Inspired by the "Pacing" thread.

It takes me several drafts. Often I will just get a narrative down in my first draft and then in subsequent drafts expand them into scenes'

Well, through the use of "wacky forshadowing", I've decidded to base my paceing off of the movie "The Terminator" so that gives me a good bases. But normally I just write what's natural...seems to work. As long as something cool is happening, then you're good, right?

PS: The wacky forshadowing is becuase at the begining the MC's are watching a movie that is a remake of a remake of a remake that's made clear to be the Terminator. Then the MC's get chased by this evil assasin up and down the ship, and it becomes sorta like the Terminator in terms of pacing. As in "Relentless and unstoppable"

And in both my book and the Terminator, it's a boy/girl partnership and in both of them the "terminator" charicter is killed by being squished (Though in my book it's via gravity generator) and in both of them, the bad guy is killed by the girl of the girl/boy partnership.

So what is the moral of the story? Base your pacing off action movies?

Seems to be working for me.

It's usually a work in progress. I would probably get it mostly right in first or second draft, and then I would have to tweak things. If I rewrite or rearrange things, I will have to figure out the pacing again. It ain't done until I send it out!

Depends. Sometimes I hit a scene's pacing right the first time out of the gate, other times it can take ten drafts or more.

I think one of the central parts of nailing pacing is in nailing your understanding of the story. This is why for many people it doesn't come out till the whole story, with all its faults, lies before you in a first draft. Like I said, an author must know his story and world, being able to pull emotion with effective pacing without having to worry about content decisions while writing. When presentation of your story is at the forefront of your thought, pacing steps up in its placement of concerns. Without a story, there is no reason to have pacing.. because.. well, there is nothing of significance to pace. This is also why it is hard to address both at once, since pacing is dependant on the story.

You don't necessarily have to write the whole novel to finish its story. You can go at novel writing from several ways, and it is my personal belief that although writing blind from a starting point and pulling in thoughts to construct a story as you go can be good for notes and material for a real story, but the most effective way is to start with notes, raw material creation, in mind, rather than creating raw material with an intention for story. By this I mean you should write starting with the bare bones of the story: themes, characters, symbols, etc. - then get everything you can together to construct the story itself, not narrative or dialogue, not writing in the novel sense, but writing in the sparknotes sort of sense. Be perceptive about your own intentions, gain a good footing in knowledge of your world, and draw together a story that turns on values inherent to your story and excentuates your themes. Become firm, wise, knowledgable in all areas that critics might dare to examine.

The last step is creating an extensive summary, or treatment, that explains chapter by chapter the flow of the story in each. Take that, and, likened to a taffy machine, take a hard piece of sugar, make it hot with imagination, then turn it into something accessable and sweet by pulling it with your pacing accordant to the slow and fast pace of life (to help with this idea, refer to my post in the thread entitled "Pacing"). Go watch a taffy pulling machine sometime, thinking about it like this, it is quite inspiring.

It's one of the things I look at on the second pass. I normally give about a 2-3 month break between first draft and second draft so I can come back with a fresh set of eyes.

Ultimately, though, pacing is something that I work on from that point forward. Pacing can refer to the pacing of the story itself, the pacing of individual scenes, or the pacing of dialogue -- so it's something I will continue to look at throughout the life cycle of the process.

Constantly. Pacing is always on my mind. Anything can become exciting if you pace it right. Anything can become drab if you don't.

After characterisation, it's what I pay most attention to.

For me, it's getting the set up of the story working right. Everything has to fit together properly in a logical manner (not have something happen here because something else needs to happen down the road). In an early draft, the story setup didn't work. Co-writer kept wanting beta readers to highlight the slow places, and I kept saying, "What slow places?"--because there weren't any. Poor story setup had us jumping from action scene to action scene to action scene.

Once we got story setup working, pacing became a conscious thing: "There's a high action scene coming up. Let's do a down chapter here and then speed into the action chapter." On the next one, story setup will be the primary focus and ensuring that it works properly from the start.

Pacing

The one thing I know I'll screw up if I think about it before I start writing is pacing. For me, pacing is letting the story and the characters dictate the action. I think about the pace of the opening as I write the opening, which is usually the first few pages. If I get the the character and the situation right in these first few pages, the pace of the novel as a whole takes care of itself, so this is where I work the hardest.

For me, pace is not about fast, slow, fast slow in rapid succession. Pace is totally dependent on what the characters do, and why they do it. This may be loooong and slooow, short and fast, or any combination thereof.

I don't think there is any one thing that can be called proper pacing, except in relation to who the characters are, what they do, and why they do it. I never try to dictate the pace of a story, but I usually get pace pretty much right on the first pass.

