Graphic by Peg Ihinger
Pacing is one of those things that most writers have to learn by doing. You need a feel for what’s working and what isn’t, the same way a marathon runner needs a feel for how much their body can do and still finish the race. Except that runners can measure minutes-per-mile and call it pace; writers have nothing that is comparable. Pace in fiction is more a matter of reader perception than objective measurement.
A story’s pace comes from a mixture of three things: the density of the prose, the rate of revelation, and the degree of tension.
The density of the prose is the amount of important stuff the writer packs into each paragraph, sentence, and word. Low-density prose reads fast, and therefore tends to speed up the pace. Dense prose slows down the pacing, because the reader has to go slowly to unpack the layers and subtext, and make connections.
Density has very little to do with absolute word count, and a lot to do with information and emotional weight per word. Dialog is usually low-density, but the right line of dialog in the right place can be three words long and still have the density of a neutron star. A paragraph of fifty or a hundred words can be empty fluff or packed solid with meaning.
It’s not about how many words the writer uses; it’s about how hard the reader’s brain has to work to comprehend everything that’s happening on all the various levels of the story. Therefore, density is also about reading speed, because people tend to slow down when they hit a section of dense prose, to make sure they’re getting all the important stuff. Of course, the information has to be important and relevant to the story, or readers will start skimming all the dense parts, which is not an ideal outcome
The rate of revelation is how fast the writer introduces or reveals new and important story information to the reader (not the characters). “New” is the part that moves the story along and keeps the reader interested; “important” is the part that keeps the writer from “revealing” things that are new but irrelevant, just to be putting in some new information to keep the rate of revelation up. And “story information” covers everything from minor questions (and their eventual answers) to major plot twists; from hints and clues to important insights and backstory.
One of the big mistakes I see comes when writers withhold or speed up information solely to adjust the rate of revelation. Dumping five pages of important information in the first chapter does not start the story off at a fast pace (and at that point, it is seldom as important as the writer thinks it is). That sort of info-dump usually slows the story down, because readers get overwhelmed and have no time to process it. Deliberately hiding, delaying, or withholding information unnecessarily tends to annoy readers, especially when the characters should already know that the sky here is purple, or that magic is real, or that George and Camilla were engaged for three months last year.
The degree of tension is essentially the threat level, and ranges from “No big deal” to “We’re all doomed! DOOMED!” with as many levels in between as the writer feels necessary. The “threat” in this case is the feeling that something important is about to happen (not necessarily something bad, just something important in the context of the story). The level relates to what the protagonist stands to gain or lose, i.e., what the reader expects the stakes of the coming event will be.
Tension comes in two types: external tension (when it looks like something outside the protagonist—such as the villain, a lawsuit, a car crash, etc.—is going to get in the protagonist’s way), and internal tension (when the obstacle or difficulty comes from inside the protagonist’s psyche, such as their fear of failure, shyness, refusing to compromise, etc.). Both kinds frequently exist at the same time—they feed on each other.
Tension has to be resolved eventually, usually because the important thing happens and the protagonist does or doesn’t get the outcome that they and/or the reader wanted. Usually, high tension needs a high payoff in order for the reader to feel that it’s been resolved successfully. Readers don’t expect rescuing a cat from a tree to have the same payoff as discovering the murderer or saving the kingdom.
Mixing and matching the density of the prose, the rate of revelation, and the degree of tension, can speed up or slow down the pace of a story. Usually, the pace of a story moves in a rhythm, like a drumbeat. Occasionally, you find a story that hits the ground running and never lets up, but that is hard to pull off in novel-length fiction. A “breakneck pace” actually has to constantly speed up and increase the tension, or readers get used to it and the pace starts feeling more like cruising than sprinting.
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