Pacing in Scenes and Narratives ...................................................

Lecture 19

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very narrative has a tempo. Some stories are fast-paced and
breathless, some are slow and meditative, and as always, there’s a
vast middle ground of narratives where the tempo varies throughout
the work, depending on what the writer is trying to evoke at a particular
PRPHQW,Q¿FWLRQWKLVWHPSRLVFDOOHGSDFLQJ—a rather slippery concept
because it’s so subjective. Some readers crave constant action and clever
plot twists, while others want a story that lingers over the intimate details
of a character’s sensibility and relationships. Given that no book can be all
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or variety of tempos, for his or her particular story.

Introduction to Pacing
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a whole and the pace of individual chapters and scenes. Both of these
ways of looking at pacing are based on a sort of proportion or balance.
Indeed, the essence of pacing is a kind of juggling act, by which writers
gauge how much information they want to get across, how many words
or pages they have to do it in, and how much patience they hope the
reader has.

z One feature of pacing a writer must address is the length of time a story
or scene takes in the world of the narrative versus the time it takes for
someone to read it. On the whole, a long book that depicts a short period
of time will probably be slower paced than a short book or a short story
that depicts a long period of time.

z But length itself is not a reliable measure of the pace of a narrative. You
also have to consider the balance between the length of the story and
the number of incidents and characters within it. We might call this the
GHQVLW\ of the narrative.