Forum Transcripts

Pacing Workshop: Learning by Doing 6/10/05

Event start time:

Fri Jun 10 19:11:07 2005

Event end time:

Fri Jun 10 20:35:21 2005



Legend:
Questions from the Audience are presented in red.
Answers by the Speaker are in black.
The Moderator's comments are in blue.

mary rosenblum

Hello all.

mary rosenblum

Welcome to our Friday After Hours Forum

mary rosenblum

I wanted to talk about pacing tonight...it's a complex craft issue and one that may writing books sort of gloss over...

mary rosenblum

because it is hard to teach.

mary rosenblum

This is our After Hours Forum, with me, Mary Rosenblum, your web editor and tonight we're working with pacing. I've published seven novels and more than 60 short stories and will do my best to answer any questions you have. If you're new here, remember that you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next to the red question mark at the top of the screen in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't reach me! Or you can use /ask and type your question into the regular send bar if that works better for you..

mary rosenblum

The main reason pacing is hard to teach is that it involves so many different aspects of craft.

mary rosenblum

It involves tight writing to begin with, then word choices, style...

mary rosenblum

the ratio of description to action...

mary rosenblum

they all play a role.

mary rosenblum

And the effect is vary the sense of drama, tension, and passage of time...

mary rosenblum

so that the story is not a 'monotone'...

mary rosenblum

but rather varies so that the story seems to 'speed up' and 'slow down'...sort of like an amusement park ride.

mary rosenblum

And one of the most common novice problems is a tendency to use the same pacing throughout...which is boring. :-)

mary rosenblum

And a slack, slow, weak pacing really compromises a lot of novice fiction...

mary rosenblum

and nonfiction for that matter! It's critically important in the world of nonfiction...

mary rosenblum

to maintain a brisk pace.

mary rosenblum

In personal narrative of course, you follow the construction of fiction, but when you're writing something like...

mary rosenblum

an informative piece, you'll still find that the pace quickens and slows, although it remains brisk overall.

mary rosenblum

Those variations in pace and tension add reader interest.

mary rosenblum

I do have some examples that people sent...most of which could use a bit of tightening pace, wise.

mary rosenblum

And this is definitely a topic that is best 'shown' rather than lectured on. :-)

mary rosenblum

Lizzy O'Dwyer's body went limp and the chair stopped rocking. Papers slipped from her fingers to her lap, and then feathered to the floor in front of the crackling fire. The cedar wood burning in the stone-mantled fireplace, popped and snapped in the silent night. A gentle evening breeze blew in through the only window, stirring up a mixture of fresh and smoky air in the one-room cabin.

mary rosenblum

Earlier in the work week, Lizzy had made up her mind to stay at her parents' cabin for the weekend by herself. As an assistant editor at a popular Sci-fi fantasy magazine, she led a busy work life, but her main reason for escape was that she needed a break from her ubiquitous fiancé, Charlie, who, with his mother, hounded her constantly to set the date for their wedding.

mary rosenblum

"Ahh, that's a great idea, honey," Charlie said to her before she left. "Go to the cabin. Take some time for yourself so you can, you know, get started on the wedding arrangements."

mary rosenblum

She left him standing in the driveway, him beaming and waving happily, her glaring as she sped away white-knuckled.

mary rosenblum

She was not eager to plan the wedding, nor was she even sure Charlie was the right man for her. She caught herself having too many second thoughts about him lately. She needed a weekend away from it all. Away from Charlie. Besides, she was looking forward to spending endless hours reading from the ever-growing slush pile of sci-fi fantasy stories.

mary rosenblum

This is from Jason, and he tells me that this is the opening to a fantasy story and he feels it's slow. :-)

mary rosenblum

There is no one reason pacing is slow, and no one way to fix it.

mary rosenblum

Yes, this is a slow beginning for a short story.

mary rosenblum

It begins with action, but nothing particularly interesting...just Lizzy's body going limp and we'll mostly assume she has fallen asleep, although a few readers may wonder if she has died. :-)

mary rosenblum

Then we go into a lengthy section of backstory. That essentially halts the forward flow of the story and sends us backward in time.

mary rosenblum

So here, the main problem with the pace is a large, contextual one...the structure of the opening is slow.

mary rosenblum

You could easily streamline this by simply beginning with the first action of the plot. I don't know what that is in this case...

mary rosenblum

whether it's a ghostly appearance, a flying saucer, or an intrusion by human or animal...

