How to Pace Your Fiction Novel: Practical Tools & Tips
Today, we will cover the different layers of pace, discuss how to apply it through practical analysis, and then review the specific literary tools writers can use to manipulate the pace.
So, uh...how's my pacing?
Do you find yourself asking that about your novel? Me, too. What we usually mean is how does it read? Too slow? Too fast? Are you bored out of your gourd, or can you not breathe?
Pacing is a combination of how fast events are happening and the feeling that gives the reader, but it's not just about fast or slow. There's another side to pacing that we often forget about!
Let me ask you this…as a human, what makes you pay attention to something?
Why are you vigilant about your surroundings in an unknown area and not so much when you're somewhere familiar?
Why do your kids flip on the oven light on to see how the cookies are doing?
Why do you look both ways before crossing the street?
Answer: Anticipation. Good or bad, humans are anticipating machines in uncertain environments or when they want or expect something.
Rather than ask, “Is it too fast or too slow?” better questions might be, “Am I keeping my reader in anticipation?” “Is something unfolding for them to worry about?” “How can I make them pay attention?” or “How am I making them feel?”
Defining Pace and Why It Matters:
In general, pace refers to how fast or slow information such as plot events, character development, reflection, reveals, and twists is presented and what the reader is anticipating to unfold. It’s a balancing act between the moments of action, tension, and reflection, influenced by the style, rhythm, and tempo of the prose, and it plays a huge part in controlling the emotional journey of your reader.
Effective pacing matters because if the speed of information is too slow, we skim, or worse, we stop reading because we no longer care. If it’s too fast for too long, we can’t breathe, understand the characters, or process the change that is happening within them or the world.
Pacing should vary throughout a novel. You don’t want a book that plods along the whole way or feels faster than the thirty-second Disneyland ride you waited in line for over an hour to experience, right?
It helps to think that pacing is delivered in sections: faster-paced sections build excitement and drive the plot forward, while slower-paced sections provide opportunities for character development, world-building, and thematic exploration.
Good rule of thumb:
“You should write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.” Lee Child
Write the slow parts fast (anything mundane with no significant change-summarize).
Write the fast parts slow (anything that shows significant change, action, emotion, or things you want your reader to see, feel, and be immersed in; put it in a scene).
Three Ways to Think About Pace
Pace is about forward momentum balanced with reflection delivered in three different layers:
1. The pace of the novel in general: The speed at which the story’s events, reveals, and twists unfold, and how the reader feels about the tempo.
2. The pace of character development: How quickly the character changes as they face the story’s conflict.
3. The pace of the moment or scene: How the words on the page affect the reader emotionally.
The Pace of the Novel
For the pace of the novel, consider the frequency with which the events of the story occur to deliver the change you’re after and expose the secrets your characters keep, given the span of time the book covers.
Look to your genre for guidance. Are you writing a commercial thriller or mystery? The speed at which the events occur will be faster.
Writing an action-adventure fantasy- also a faster speed. How about a multi-generational family drama or a contemporary YA coming-of-age story? Likely slower but deeper.
Here’s another good rule of thumb:
Start fast or deeply interesting, build with tension, keep your reader in a state of anticipation, and deliver the event with the highest energy, which is most interesting, the one the reader is dying to see, at the climax. Never dawdle, never plod, never pontificate. Keep your character going after a goal and keep your readers wondering if they’ll get it.
Take Action With Practical Analysis:
Pick up a book in your genre that you enjoyed and re-read it. (I know I say this a lot, so no surprise, but really, do it. You are going to learn so much!)
Note the length of time the book covers. Days, months, years?
Now, map out the story timeline coinciding with the plot’s events. Did I just ask you to outline an entire novel you didn’t write? Yes. Yes, I did.
How often does the character encounter new information or a new situation/event? Ask yourself, as the reader, if you were anticipating the next event. What do you feel in the “what’s gonna happen” feeling?
What is the energy within each of these events? Is tension building? Are the events getting bigger and more challenging? As the reader, what is compelling you to read on?
