by Sarah Hoyt(Unofficial subtitle: still lost in the high grass. Sorry to post this so late. For those who don’t know this, the city had issues with wildfires, just as I was recovering from death-flu. The end result is that things are a little scattered out there. Also, our power went down for hours this morning, making everything late. As is, I hope I’m telling you something useful?)
Timing Is Everything
And pacing is timing. None of which makes this an easy workshop to teach, because it’s sort of like teaching a workshop about everything.
I realized, as I was thinking about these posts, that I kept trying to go back to things I should have – and hopefully did – teach you in the other workshop: How to do great beginnings. How to have your character become present in the reader’s mind. How to– How to write books.
Because pacing is part of the structure of every story and also of the style of every writer. I can no more tell you “write with this pacing” without even knowing what you’re writing than I can tell you “don’t use long words.” “Use only simple sentences.” “Absolutely no adjectives.” This might be right for some – perhaps even many – stories, but it will kill others absolutely flat. And some of it is structural to the genre – or type – of story you’re trying to write. And some of it is simply your voice. You can’t write a fantasy novel the same way you write a hardboiled mystery: unless you’re trying to be very experimental.
So, barring you guys peppering me with questions (Madgeniusworkshops@gmail.com) I’m stuck with giving you some tips and tricks of how to time different genres and styles. This does not excuse you from picking up your favorite example of that genre/style and outlining it and studying it, to determine how it’s actually minutely paced. In the end, that’s the only way to learn.
But to do that, you need a particular tool – you need to be able to pry away all the minutia of circumstance, character, plot, foreshadowing, and see pacing, naked, in its bones.
So, in this post, let’s define what pacing is: Pacing is rate at which the motor of the story ticks. Motor of the story? You say. Yes.
Every story has a motor, something that propels it forward and keeps it going, keeps the plot unrolling and stuff happening.
If you have 800 pages of a character getting up, doing random stuff, going to bed, having stuff happen to him or her, having random stuff fall on him… You don’t have a novel. In fact, you don’t even have a mess. I’m not sure what you have, but it might be a diary for a person who doesn’t exist.
Somehow: Character plays with rubber ducky in bathtub; character gets dressed; character has piano fall on him; character gets given a poney; character’s true love kisses him – fails to be a story. The bones are there, mind – I mean “stuff happens” so there should be a plot, right? Except the bones aren’t connected to anything.
I have a kid who is studying in the hope of entering med school. What I wrote about is to a plot as dropping a bunch of bones of different animals on his desk and saying “that’s a skeleton, right” is to giving him an articulated skeleton.
And it gets about the same reaction from me. (ARGH.)
Mind you, I’ve seen “novels” like that. In fact, weirdly that’s the most common BAD “indie” novel I see. The character exists. Random things happen. Something he/she wants happens. The end.
(And while I know I’m an unnatural woman, what the heck is it with SHOPPING in novels? It’s like sooner or later every woman writer decides “oh, fantasy world and tons of money. My character is going shopping.” For the love of heaven, if you must have your fantasy shopping trip, do so, just not in a novel.)
So, the skeleton of your novel, which determines the timing starts with unity of action. Events in the novel connect to each other. Think of it as assembling a skeleton. What unifies them is the need or purpose.
I’m not going to ask you what your purpose is in writing this novel. One of my editors routinely asks me this, and the answer is normally “to get these crazy people out of my head.” It’s not till about the middle that I can tell where things connect and what they mean.
And yet, the novels you like, there is a purpose and a journey (even when the journey is internal.) The character grows or learns or discovers. I’m going to list half a dozen of generic novel “structures” or “purposes” which can be superimposed (or slid under) a book to give it shape: Finding the McGuffin; Falling in love; battling great evil; solving the mystery; defeating a blight; escaping.
There are a lot more purpose-shapes, depending on what the book is and how the purpose/shapes are defined. But this should give you an idea of what I’m looking for when I say the book should have a purpose that gives it shape.
You should start with a character who needs something, and the need must be strong and desperate enough to drive it through however many pages and to give purpose to every event. And that need/requirement must be stated fairly early.
Think of Pride and Prejudice. Very early on she states the problem with five sisters, all of them out (which means that the oldest is getting long in the tooth) and the father’s estate entailed away from the female line. They must find marriages. This lends urgency to the romancing, thereby making even the slower portions of the plot interesting, because as things slow down we wonder “aren’t they running out of time?” (I think failure to understand pacing is why so many romance novels drench the novel in sex, in an attempt to keep the tension… pardon me… up. Particularly when you’re talking regency, most modern writers seem incapable of grasping that for these women marriage WAS life or death, and not merely a matter of finding fulfillment or true love. I’m forever amazed at how easily these supposed regency women find careers when they think love is forsworn.)
So, the essence of pacing any book is to have a purpose that must be accomplished in a certain time. We’ll get into the specifics later on.
