pacing

Sounds good to me. Unless your s-l-o-w-w-w-w is really s-s-s-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w-w.

Fastfastfast is fun.

If I have one eye remaining because the detective is beating me with a three foot rod of rebar, as I fight to click the safety on my assault rifle with my broken fingers, then good.

I try to think of pacing as how fast time goes for a charachter and that I need to control how quickly or slowly it passes or flows. To me it depends on how important a particular moment is to the charachter. If it is a moment that is going to have a compounding effect on that charachter, say for example the moment, the second it can take for you to realise a person is dead, I would think it would need more than a sentence. It might only be a second, but that moment and the emotion of the MC could be explored. But if he or she notices a cat, but that cat isn't really that important but just a part of the scene setting, we probably don't need to spend a paragraph describing it.

Pacing I think is gained by varying word, setence, and paragraph length.

If you have a charachter running through the woods, or streets, you might use short sentences, maybe to keep pace with their breating or something. If you have a charachter going for a slow boat ride, you sentences might be long, flowing, to give an effect to the scenery.

If you have a gape between scenes where nothing of interest happens, you don't want to bore the reader with the charachter dressing, or making dinner, unless it is part of the plot and needed.

Two many or said tags placed when not needed will slow down pace also, as will wordy sentences that have no purpose, and long flashbacks or backstory unless handled very carefully. Once you take a reader back in time, it can have the affect of making the reader become bored with hearing about something in the past. If not done properly you will rip the reader out of the moment, make them wish they could get back to the future, and in turn slow the pace down.

Hope some of this helps.

That's where beta readers come in handy

I never worry about pacing on the first draft. I just write to get the story set down on paper and then go back and figure out where I need to tighten or add, etc.

I'm consistently amazed at how different the pacing seems once the book is completed versus when I'm writing it.

And since when do husbands not count as betas?

bagels said:

I'm consistently amazed at how different the pacing seems once the book is completed versus when I'm writing it.

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Bagels,

How does it usually turn out for you...faster paced than you imagined when writing or slower?

When I'm working on the first draft and coming up with the story, I have no sense of the pacing. Looking at the first draft I'm revising, I can see the places where I wasn't sure what happened next so I just kept throwing words on the page until something clicked. This revision is more of a rewrite, and I know I'm also losing track of pacing. I'll deal with it in the next pass when I know what the whole story looks like.

Until you've got the whole story down on paper, I wouldn't worry about pacing. As for action followed by introspection, are you familiar with scenes & sequels? Jim Butcher's LiveJournal has lots of good information on the subject. Also Jack Bickham has a book about it.

I wouldn't worry about pacing too much until you're ready for critique partners, betas, and rewrites. I made the mistake of worrying about all of that stuff in the midst of a first-draft, and it just killed my writing mojo for that story. I should have just banged out the first draft so that I had it all down when the juices and ideas were flowing. Needless to say, it's still and unfinished first draft.

Obviously this is just my rambling, so take of it what you will ...

vox said:

Bagels,

How does it usually turn out for you...faster paced than you imagined when writing or slower?

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It tends to be a little of both. And there's inevitably one or two scenes that just work from the start.

Some specific examples: I had one scene in my current project that I was positive was going to read as rushed, but when I went back through after completing the whole novel and read it, I was shocked at how plodding and boring it was. As it stands, the scene is now about half the length of what it was originally - and I'd estimate that much of what remains is somehow altered. On the flip side, another series of scenes that I was positive was going to read as frantic and disjointed ended up being the universal favorite of my beta readers (and that scene received primarily cosmetic editing before I let them look at it because I wasn't even sure how to try and fix it).

That's why I recommend waiting until the project is finished - it simply feels different. More than that, you can see how the finished product looks as a whole and begin to figure out what works and what doesn't, what needs elaboration and what needs to be deleted in the context of the big picture.

Ruth2 said:

cooeedownunder: I guess what I'm worried about is having a nice slow tender moment immediately followed by a hellbent-for-leather chase scene. Is the pacing of the transition too fast? And is it too much, bordering on slapstick?
Menace is good, farce is bad. And how to tell when you've crossed the line from menace to farce.

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Have you watched Joss Whedon's TV series Firefly and the accompanying movie, Serenity? That man is a master of rapid tone switches, from hilarious to dark/sinister to action and back again. A fast change of tone, well-executed, can be very powerful. I especially like going from a cosy quiet scene to PANIC PANIC WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE (something I played with in my opening chapter).

Unfortunately, since execution is everything, I don't think there's a whole lot anyone can do to judge without seeing the work.