Pick out the moments when the story slows down and ask what happens there. Notice how you felt during dynamic turns and each moment of reprieve?
Apply this to your work:
If you’re a plotter, look at your plot points or your scenes and flag the ones that are high intensity (those should be faster paced), then see if you have a follow-up moment or scene that is more reflective (slower).
If you’re a pantser, do this scene-by-scene analysis in revision.
Think of it like a roller coaster. The moments where you level out allow you time to catch your breath and anticipate the next big twist or turn.
The Pace of Character Development:
Consider the rate your protagonist changes as a result of the story’s events.
Do they begin like a lamb among wolves, thrust into uncertainty in chapter one and two chapters later they have adapted and are now a fierce fighter?
Do the love interests hate each other the first time they meet, but are they all lovey-dovey three or four scenes later?
Do you believe it? If you don’t, it’s probably too big a change, delivered too fast. As the reader, would you feel cheated?
Alternatively, do you keep them from changing for too long? Do you keep them from incorporating the lessons the conflict and their choices have taught them?
Are they behaving in the same manner in the novel’s second half as in the first, and is that appropriate for their arc?
If so, they probably aren’t developing internally, even if they are getting stronger externally, unless you are writing a flat or static arc.
Take Action With Practical Analysis:
Now that you’ve mapped out the story events of the book you’re analyzing, do the same for the character development. When and where in the narrative are they changing? Drill down into the moment they decide to do something different because of the lessons they’ve learned.
Identify those same moments in your own story.
The Pace of the Moment:
Given what is happening on the page right now, how does the reader feel, and what factors contribute to this?
How long are the scenes? How are the paragraphs and sentences structured? Are they short and snappy, or long and filled with introspection? Is the page dense with words, or is there more white space? What kind of verb choices have been made? Do they feel sharp and crisp or more languid? How is the description used? Lots of details slow the moment down and force the reader to focus.
Take Action With Practical Analysis:
Look at a specific moment in time from the book you are analyzing. What’s happening? Is it action or reflection? Is the character inside their head? What do you feel? Why do you feel that way? What word choices do you notice here? How are the paragraphs and sentences structured?
For your novel: Evaluate the pace of the moment in revision. Think about how you want your reader to feel and adjust the elements to make it so.
When do you worry about pace?
As you develop your story and map out your plot events, consider the pace of the novel in general.
Don’t worry about pacing too much (if at all) as you draft. Just focus on giving your character an overarching story goal and a scene goal and putting them into action to pursue it. That will help immensely.
Then, take the knife out when you revise.
Specific Factors that Control Pacing
Macro Elements
The Plot and Genre: For commercial novels, the plot events (the highs and the lows) will help you set the pace, especially for books with tried-and-true frameworks: Romance, Mystery, and Thriller.
Subplots: Subplots can be fun, but keep in mind they will slow your narrative pace, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Subplots can add texture and deepen the novel, but they can also detract from the main storyline if excessive. So just be aware. Dropping a subplot in immediately after a high point (good or bad), can give the reader a nice breather.
Character Development: As the character moves past major turning points in the novel it should affect them in some way. They should be getting closer to their goal or farther from it. Are they evolving because of the decisions they’ve made and actions they’ve taken? Does it feel natural or is the development unbalanced, heavy on one end of the book vs. the other?
Character goal: No goal, nothing to anticipate. Nothing to anticipate equates to slow pages.
Backstory: Dropping in a dollop (or more) of backstory, especially if it contains a secret, too early in the book will slam the breaks on the novel. Consider holding the reveal back and only give the information away when the reader needs to know it, at the moment it will make the biggest impact.
Micro Elements
Action and Dialogue: In general action and dialogue will ramp up the pace, but it depends on what is being done and said and if there is tension inside of it. Remember to consider if the reader is anticipating anything, make sure the character has a goal and that it’s hard to get.
Description: How you describe things can affect the pace of the moment. Languid, flowing description will slow things down. Sharp, harsh, and arresting descriptions will increase the pace.
