writermag.com • The Writer | 11things are happening too fast for you
to track – or they’re happening so fast
you can’t tell why they’re important to
the plotline or the character.
I’ll give you some examples:
In a few recent stories I’ve read, our
protagonist sits in a coffee shop, bar, or
living room, or maybe in their office,
ruminating over a recent breakup.
Nothing else happens for some time,
and there is a good amount of space
dedicated to things like what the pro-
tagonist misses about the relationship.
Or maybe beating up oneself over the
relationship. It’s quite some time before
anything actually happens, if anything
happens at all.
In another kind of story, the pro-
tagonist, and some members of the
cast of characters, are described at
great length. Or maybe the setting is
described at great length. Eventually,
the descriptions run out of steam, and
all the action – setup, denouement,
conclusion – happens in a few pages.
The reader feels jostled, confused.
In yet another kind of narrative, the
writer spends a lot of time describing
what brought the character to a certain
point in time. Or the writer springs
immediately into flashback after
throwing something in media res at the
reader. Or the writer introduces a
character only to have that character
go away for some time, not to be seen
for pages and pages.
Each of these situations results in
pacing problems – the reader feels
impatient, or the reader feels rushed,
or the reader feels cheated out of
important information. But each of
these is also deeply connected to one
major problem: a good sense of timing.
In the first situation, we are looking
at a lack of conflict: The breakup has
already happened, so nothing is really
propelling the protagonist to act. (And,
there is no reason for the reader to
worry, since “the worst” that could
happen has already occurred off-page.)
In the second, we are looking at a case
of throat-clearing, where the writer
doesn’t quite know where to start and
so spends too much time on atmo-
spherics before we get to the meat of
the story. In the third case, the story
has started too early, or too late, or just
at the wrong time for the protagonist’s
actions to matter to the reader. (Flash-
back is a key indication that the story
we’ve opened with isn’t necessarily the
story that needs to be told, when you
consider everything else: setting, char-
acter, narrative arc.)
But in each of these cases, we must
ask ourselves: Why are we meeting the
characters at this particular juncture in
their timeline? What is going to hap-
pen, or what has just happened, for
this moment to be remarkable? Or,
quoting writer Mike Copperman, who
paraphrased the writer Elizabeth
Bowen to me: “A story is the moment,
after which, a character’s life is never
the same.” When writers can nail down
this moment, a lot of pacing problems,
I think, can disappear awfully fast.
The writer must, of course, also
remain vigilant over the course of the
story, even after they’ve discovered what
the moment of story is for themselves.
Because after we’ve identified that
moment, which serves as the body of
the story, there’s still all of that intersti-
tial stuff: Figuring out when to intro-
duce new characters. Making sure the
characters react in the right space of
time to major events and minor revela-
tions as they grow through the narrative.
Keeping your character growing and
changing. These, too, are related to pac-
ing. They are in service to keeping the
contract you’ve entered into with the
reader, committing your characters and
plot to ensuring, ultimately, that your
reader stays entertained and interested
over the course of your story or essay.
Granted, you’re not going to win
over every reader. Pleasing everyone
shouldn’t ever be the reason you write
anything, right? But great pacing will
give you a long leg up on making storiesthat keep readers turning pages, and
coming back for more of your work.Yi Shun Lai is the fiction editor and co-owner
of Tahoma Literary Review. Read about her
writing coaching and editing services; her
novel, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadven-
tures of Marty Wu; and her daily adventures at
thegooddirt.org.ADVANCE
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