mary rosenblum

but I would begin here. Begin with action and only the facts that we need to comprehend the scene. We don't need to know NOW how and why she is in the cabin.

mary rosenblum

It's okay even to begin with her nodding off as long as Something Happens in that first page.

mary rosenblum

This is a large scale pacing issue as opposed to a problem at a prose level.

mary rosenblum

Let me see now if I can find a passage with prose level pacing problems as a contrast. :-)

mary rosenblum

Ha. Got one. Now in this next couple of paragraphs, we have drama, but the prose is simply slowing things down a bit:

mary rosenblum

The sheriff defended his people from outside attack. He required

mary rosenblum

trenches to be dug all along the town line. All men and boys over 14 had been required to bring shovels and work steadily. The Moat, as the people proudly named the trench, was finished two weeks after Mrs. Mulwerky's baby was shot.

mary rosenblum

Mr. Mulwerky was covered in mud and old sweat as he left the Moat. His hands were calloused where there had never been calluses. His body, stronger now than ever before, still ached. In his "former" life, that is before The Moat, he gardened, all Melivale people gardened, had to to eat; but Mr. Mulwerky was a stenographer to the town. Normally he wore a shirt and tie and lived indoors. Now his face was bronzed beyond tan. His arms bulged beneath the cut-off sleeves of

mary rosenblum

what once had been his third-best work shirt. The Moat was finished.

mary rosenblum

We have drama here...someone's baby has been shot and a town gets together to dig the Moat.

mary rosenblum

But this simply doesn't move as strongly as it could here, and a bit of tweaking can fix that.

mary rosenblum

Let's look at the beginning. "The sheriff defended his people from outside attack.

mary rosenblum

Well, we're about to find that out, right? It's not really showing the reader anything, it's telling us what we're about to find out again.

mary rosenblum

The author ends up showing us the same thing she just told us...so leave it out.

mary rosenblum

Every man and boy over 14 had to dig trenches all along the town line. They worked around the clock with and the Moat, as the people proudly named the trench, was finished two weeks after Mrs. Mulwerky's baby was shot.

mary rosenblum

What have I removed?

mary rosenblum

I dropped the bit about the Sheriff requiring it. I don't have the whole ms, but I will bet you readers could guess who gave the order from previous context.

mary rosenblum

I dropped out the 'bring a shovel and work steadily' phrase.

mary rosenblum

If they dig a trench big enough to be called a Moat, they ARE going to work steadily, readers will get it. And what ELSE will they dig it with? :-)

mary rosenblum

But these are details! I can hear the protests. :-) And aren't details good?

mary rosenblum

Yes. But not unimportant details...they simply make you take longer to read and process the important information...

mary rosenblum

and these details don't add anything we won't figure out on our own...in other words, they repeat.

mary rosenblum

They simply say out loud something we will figure out for ourselves...so they slow down the scene.

mary rosenblum

The important details, the ones that make that scene work are: trench, everybody digs it, two weeks, the Moat.

mary rosenblum

Let's look at Mr. Mulwerky...here we do have some very good visual details.

mary rosenblum

Here the prose tweaks to improve the pacing are very minute...it's a matter of using stronger, more vigorous style.

mary rosenblum

Let me put that paragraph in again so you all don't have to scroll up so far.

mary rosenblum

Mr. Mulwerky was covered in mud and old sweat as he left the Moat. His hands were calloused where there had never been calluses. His body, stronger now than ever before, still ached. In his "former" life, that is before The Moat, he gardened, all Melivale people gardened, had to to eat; but Mr. Mulwerky was a stenographer to the town. Normally he wore a shirt and tie and lived indoors. Now his face was bronzed beyond tan. His arms bulged beneath the cut-off sleeves of what once had been his third-best work shirt. The Moat was finished.

mary rosenblum

Let's see if we can't make this read with a bit more energy and drive.

mary rosenblum

Mr. Mulwerky scrubbed mud and sweat from his face as he left the Moat. He stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket and stared at his hands. They had callouses where he had never had callouses before. His body ached, in spite of his new muscles.

mary rosenblum

In this former life -- before the Moat -- he had gardened, like everybody in Melivale. You had to, to eat, but he had spent the days indoors in a suit and tie, as a stenographer.

mary rosenblum

He smiled, thinking of his tanned face, his arms bulging from the cut-off sleeves of what had been his third-best work shirt. But the Moat was done. Finished.

