Comments on: Writing Excuses Episode 10: Pacing

By: JayT

JayT — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:03:49 +0000

It’s easy to know that you *should* avoid slow pacing, but identifying problem areas in your own writing can be difficult.

I use the AutoCrit Editing Wizard to help me find slow-paced parts of my writing. Does anyone else have any extra “secrets” for helping to identify pacing problems in your writing?

By: Mike Barker

Mike Barker — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:27:16 +0000

I’m late, I’m late.

Summary for #10: Pacing at
http://mbarker.livejournal.com/67318.html

By: Dan Wells

Dan Wells — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:04:45 +0000

Andreas:
The important part of killing your darlings is that you should only kill them when they need to die, and more often than not that decision is based more on coherency than on pacing. A darling, at least as we’ve defined it, is something you really like that works well on its own, but doesn’t fit into the whole, be that whole a scene or an entire book. Trimming a scene for pacing is usually done by taking out stuff that doesn’t necessarily work at all, or moving stuff to a different scene where it works better.

So the real, cop-out answer to to this particular aspect of your question is that you should cram every scene full of everything that should be in it, and viciously cut out everything that shouldn’t. Which is more or less the same questionably-useful advice that Michelangelo gave on sculpting: “If you want to carve an elephant, take a block of stone and chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.”

By: Andreas

Andreas — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:44:13 +0000

I think both what Howard replied to Alan and what Dan said in response to Michelle highlight the main problem I have with this podcast (which I found quite intriguing for the most part):

With this installment I had the feeling you guys were mixing pacing of novels and pacing of scenes too much. What has to go into a scene of 500 words can not necessarily be applied to a story of 50K words the same way, or so I would think. Sometimes you guys talk about the pieces of the puzzle, and (at almost the same time) the whole picture as if they were the same thing and as if the same rules applied to both. Personaly I am not so sure about that, but that could be just me, being a hobbyist writer with no ambitions of ever getting published.

One point that could create a bit of confusion here may also be your earlier advice to “kill your darlings” which could be taken to mean that you should keep a scene lean, mean, and to the point. So why cram as much as possible into a scene as you can, when you will have to delete half of it later anyway? I think this could be where Alan and Howard ran into a disagreement, and I think it’s understandable that it happened.

Perhaps a podcast about what advice to take when and where wouldn’t be such a bad thing, and not just because of how I feel about this podcast, but also because I think it might be worth examining how much one should cling to advice offered to new writers. When and why to break “established rules” might be worth delving into. But that’s just me.

By: Dan Wells

Dan Wells — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:41:46 +0000

Michelle:
You kind of answered your own question there: the way to make breathers interesting is to make them relevant. Interesting and intense are two different things; you can spend the “down time” taking care of other important story elements, like having your characters learn things, share important information, and even just think about their reactions to other plot points. That last one is a biggie: many writers get so wrapped up in showing us new things and throwing us exciting twists, that they forget to give their characters a chance to think about all the changes going on, and digest them, and come to terms with them, and making important decisions based on them.

A great example of this came in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They did a big two-part episode where Picard was assimilated into the Borg, and it was full of action and tension and emotion and explosions, and then in the next episode, instead of moving on to the next big conflict, they slowed down and realized that Picard probably had a lot of thinking to do about what had just happened to him. He went home to his family’s vineyard, puttered around for a while, and came to terms with his recent experiences. It was a very quiet episode, and very different from the norm, but it was interesting and relevant and not boring at all.

By: Michelle M.

Michelle M. — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:52:41 +0000

This episode is one of my favorites, I do have a couple questions though. I understand that I need to pace the story evenly enough where it flows smoothly. However, how do you keep it from lagging too much or just cutting straight from conflict to conflict? For the breathers in any story between conflicts, how do you make them not completely dull and still relevant to the story? And how do you keep the breathers or conflicts from being too cliché?

By: Ivo

Ivo — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:36:59 +0000

To Brandon/Howard/Dan

Podcast was great, a big help and alot to think on as usual. The whole fast in, fast out and if you have to think about whether to include something, probably doesn’t need to be, quite helpful.

Jen, probably the suggestion on extending the chase, having them either ditch what’s after them or Howards suggestion that maybe the chase culminates in just being the first act are probably the way to go. Also it’s probably dependant on the story but cutting to other events with other characters that are happening in the same time frame to add some meat to the story might give it some more volume.

By: WEKM

WEKM — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:52:02 +0000

I personally like the lappy mic, despite the echo. I listen in my truck, and find that what you have done this way comes across louder. But maybe it’s just me.

I did feel like this episode was rushed, but very informative. You guys are helping me believe that I can be a writer.
Still not sure if that is a good thing or not.

By: Guerry

Guerry — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:40:21 +0000

Great podcast this week! I was just complaining to my wife (who’s smart enough to just nod and let me get over it that all of the SF books I’ve picked up to read recently ended up being travelogues. I’m not a huge fan of travelogues, particularly if the plot doesn’t really justify going some of the places I’m forced to visit with the main characters. If the reason for going doesn’t feel seamless, it pulls me out of the story, and it’s much worse of course, when it’s a “where are we going?–oh, we’ll know when we get there.”

I’m sure others may feel differently about this, but it’s my personal preference

By: Howard Tayler

Howard Tayler — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:44:53 +0000

@Alan: That’s not pacing. That’s editing.

Certainly pacing is HELPED by editing, but the structure is governed by principles like the one Brandon closed with: cram as much purpose into a chapter or scene as you can. Edit to make it smooth, to make it fit cleanly, but START by cramming stuff in.

Sometimes you have to re-write and expand. Sometimes (much more often) you have to prune, in order to keep it humming along.

As to cramming words into the podcast, we don’t rehearse, nor do we edit (other than sticking the Tor ad in the middle.) Very little of the stuff that applies to writers fits well for “live” broadcast. Don’t believe me? Try recording yourself responding verbally to this blog entry, and see just how different it is from composing a post with the keyboard.