Oliveman said:

I think one of the central parts of nailing pacing is in nailing your understanding of the story. This is why for many people it doesn't come out till the whole story, with all its faults, lies before you in a first draft. Like I said, an author must know his story and world, being able to pull emotion with effective pacing without having to worry about content decisions while writing. When presentation of your story is at the forefront of your thought, pacing steps up in its placement of concerns. Without a story, there is no reason to have pacing.. because.. well, there is nothing of significance to pace. This is also why it is hard to address both at once, since pacing is dependant on the story.

You don't necessarily have to write the whole novel to finish its story. You can go at novel writing from several ways, and it is my personal belief that although writing blind from a starting point and pulling in thoughts to construct a story as you go can be good for notes and material for a real story, but the most effective way is to start with notes, raw material creation, in mind, rather than creating raw material with an intention for story. By this I mean you should write starting with the bare bones of the story: themes, characters, symbols, etc. - then get everything you can together to construct the story itself, not narrative or dialogue, not writing in the novel sense, but writing in the sparknotes sort of sense. Be perceptive about your own intentions, gain a good footing in knowledge of your world, and draw together a story that turns on values inherent to your story and excentuates your themes. Become firm, wise, knowledgable in all areas that critics might dare to examine.

The last step is creating an extensive summary, or treatment, that explains chapter by chapter the flow of the story in each. Take that, and, likened to a taffy machine, take a hard piece of sugar, make it hot with imagination, then turn it into something accessable and sweet by pulling it with your pacing accordant to the slow and fast pace of life (to help with this idea, refer to my post in the thread entitled "Pacing"). Go watch a taffy pulling machine sometime, thinking about it like this, it is quite inspiring.

Click to expand...

I don't write like this at all. Nothing in that is what I do. My world is your world, and organic writing (or whatever you want to call it, seat-of-your-pantsing, winging it) is what I do. It works for me and pacing takes care of itself in character and situation. See what James wrote below:

Jamesaritchie said:

The one thing I know I'll screw up if I think about it before I start writing is pacing. For me, pacing is letting the story and the characters dictate the action. I think about the pace of the opening as I write the opening, which is usually the first few pages. If I get the the character and the situation right in these first few pages, the pace of the novel as a whole takes care of itself, so this is where I work the hardest.

For me, pace is not about fast, slow, fast slow in rapid succession. Pace is totally dependent on what the characters do, and why they do it. This may be loooong and slooow, short and fast, or any combination thereof.

I don't think there is any one thing that can be called proper pacing, except in relation to who the characters are, what they do, and why they do it. I never try to dictate the pace of a story, but I usually get pace pretty much right on the first pass.

Click to expand...

To me, pacing is about the natural rhythm of the story. There are fasts and slows, ups and downs, peaks and valleys. The story dictates that -- but we should also take care of not moving too fast without taking a breath or lingering for too long. I don't plan my "pacing" but I'm aware of it when I write. And definitely look at it when I revise.

As a part of my notes, I also write the story itself. It helps me establish my voice, and gain hands-on perspective about how the character is presented, but, while this is helpful, I cannot craft a masterpiece on a linear path of construction.

Please note that, while my advice listed above is my own, there are many who work the same way. It doesn't matter to me if a story is published or not, but if it has stirred and inspired the masses - made people think. There are the examples I use for research. Not that I'm saying a timeless story couldn't be crafted in a rush from a singular idea (The Old Man and the Sea was crafted that way, I believe), but I will say that I believe many more great stories have come from writing from the inside out.

The construction of the story treatment is much like the same approach to writing a story, but decidedly shorter, maybe at 1/10 the the size of your narrative. You still let characters and situations guide the flow of the story, but you are working with a much more concise a space to change your story, which is completely written, even with non intra-scene pacing. Pacing IS guided by characters, but many make the mistake of becoming defensive about their pacing, claiming that it flows from the characters and their conflict, but they are simply failing to see the human rhythm that the reader comes from, that is, wanting a change of pace: action flow in time, sentence length, paragraph length, narrative-dialogue balance, etc. There are many effective stories that don't have good pacing, but they seem to win awards and then get relagated to the second-best shelf, so to speak. Either that, or they isolate some people who are sensitive to pacing, who toss the book across the room with force if they are given half a book of boring introduction, or 400 action-clogged pages. Pacing helps draw emotion into your story, and it helps create a connection of trust between you and your reader.

I'm sorry if my ideas about constructing your story before your pacing detail are offensive, but the truth is that this is part of the phenomenon of second, third, and forth drafts - rewrites, revisions, and extensive editing in any form. We all seem to go through this process of knowing our story and world, and out of that knowledge comes a truer version of the story our story is trying to be. Sometimes we make it, others no, but that should be our goal, and though there are different methods to get to that point, there are different methods to that same end of knowing our story.

My recommendation, however, is to start with practice story, notes, drawings, notes, notes, and more notes, move it to a 10-50 page treatment, then give it flesh, life, and, accordant with this thread's topic, pacing. Our only hope is that the readers pace along with us.