mary rosenblum

I didn't change much here, I simply reduced the narrative distance so that it sounds more as if Mr. M is thinking about his garden and his muscles.

mary rosenblum

I added a bit more action...his smile...to remind readers that he's doing the thinking here, the author isn't telling us this.

mary rosenblum

I left out the 'bronzed and'...since he's thinking this and will probably only think 'I'm tan'.

mary rosenblum

Same thing with the sentence about his body aching. He's thinking something along the lines of..."I ache. and I have more muscles than I did'...

mary rosenblum

so I simplified it to suggest his thoughts.

mary rosenblum

This isn't a particularly dramatic scene at all, but by maximizing the pacing here, you keep readers moving forward strongly and their minds are less likely to wander, they are less likely to put the story aside.

mary rosenblum

This is our After Hours Forum, with me, Mary Rosenblum, your web editor and tonight we're working with pacing. I've published seven novels and more than 60 short stories and will do my best to answer any questions you have. If you're new here, remember that you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next to the red question mark at the top of the screen in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't reach me! Or you can use /ask and type your question into the regular send bar if that works better for you..

mary rosenblum

Okay, here's an example in first person with a lot of dialogue.

mary rosenblum

"Hello, Ms. Savage," he said, as he stood in the open door of the diner.

mary rosenblum

Four of his cronies followed him in. The few customers I had that morning

mary rosenblum

scattered. Cowards. I swallowed. I had never seen him before, but I knew it was him. Stone looked more like a bounty hunter than a knight. He was tall, and his greasy black hair was neatly combed back from his forehead. A thin scabbard protruded from beneath his long coat. He had the deadest eyes I had ever seen. Corpses have more life in their eyes.

mary rosenblum

"Sorry, we're all full," I said. "Go somewhere else."

mary rosenblum

"Clever lass, aren't you?" Stone caressed his stubbled face. "I understand my boys have been, shall we say, less than welcome here. How can we remedy that?"

mary rosenblum

Here we have our first person POV tavern owner and our scary Stone.

mary rosenblum

And her narrative is nice and it's fun, and it really doesn't need a lot of tweaking here.

mary rosenblum

But this is doing something I see a lot of fantasy ms from novice writers...

mary rosenblum

which is that the speakers do a lot of description...very cool description...in situations where the speaker wouldn't really do that. So the effect...

mary rosenblum

is that we know the speaker isn't in danger and the sense of tension sags.

mary rosenblum

Fantasy, because of the tradition...at least in classical sword and sorcery fantasy...of rich language...

mary rosenblum

tempts authors to do that, and there are certainly many published examples of it. Doesn't mean you have to do it, too. :-) You can still have rich language and keep the sense of tension much tighter.

mary rosenblum

Look at this scene. We have a tavern owner who looks up to see serious trouble walk through the door.

mary rosenblum

I would simply trim this a bit to give more of a sense of her attention being riveted on the newcomer. The writing is good and the scene is certainly as good as many out there...but it could be stronger. :-)

mary rosenblum

Let me put it in again so we don't have to scroll:

mary rosenblum

"Hello, Ms. Savage," he said, as he stood in the open door of the diner.

mary rosenblum

Four of his cronies followed him in. The few customers I had that morning scattered. Cowards. I swallowed. I had never seen him before, but I knew it was him. Stone looked more like a bounty hunter than a knight. He was tall, and his greasy black hair was neatly combed back from his forehead. A thin scabbard protruded from beneath his long coat. He had the deadest eyes I had ever seen. Corpses have more life in their eyes.

mary rosenblum

Okay, it's a diner, not a tavern...:-)

mary rosenblum

We'll assume the writer shows the door opening:

mary rosenblum

"Hello, Ms. Savage." A stranger stood in the open door.

mary rosenblum

Four of his cronies stalked in after him and my few customers scattered. Cowards. Stone. I swallowed. Had to be him. He looked more like a bounty hunter than a knight, tall, with greasy black hair combed back from his forehead. I glanced at the thin scabbard...

mary rosenblum

protruding from beneath his long coat, but his eyes were what scared me. Corpses have more life in their eyes.

mary rosenblum

I didn't change much...here, the tweaks are even smaller than in our last example.

mary rosenblum

I simply took out a few superfluous words... she is under stress.

mary rosenblum

She doesn't care or notice if his hair is neat.

mary rosenblum

She identifies the details that make him Stone. I took out the 'I had never seen him before' because that 'had to be him' tells us she has never seen him...

mary rosenblum

and it's her thought...short and stressed.