Use Story Questions and Suspense: Write with an element of suspense in mind, both long and short term. Make the reader ask questions, then create micro-payoffs for them as they read forward. It’s like following a yummy trail of breadcrumbs. For larger elements of suspense, say the answer to the main story question (Will Harry and crew find out what the Chamber of Secrets is and why it’s dangerous? Will Katniss kill Peeta to survive the Hunger Games? Will Shrek tell Princess Fiona how he feels?) hold back the reveal. Prolong the outcome and keep the reader in anticipation until the climactic moment when the stakes are the highest!
Summary: Using summary can increase pace by skipping over chunks of time or events, the mundane things the reader does not need to see or feel.
Clocks: The use of a ticking clock will increase the pace by heightening reader anticipation.
Chapter and Scene Techniques
Chapter or Scene Length: Shorter chapters or scenes with concise descriptions and rapid dialogue can create a sense of urgency and propel the story forward quickly. Longer scenes with more detailed exposition and introspection slow down the pacing to allow for a deeper exploration of characters and themes.
Varying the pacing within individual scenes can add depth and complexity to the narrative. Alternating between fast-paced action sequences and slower-paced moments of introspection or dialogue creates a dynamic rhythm that holds the reader's attention.
Cliff Hangers: Cliff hangers increase pace by affronting the reader. You don’t give them the answer. You leave them in anticipation so they turn the page to find out what’s going to happen. They are effective for sure, but overdone can feel gimmicky.
Scene Cuts: Scene cuts can move things along and increase the pace. Scene cuts rely on the reader filling in the blanks of what happened.
Sentence Structure & Word Choice
Active Voice: Using an active voice vs. passive will always enhance the pace. Keep the subject doing the work on the object of the sentence. Bob slammed the door and stomped out of the room, not the door was slammed by Bob as he stomped out of the room.
White Space: The brain interprets more white space on the page as a faster read, increasing the pace.
Fragments: Sentence fragments generally increase the pace. They can also be very effective in reflecting tone and mood.
Short and Long Sentences: Short sentences increase pace. Longer sentences slow down the speed of the passage, asking the reader to focus for a greater amount of time. Varying the length of sentences in a paragraph helps create the rhythm and flow of the prose. A best practice is to read your work out loud to feel how your sentence structure is working from a pacing standpoint.
Verb Choice: Aggressive, punchy verbs, especially those associated with sound and action (onomatopoeia) like crash, slash, pop, fizz, slice, sizzle, etc., will increase the pace.
Prepositional Phrases: To increase the pace, eliminate unnecessary prepositional phrases. For example, instead of " The walls inside of the ballroom were streaked with blood,” use " The ballroom walls were streaked with blood.”
Remove Filter Words: Filter words distance the reader from the character and the experience on the page. Examples of filter words are thought, felt, saw, heard, could have, should have, reflected, noticed, watched, looked, smelled, and all their tense variations. Search for them in revision and take out your scalpel. For a full list of filter words to look out for when you revise, see this list!
Takeaways
A well-paced novel effectively manages the timing of key plot points, information, character arcs, and thematic developments to keep the reader engaged and create a sense of momentum.
Pacing should vary throughout the novel. Faster-paced sections should build excitement and drive the plot forward, while slower-paced sections should provide opportunities for character development, world-building, and thematic exploration.
Pacing is best considered in layers: the book itself, character development, and the pace of the scene/moment.
If you are a plotter, map out your major turning points and reflective moments to evaluate the pace and see the roller coaster. If you are pantsing, just write and save this step for revision.
In revision, map out your scenes, evaluate your major turning points, and consider what information is revealed to the reader, how they feel about it, and how the character is affected. Make sure you vary the pace and can see the roller coaster ride.
In a later pass in revision, drop down to the scene level and evaluate the pace of each scene. Does it fit? Does it work? How do you want the reader to feel here? Do the same for the lines. Make each paragraph, sentence, and word count.
A well-paced novel strikes a balance between momentum and depth, holding the reader's interest from beginning to end. The best way to learn how to do this is to read analytically, dissect what you read, and then practice, practice, practice on your story!
