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How to slow down my writing pace?

Vonsey

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I've been struggling with slowing down my writing pace. It's not that everything is an action or the characters are frantically racing about, it's that I don't bother with the small details that enrich a scene. I have a Point A and Point B to reach and the rest is just in the way. I think that is the best way to describe it. I have spent the last few years writing academically and I think that is where the problem comes from, with the word count being exceptionally crucial and no 'filler' allowed.

Does anybody have any exercises or recommendations on how to work on this problem? I've been struggling to overcome it and imagine I'm not the only one.

Appreciate any help or suggestions.
 

Woollybear

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Hiya Vonsey,

My background is also academic. And at times, when I'm reading trade published fiction in an ongoing effort to 'level up,' I find myself thinking that the author really wrote a lot of non-essential stuff in some particular paragraph or other. It's entertaining but not necessary. So why is it there?

I find myself thinking of storytelling in a historical context--perhaps villagers around a fire, with an elder telling the tale of how their ancestors survived the drought. I also find myself thinking of Bob Ross and his painting show. Have you seen those? A happy little tree. :) A happy little cloud.

In other words, I start to see the role of the writer as one of unfolding the story for the reader, at a pace they can ingest. Sure, it requires all the writing skills you read about--active voice, show don't tell, etc--but it also involves, in this case, the idea of serving the reader. It's not about getting a story out efficiently... it's about hearing the story as a reader might, and making the experience as delicious as possible.

I just finished Shanghai Girls for the second time, and this time I tried to be more cognizant of Lisa See's prose. Here's the open:

"Our daughter looks like a South China peasant with those red cheeks," my father complains, pointedly ignoring the soup before him. "Can't you do something about them?"

Mama stares at Baba, but what can she say? My face is pretty enough - some might even say lovely - but not as luminescent as the pearl I'm named for. I tend to blush easily. Beyond that, my cheeks capture the sun. When I turned five, my mother began rubbing my face and arms with pearl creams, and mixing ground pearls into my morning jook - rice porridge - hoping the white essence would permeate my skin. It hasn't worked. Now my cheeks burn red - exactly what my father hates. I shrink down into my chair. I always slump when I'm near him, but I slump even more on those occasions when Baba takes his eyes off my sister to look at me. I'm taller than my father, which he loathes. We live in Shanghai, where the tallest car, the tallest wall, or the tallest building sends a clear and unwavering message that the owner is a person of great importance. I am not a person of importance.

^^That opening gives you a character + name, appearance, immersion, her emotional state in the moment, relationships, culture...

It's Lisa See's voice, and it isn't mine, and it isn't academic, :), but to your question I think the way to slow your pace is to "be the reader" experiencing story for the first time.

For me, in practical terms, this means keeping a list of all the sorts of sentences that can be added to the skeleton of a story as I develop it. (an academic approach!) When I want to flesh out a paragraph, my list reminds me that I can add: a sentence of emotion, a sentence of situational context, a sentence of time-awareness, a sentence of action in response to something, a sentence of setting, a sentence of .... This list is part of my growing toolbox.

If you look at that quoted text, you'll see the first sentence (dialog) is a 'stimulus' --it's a poke in the eye to Pearl. Her response includes an action (slumping), a little setting (the tall buildings etc in Shanghai), a little something of how she looks, her awareness of time (When I turned five...). Craft-wise, that open is accomplishing a lot.

See could simply have written My father insults my face. His words make me feel small, but being unimportant, I am used to that. Instead she added a sentence of this, a sentence of that--each sentence serves the reader's experience. She integrated all the bits and smoothed it out.

So, to your question, I think that's one way to go. Break it down analytically. Find the spots you want to breathe more life into, look at the tools in your toolbox and start tinkering.

Lisa See is a bestselling author with multiple novels. Sandra Dijkstra is her agent. Shanghai Girls took her nineteen years to write.
 
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indianroads

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I've been struggling with slowing down my writing pace. It's not that everything is an action or the characters are frantically racing about, it's that I don't bother with the small details that enrich a scene. I have a Point A and Point B to reach and the rest is just in the way. I think that is the best way to describe it. I have spent the last few years writing academically and I think that is where the problem comes from, with the word count being exceptionally crucial and no 'filler' allowed.

I'm educated, but am more of a heathen than an academic. There's a saying in the biker world (and I mean motorcycles, not bicycles), "It's about the journey, not the destination." We want to smell the air as we ride, take the twisty road that's less traveled rather than the interstate, stop at questionable bars and greasy spoon restaurants and chat with the locals. The ending is just the gravity pulling you along the way, but it's the spaces between that give it meaning.

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes that make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

Lao Tzu
 

TheKingsWit

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It might be helpful to reframe the way you think about 'filler'. Instead, I like to think about purpose. Getting from plot point A to plot point B is one purpose, but so is developing character, displaying character emotion/mental state, creating mood or atmosphere, foreshadowing, emphasizing theme, developing relationships, grounding the reader in setting, particularly unfamiliar elements of culture and setting, or even just being something interesting and attention grabbing, etc. True filler either has no purpose, or is just rehashing an already made point and truly isn't necessary. If, when you add these details, you have an understanding of what purpose they're serving, then they'll stop feeling like they're in the way.

As for specific suggestions, I have a few you could try. The first is simply reading critically. Take a few books that you enjoy and pick a few passages apart. What do they include that you normally wouldn't? What do those additions make you feel? What purpose do you see for them? Where do they add them? How do they effect pacing?