mary rosenblum

So here, all I really did was to remove any word that didn't absolutely have to be there...

mary rosenblum

Now this is the most dramatic scene we've looked at, and by reducing details in our POV's thoughts...

mary rosenblum

I am trying to reproduce that 'zooming in' effect that stress produces...

mary rosenblum

when you focus on the very immediate threat and notice nothing else.

mary rosenblum

Which is why I removed any word that wouldn't instantly pop into her head: Stone...sword...ugly eyes...TROUBLE.

mary rosenblum

This is our After Hours Forum, with me, Mary Rosenblum, your web editor and tonight we're working with pacing. I've published seven novels and more than 60 short stories and will do my best to answer any questions you have. If you're new here, remember that you need to click on the 'Ask a Question' button or the 'word bubble' next to the red question mark at the top of the screen in order to ask a question. Your regular 'send' bar won't reach me! Or you can use /ask and type your question into the regular send bar if that works better for you..

mary rosenblum

Whew...talk about thinking on your feet! I downloaded these from email about five minutes before this forum!

mary rosenblum

Now...I absolutely FORBID you all to even think about this during your first draft, okay?

mary rosenblum

You'll drive yourselves into writers block in a page.

mary rosenblum

Even I don't worry about it in draft one and I'm much more conscious of a lot of craft issues than a novice...

mary rosenblum

but this type of pacing refinement is something to save for probably your third draft...

mary rosenblum

unless you don't need to make many big changes in your second draft.

mary rosenblum

If you're making content changes, save the pacing tweaks for another pass.

mary rosenblum

It's like using a microscope on your work...you can't see the big things with a microscope and if you're looking at big things, you can't see the microscopic problems.

mary rosenblum

Worry about getting the story down in draft one.

mary rosenblum

Worry about fixing the story and characters in draft two.

mary rosenblum

Worry about language and pacing in draft three. Or even later.

mary rosenblum

Okay, here's a good example...

mary rosenblum

Gramma, tell us a story," the small child begged me.

mary rosenblum

"OK, lil-one. But not now. You gather your friends, and I will tell you a story at Fireside tonight. Now I must make pita, or we will go hungry." I gave my firstborn's youngun, Rama, a smile and returned to my daily task of making the dough that served as a wraparound for the squirrel that her daddy would bring home from the hunt.

mary rosenblum

There was such an abundance of squirrel this year, and the big game hadn't made it back sufficiently yet, so hope for some venison or moose was out of the question. The Long War had really destroyed much of the animal kingdom or at least rendered many close to extinction.

mary rosenblum

This is a very narrative piece. Our POV, Gramma, is not only going to tell her grandchild a story, she is also telling US a story...the story of her people.

mary rosenblum

I have another paragraph very much like these.

mary rosenblum

Now depending on what your intention is, there is nothing wrong with doing it this way.

mary rosenblum

Ursula LeGuin's 'Always Coming Home' which won several awards as I recall...

mary rosenblum

was written in just this type of 'storytelling' narrative voice.

mary rosenblum

It was meant to be exactly that...an old woman telling the story of her life.

mary rosenblum

The pacing is languid and it's very diffucult to achieve a lot of tension in this type of narrative because, of course, the POV survived. :-) Although...

mary rosenblum

you can make readers worry about the fate of characters you and they come to care about.

mary rosenblum

Here, pacing issues would be more content driven...

mary rosenblum

if our narrator meanders along and doesn't keep the reader looking forward to the next hing to happen, the story will falter and stall.

mary rosenblum

So here, it becomes a matter of finding details that illustrate the story you wish to tell without boring the reader with unneeded details.

mary rosenblum

As you can see...there is no one way to fix pacing.

mary rosenblum

Which is why it is so hard to teach

mary rosenblum

What fixes it in one case, is not the problem in another.

mary rosenblum

It is probably the most difficult aspect of craft to really master.

mary rosenblum

When you read something that moves along strongly so that you look up, realized you've been reading for an hour and it seems like five minutes...

mary rosenblum

go back and take a look at what you hae just read.

mary rosenblum

Go grab a couple of pages you've written recently and lay them down by that book.

mary rosenblum

See if you can tell how that really strongly paced prose differs from yours.

mary rosenblum

You'll learn a lot that way. :-) We have many prose habits that we like...they sound good to us...but they can really bog down pacing. :-)

mary rosenblum

What suits your ear may not suit the story or article you are writing. :-)

mary rosenblum

Well, we've almost run out of our Oregon Hour, so if you have any questions about this...now is the time. :-)

whistlin_smithy

Mary, do you view flashback as a hindrance to a rapid pace? Or can it work to maintain a quickening pace?