In Writing the Blockbuster Novel, Ken Follett is cited as an enlightening example of dealing with what some people think of as revision, but he describes his first 40000 wc as an outline. I find this concept helpful, because I don't outline in the normal way, but I do use that first draft as the basis for revision, usually expanding it more than double. Up until now, I haven't considered the pacing as an isolated aspect, but I can see that, for me, attention to it might become the third draft.

As always, we can get hung up on what words mean--my friends laugh when i describe my first draft as an outline, but it functions that way for me.

Yeah, adding to that, I meant to say that pacing wasn't isolated but for the most minute parts of that pacing, as in, the phrasing within the scene or chapter and so forth. Pacing between Acts, the major changes in direction of your story, should come first, with each detail coming afterward. Certain necessary scenes may pop up, and you pace around those as well.

The point is that story comes first, then pacing, though the story itself is paced, so you must craft with that in mind. It is the final step to bring detail of pacing to the scenes themselves, or actually, the final step would be bringing pacing to sentence length and content, as that is probably the smallest place you'll find pacing.

For me it's got to be organic, and it depends on how fast I'm writing. If I have no deadline, I find I usually need to tighten and speed up th second draft. When I do have a deadline, my first drafts tend to be headlong and my critique group is always saying, "You need to take a breath here— we need to stop for some character emotion here— I need more detail of the setting here—" Usually it's there in my mind; it just takes a couple of drafts to reach the paper.

Aiming to get the pacing and all the details right in the first draft would probably paralyze me. I edit much more quickly than I write, so getting something down, even if I expand it greatly in the next draft, is more than half the battle and about 90% of the time and effort.

For me, pacing comes naturally. I sort of get the scenes like they should be in the first place. The only editing I do is to check on spelling and grammar. I guess pacing is easy for me, because I 'dream' my scenes before I write them, and make them sort of like action scenes for film or tv.


Nickie

Hmmmm ... I handle pacing during the first draft.

Now I write fairly slow-paced, overall,
so I look at this business of plotting for pace
as setting my bits of conflict and fast action into a matrix of slower scenes.
Rather than 'tother way round.

When I'm blocking out my string of scenes in the planning stages,
I'll kind of note which are intrinsically 'fast-paced'.

I jiggle these fast-paced scenes around till they land where I want them.


I need a fast-paced, large-scale, action scene ...

-- In the first three chapters,
-- As near the final resolution as possible.
-- And somewhere about in the middle or just past.

I really like an action scene in those three spots. If I don't have a good scene to stick in, I come up with one.

There are maybe a few other action scenes beyond those three.
I put them in anywhere
and just try not to set them too close to each other.

I'm writing Romance, so three or four or five jumping-up-and-down-yelling scenes is all I really need.

Romance is about emotional intensity, which is generally, though not always, slow-paced.

The level of emotional intensity is more important to the process of plotting than fast or slow pacing, really.

For example, I need a major emotional upheaval maybe 80% of the way through the story.
That upheaval flips every character's emotional state. It should come as a surprise to the reader.
And it marks the boundary of the last 20% of the story where we downhill to the resolution.

That last 20% of the story, after that emotional flip, (which is generally part of the 'Black Moment',) carries a faster general tenor of pacing than the first 80% of the story.

I agree with those who say pacing is organic. But at the same time, I would suggest that pacing is inherent to the structure of the book. If your structure is tight, and you allow your characters and story to unfold organically as well, your pacing will be good.

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Or: Know when to slow down and go for the color and detail and character psychology, and then, know when to get on with it.

Like that's easy to do!

I write toward turning points in my first draft, so that helps with pacing a bit, but I also do a scene-by-scene spreadsheet (yeah, I'm more left-brained than the average bear/writer) after the first draft, so I can see the big picture at a glance, and that helps with pacing.

JD

Kristin Landon said:

For me it's got to be organic, and it depends on how fast I'm writing. If I have no deadline, I find I usually need to tighten and speed up th second draft. When I do have a deadline, my first drafts tend to be headlong and my critique group is always saying, "You need to take a breath here— we need to stop for some character emotion here— I need more detail of the setting here—" Usually it's there in my mind; it just takes a couple of drafts to reach the paper.

Aiming to get the pacing and all the details right in the first draft would probably paralyze me. I edit much more quickly than I write, so getting something down, even if I expand it greatly in the next draft, is more than half the battle and about 90% of the time and effort.

Click to expand...

Same for me. My style is write, do basic editing, write more, make sure the sections flow, do more basic editing, write, check flow, edit, write, check flow, edit, etc. I know some people (*cougholivemancough*) might ridicule me for this, but I rely more or less solely on divine inspiration and old movies no one has ever heard of. And my cat. But really, if I can just sit down and write something, going back over it is really easy. Of course, I might go "back over" something about twenty times in a week before I'm satisfied and then a month later I tear my hair out over it, but that's a different issue.