rude] [not to trust]

2. They are alone with the man in the iron mask. [the prize]

Quatrain III, lines 9–12: FALLOUT, a NEW SITUATION, a NEW CHOICE.

1. Fallout / Volta: They unmask him and discover his identity. Their actions have exposed them; everyone involved now possesses a secret the existing order, the ancien regime, cannot permit to escape. (It is explosive) guards nobles philosophers lovers all now involved.

10New situation: The prisoner is Philippe’s elder brother and the rightful King of France, to whom Philippe owes both fraternal and political allegiance.

1. Restoring him would destroy the existing order and threaten France; killing him cannot contain the danger while the other witnesses live. The other witnesses are those who Philippe loves.

2. New choice: Philippe must choose between his long lost brother the real king and those he loves, or the preservation of France and his other brother the younger twin Louis.

Couplet, lines 13–14: ACTION & CATASTROPHE.

13.Action: Philippe chooses France and kills his long lost brother, the rightful king, and those who helped him uncover the truth.
14.The secret dies with them all, leaving Philippe alive as the keeper of the truth and the preserver of the order which has left him isolated.

[u/ArchDan → u/1800COCAINE]

Have you tried layered approach (Multiple stories within stories)?

Your approach to beats and narrative building is very systematic, i like that. So im wondering how far have you been able to push it?

[u/Cornsnake5]

I think a part of pacing comes down to personal taste. My own story caters perfectly to my own tastes and I was able to read through the same chapter again and again despite already suspecting that it was running long. The current shorter version does feel better though.

Meanwhile I was barely able to sit through the first Harry potter movie, despite it being paced faster than the book and despite me loving fantasy. All the tropes that appeal to its target audience didn’t appeal to me, but they might have if I was younger. It felt like a slog to me.

So personal taste can skew your perspective on good pacing. Getting independent perspectives of people who are fans of the genre usually helps nail it down. I also try to maintain good story structure to make sure something meaningful keeps happening and remind myself that cutting it shorter is usually the better way to go.

[u/ArchDan]

edited. My sentances were all over the place. I apologize.

I view pacing primarily as an established rhythm that you intentionally break to create emphasis.

People process narrative through relationships and contrasts (like stone to rock, to gravel, to sand). In the prose, a reader gets used to an author's natural voice and cadence within the first few paragraphs. That baseline becomes the story’s "resting heart rate." Once that baseline is established, the reader intuitively feels every intentional shift—provided you don't stay shifted for so long that the narrative identity dissolves.

I tend to approach pacing almost poetically through a few specific mechanics:

1. Word-Count Ranges as a Baseline I keep a loose target window for my "resting" sentence length (for me, 10 to 16 words feels natural). From there, pacing comes down to how you transition away from that baseline:
2. Easing in: Gradually scaling sentence length up or down to ramp up tension or bring a scene to rest.

3. Shocking: Abruptly dropping to a 2-word sentence or exploding into a 40-word run-on to jar the reader awake. This is risky, and its not worth the shock value alone. I prefer to use it only when I have need to use emotion that it produces.

4. Auditory & Breath Cadence Pacing lives in the mouth and lungs as much as the eye. I like to test prose against a slow speaking pace/metronome to check the actual rhythm of the syllables. There is a metronome /beat machine available for free on the Berkeley website). Reading with the beat helps identify the pauses, word choices and natural cadance emphasis. If the prose doesn't breathe naturally when read aloud, the pacing will feel awkward on the page regardless of plot speed.

5. Scene-Specific Rhythmic Profiles The baseline changes based on the emotional engine of the scene:

6. Horror/Suspense: A slow, stalking rhythm—like a predator sneaking. Word choice becomes breathy or sharp.

7. Action: Compressed word counts, shorter time between heavy beats, rapid-fire emphasis.

8. Whimsical/Childlike: Shifting the weight away from punchy words toward allegorical rhythm and metaphor.

When a "fast" story feels like a heart attack or a "slow" story feels like torture, it's usually because the author changed the rhythm without building a clear baseline first, leaving the reader with no anchor. Another possible option is that the author had written under the varying influence, thus varying pacing.

[u/ImpressiveGrass7832]

Two types of pacing for me. Pacing for the prose (like, the actual text) and pacing of the story elements, beats, how information is unveiled and plot forwarded.

In my head they're distinguished parts, but are connected. I've read things where the plot moves lightning fast but everything feels terribly slow just because of the physical amount of prose on the page. This isn't a good combination for my brain.

Bit wishy-washy but I like to think of pacing as a series of narrative highs and lows. Either I'm trying to build up to something, some payoff, in which case should ideally be accelerating (start slower, speed up and up then culminate in some moment, some climax). Then, the next part should decelerate. Slow down and think on things, gather thoughts/strength/courage, then head out and begin accelerating towards the next Narrative Conflict (dragon fight, bank vault heist, whatever).

So, to me, the pattern matters more than like, a number I can put on pace (go 10MPH here and then speed up to 50 in this section then down to 20). That wave pattern feels comfortable and natural to write in. I get stuck when I don't format my plot properly to enable this, because it feels like things just happening one after the other and building to nothing (so feels terribly slow).

Anyway my random amateur 2 cent ramblings on pace.

[u/ImpressiveGrass7832 → u/ImpressiveGrass7832]

Oh, incidentally this -> "feels terribly slow just because of the physical amount of prose on the page" is also why i hate 'stage directions' when reading (like a TON of mundane physical gestures like raising eyebrows or clenching fists or whatever, strung too dense and close together in a screenplay style way).

I notice it a lot in self-pubbed stuff. It tends to tank the pace for me and slows me down, and if they don't serve purpose or add much it feels like a slog until I get to the 'actual' story, if that makes sense

[u/Lisez-le-lui]

I think the trick with pacing is that it doesn't actually matter in its own right. What makes a "slow" story feel that way isn't that nothing is happening, but that nothing interesting is happening, or, in other words, that one or more boring things are happening instead. If the goal is to keep the reader interested, then speeding up or slowing down the speed at which the story moves through time is only useful insofar as it allows the story to skip over "boring" material or expand on "interesting" material (the latter being necessary if the story feels too "fast").

I have heard it said, though I have not watched the show Dragon Ball, that the seventeen-episode "Red Ribbon Army Saga," which runs for nearly seven hours of real time, takes place continuously over the course of a single afternoon. It may well take longer to watch than the events portrayed are supposed to have lasted. It's more difficult to measure the speed at which a book can be read versus the speed at which its plot is moving, but the stream-of-consciousness novel The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker, definitely takes longer to read than its main character's inner monologue would last in real life (indeed, Baker acknowledges that it would be impossible for the main character to think so much in such a short time, and claims that his goal is to portray thought not as it is, but as it could be given limitless room to develop). At the other extreme, many short stories present "grand narratives" of thousands or millions of years unfolding over a few pages. Curiously, while expansion beyond a one-to-one timescale is rare, compression is so common as to be unremarkable.

None of that is actually concretely helpful beyond standing for the general principle that reason and common sense are the best guides.

[u/Miserable-Disk-8900]

I recently finished The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. I enjoyed it, but found issues with the pacing in the second half of the novella due to the language, especially the dialogue, shifting from being vivid and heavy in subtext to focusing on delivering exposition and thus often coming across as cheesy. I think the problem usually lies in how well you choose and develop the concepts. In the case of The Hellbound Heart, I think Barker simply ran out of ideas to explore with the present set of characters.