mary rosenblum

Good question, smithy. No, flashback is never (a rare absolute) going to quicken the pace...it WILL send your reader backward...which is why..

mary rosenblum

you really need to use it when it matters, but not for convenience's sake.

mary rosenblum

It may be worth the loss of forward momentum to do that flashback...

mary rosenblum

but if you are merely doing it because it's too much work to figure out how to work in that back story...don't.

paja

Do we always want to keep the tight wording? What instances would we lengthen the pacing?

mary rosenblum

Well, not all the time, paja!

mary rosenblum

You can have a monotone that is breakneck! And the reader wears out and gets desensitized by the taut pace.

mary rosenblum

While you want the tightest pace that the scene can handle, that 'tight' pace will be stronger in some scenes and slacker in others...

mary rosenblum

you just don't want it to be slacker than it needs to be.

info

is there any normal set of times to go through your draft? I mean is three or four times to make sure you gotten every thing or is it more like over six times?

mary rosenblum

I generally do three passes, info. I have writer friends who do ten.

mary rosenblum

Whatever works for you.

mary rosenblum

And I have a friend who does ONE pass....but it takes her 18 months to do it!

mary rosenblum

She's the exception!

paja

In drafts: is this the general flow?

mary rosenblum

What's that, paja? Not sure I understand you.

paja

Whoops. 1. get all content down 2 arrange content flow 3 check phrasing pace?

mary rosenblum

I'd say that's pretty common.

mary rosenblum

The problem with trying to do too much at once, is that you are looking at differen't levels of the story.

mary rosenblum

You begin by looking at structure...does the plot work, do the subplots tie in.

mary rosenblum

Then you look at characters closely and ignore the plot..okay the plot works, does this character behave appropriately in this scene?

mary rosenblum

It's easy to miss plot issues if you're focused on characters...

mary rosenblum

Then you get down to language...do these words work, is this the strongest verb, do I have extra words, did I repeat myself?

mary rosenblum

It's easy to miss both character and plot issues while you have your nose pressed to the page, so to speak.

glider

Does outlining affect how you can set the pace of the story?

mary rosenblum

Sure glider.

mary rosenblum

At least in terms of content issues...by roughing out the peaks and valleys of your plot line, you avoid a huge slump in the middle where nothing happens for example.

mary rosenblum

Because I rough out my plot thoroughly before I start draft one, I rarely have to worry about plot issues.

mary rosenblum

My draft two is a character pass.

mary rosenblum

Draft three is language.

mary rosenblum

When I started, I often needed four passes...plot, character then language after the first draft.

mary rosenblum

Mostly it's a matter of learning what does NOT need to be in the story...

mary rosenblum

and that simply takes practice, practice, practice.

whistlin_smithy

Mary, do you think figures of speech, hyperbole, metaphor, etc., would slow down pace? Or trash it altogether?

mary rosenblum

Oh not at all, smithy. They can actually tighten the pacing by adding a lot of subtext and nuance without adding words.

mary rosenblum

If I describe a kid as a young lion, I don't have to add a lot of words about his personality, do I?

mary rosenblum

-)

mary rosenblum

You can sure overdo 'em, but they're very useful.

mary rosenblum

Actually, that's why you want to use 'loaded words' whenever possible.

mary rosenblum

It's not a house, it's a shack or a mansion or a flea hotel or what have you.

mary rosenblum

Look how much description you have saved...you can spend those words on the details to make it unique.

speck

I'm reading a book now in which the author equates metaphors, adverbs, etc as tools. He says we have to know when and where to use them most effectively. Being a mechanic once, I really liked his comparasion.

mary rosenblum

Sure. All aspects of craft are tools and learning to use the right one in the right situation is what craft is all about. :-)

mary rosenblum

Good analogy.

mary rosenblum

Well, this has been a fun Oregon Hour, and thanks for the samples, folks!

mary rosenblum

I'll see you all Sunday for our casual chat!

mary rosenblum

Same time and place, only on Sunday.

speck

Have a nice weekend:--)

mary rosenblum

I will thank you, and you all, too!

mary rosenblum

See you Sunday!

mary rosenblum

I'll post this in Writing Craft: Forum Transcripts.

mary rosenblum

Have a great weekend!

 

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