For now, to the email I mentioned above, send me a paragraph telling me what the need/lack/craving is that is going to drive your short or novel – and how long you expect it to be. Then go and diagram one of your favorite novels by FIRST writing down what the need/lack is or the purpose of the character/novel, and then noting how each chapter/scene advances towards the goal. (But for all that’s holy don’t send me THAT.)
Also send me any specific questions, so I might better tailor these posts to help you.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Pacing Workshop II”
So, in a nutshell, you’re saying that there are a number of plot-elements that are completely outside your control which are causing you to have trouble with time-management while working on the pacing workshop?
As Spider Robinson do succinctly put it, “God Is An Iron”. 🙂
I cut my teeth on flash. My first attempt at a novel-length work has almost the same density of stuff-per-word as the 600-word stories I’ve already sold. I don’t know how to “dilute” that without feeling like I’m just wasting time and space.
analyse the novels you read. It’s a different set of skills, but I guarantee you can learn them.
Odd thought, but I just spent the weekend guiding 20 plus students around Kyoto and Nara — picked them up at the station Saturday morning, loaded them on a bus, took them to three different places before lunch, then a 2-hour break at one large temple, and one more place before we took them to a hotel and dinner. Sunday was just a walk in the Nara park, a visit to the big Buddha, lunch, ride the train out to Kyoto, a couple of hours shopping, taxis to the station, and put everyone on the trains to Tokyo.
The thing is, my wife and I looked at each other after we sent everyone home, and said, “Wait a minute, was Friday really just two days ago? It feels like at least a week ago…”
You might think of flash as that kind of packed weekend, or vacation trip, where you’re experiencing a lot of things in a very short time. Short stories or novels have more time to let the characters and the readers “digest” the events, more like normal workdays.
Instead of leaving the reaction to the reader, go ahead and let the character experience it — what’s the scene-sequel formula? FACT — Feel, Analyze, Choose, Try. When we finish a scene — the action — we need the reaction part, where a person reacts emotionally first, then does the thoughtful analysis and planning, and makes a decision, which leads to trying something — and we’re back to another scene. I think when you start filling out those sequels, you’re likely to find the pace slowing down.
Yes, exactly. There is a time distortion thing when it is action packed. We experienced that at Liberty Con. I’ve found, and I know it sounds crazy unless you’ve done it, that any more of three “official functions” a day lays me low — which is why I’m only now answering these and I’m late posting the next workshop installment. — I think this is because of all the stuff that goes on between panels (talks with editors, other writers, meeting friends you only see at con, etc.)
Because this con overscheduled every writer you kept seeing people starting panels with “was it only yesterday that–?” Time distortion had set in.
I’ve also been to intense weekend workshops where one was required to finish say two stories and one novel proposal with sample chapters in four days. At the end of it you felt as though you’d been away for years. And your perspective had changed accordingly which made the workshop effective, of course.
Reading something you like and analyzing it works for me. At least it seems to. The trick is to re-read while paying attention to whatever you’re interested in paying attention to. The re-read part is important because if you already know what is going to happen you’ll be less distracted by the story and better able to examine the mechanics.
I haven’t done my re-reads and analyzing with novel length pacing in mind, but I’ve looked really closely at pacing in an opening action sequence since I’ve struggled with trying to jam too much in all at once and feeling like the action is fast so I couldn’t get the info in there. It ends up a horrible mess.
What I discovered was that the action moves along a different time-line than the reading of it. You really can have someone point a gun and squeeze the trigger and stick half a page of description in before the bullet hits.
The other tricks about writing action are true enough, the short words and short sentences to create urgency and all that, but it still doesn’t happen in Real Time.
You are absolutely correct. If you keep the stakes high, you can hide entire elephants worth of world building between the lines of text.
I’ve noticed that I tend to write in musical phrases, meaning that there is a crescendo, then a decrescendo of some sort or at least a lack of volume change, occasionally a rest, and then another crescendo, each building towards the climax. The type of story (action, character development, humor) determines how intense the sequence is and how fast the changes come.
No shopping. Darn, so much for the novella set in an interstellar weapons show. [slouches over to corner to pout]
Nothing wrong with the interstellar weapons show provided there’s a STORY. Just waking around admiring or buying guns? Not so much.
But it would be okay if you were flirting with somebody shopping with you, or finding out interesting backstory about that person, or shopping while being followed. Heyer was the start of a lot of shopping scenes, but she was using them for characterization and worldbuilding, most of the time. It’s a double duty thing.
I was slightly tongue-in-cheek. The MC tracks contraband weapons and technology to someone selling at the arms mart, so she’s skulking around as well as meeting a contact. And getting a goodie or two for professional use. Very much part of the plot, because there’s no other way she could get close to the individual that turns out to be behind the illegal activities.