Another might be to practice writing shorts where there is no point A and point B to travel between. Let your writing wander, or give it a specific non-plot related goal. Write two short scenes where the same character walks in to two significantly different bars. How do you create different atmospheres, what body language is being used, how does this effect the characters actions big and small? Or, write two scenes in which two very different characters walk into the same bar. How do those differences effect the way they describe the same scene? How do you display their character and emotional state. Write the bar scene as if you were writing the opening to a horror novel, then as a romance novel. Obviously, it doesn't have to be a bar, or any of these specific set ups, but this is the kind of exercise that may help you figure out what these additional details that your struggling to include can do for you, and to get used to using them.

Best of luck!
 

Cephus

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Don't worry about it, just write the damn thing and fix it in revision. All worrying about it right now will do is keep you from finishing the project.
 

TheKingsWit

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Cephus brings up a good point! My comment was aimed more at fleshing out writing in general, but if you're currently mid-draft, I also recommend finishing your draft before worrying about this. It's perfectly normal to write your first draft lean and fill it out during the revision phase. I know many people who do the same.
 

Vonsey

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Don't worry about it, just write the damn thing and fix it in revision. All worrying about it right now will do is keep you from finishing the project.

I've actually finished the project a long time ago. This is something that comes up in all my writing, even when I make a point to try and 'slow down'.

A lot of really good advice here. WollyBear gets it :)

I think reading other works critically will help. I'm going to try just writing a few random scenes with no real goal. I get hellbent on making a word count or reaching a point in a scene, and I think this is where my 'jumping' writing style comes from.

"It's about the journey, not the destination."

That about sums up my problem and explains the solution

Really appreciate all the responses. Thank you
 
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oooooh

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I have the exact same issue currently, revising a first draft MS. Woollybear said it perfectly though, that the reader needs a bit more meat on the bones to properly flesh out and visualise a scene. It's easy for us to write in a bare bones manner coursing from point A to point B, because we've already seen everything in that scene in our imagination. But what of the reader? They don't know what room they're in, how the room looks, whether it's brightly lit or dimly lit, if it smells of incense, if there is a fire roaring in the fireplace, and so on. In fact, I've begun to think it's better to write *too* much detail in the preliminary stages and then cut it out later, than write too little. I don't know when your story is set, but that goes double for anything historic. I'm writing something set in 1965 (and another set in 1865 or thereabouts) — and travelling through time might as well be like landing in another country or planet entirely. I need to infuse my story with enough detail to ground the reader very firmly in that time, without it being overkill. Or, that's what I'm trying to accomplish currently, anyway!
 

talktidy

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Brevity is the soul of wit, or so I hear. I have completely the opposite problem: I waffle.

Are you referring to a finished draft or to a work in progress? If it is a WIP, then I would nail down your story first and then look to correct at the revision stage.

Who is your favourite author? Do you have a favourite book? I would suggest you settle down for a spot of market research and see how the favourite author handles things -- read critically and make notes. Bet that comes as second nature to you now.

While White Room Syndrome needs to be avoided, there is always the possibility of swinging the pendulm too far in the opposite direction and bogging a scene down with an abundance of descriptive detail. I confess I am still trying to find my happy medium.
 

MythMonger

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I think what you're experiencing is a classic underwriting complex. I also consider myself an underwriter, but I've found techniques to overcome that.

For example, the first draft of my WIP is currently sitting at 38K, but I fully expect it to end up somewhere in the 100K range. This has been the case for the past two manuscripts, so I have no reason to doubt it'll happen again.

What typically happens is I learn more about my characters and setting with each draft. The more I learn about them, the more I delve into their differences which naturally produces tension. This tension results in a higher word count as I work through them, each draft producing another layer.
 

Cephus

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Cephus brings up a good point! My comment was aimed more at fleshing out writing in general, but if you're currently mid-draft, I also recommend finishing your draft before worrying about this. It's perfectly normal to write your first draft lean and fill it out during the revision phase. I know many people who do the same.

Exactly. I underwrite in the first draft every time and I add to it in revision. I'm not worried about getting all of the details right the first time through. I just want the story. I always add a lot of words on the second draft.
 

Animad345

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Relieved to hear that there are so many other underwriters around!
 

cbenoi1

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A known technique to control pacing is via MRUs - Motivation / Reaction / Units which were first published in Doug Swain's Techniques Of The Selling Writer ( link ). Essentially a scene is made up of a string of ACTION and REACTION components and the key to controlling pace - in your case to slow things down - is to understand how to make the ACTION shorter and the REACTION longer.

The approach is explained in detail here:
https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/writing-the-perfect-scene
and here in chapter 8:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0898799066/?tag=absowrit-20

Hope this helps.

-cb
 
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neandermagnon

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I'm an underwriter. 'tis my day job :ROFL:

Coincidentally, I appear to be "underwriting" one of my current WIPs. I'm focusing on plot because previous novels I've had trouble sticking to a coherent plot so this one I'm focusing on staying on track with the plot and I'll go back and fill in the details - particularly world building details (it's set 40,000 years ago so it needs a lot of worldbuilding) after I've got the plot down and sorted. But some of the plot details aren't finalised yet (I'm a pantser - halfway through the novel therefore halfway through figuring out the plot) and when I figure that out I'll have to go back and foreshadow anything that needs foreshadowing.
It beats underwriting mortgage applications :ROFL: