Pace is Critical to a Good Story
By Darryl A. Woods
As I began writing my novel, I
knew I did not want to drone on via narrative or dialogue. I know this can be
boring and repetitive after a certain point and tried to be conscientious about
balancing those throughout the story. However, other elements are often
overlooked that also help to establish the pace of the story. One of these elements
is detail versus panoramic views.
An easy way to visualize descriptions
and how you write them is to imagine a scene in a movie. The camera starts out
with a flyover of an open field with a large tree on a grassy knoll. The panoramic
view lets you take in a wide sweep of imagery, allowing you to put the scene
into perspective with its surroundings. The camera then focuses on the large
tree as other details fade to obscurity. The shot continues to tighten, showing
a couple on a blanket. As the shot tightens, you can see that the man seems
quite happy but is oblivious to the look of sadness on the woman’s face. The
scene ends with a close-up of her face, which verifies your suspicion that she
was not sharing in the man’s happiness.
This process does two things. It
shows the overall setting of the scene, allowing you, the viewer (reader), to
take in the beauty of the picturesque setting. It then draws you into observing
the subtlety of the characters’ emotions. It also sets an emotional pace, going
from a simple, carefree flyover to creating concern for the woman in the scene.
A good novel needs a balance of
emotions. For example, a good battle scene should build as the overall setting
is defined. Moments of intense action need to be followed by a slowing of the
action to give the reader a break. Without this, the reader can become overwhelmed
and numb to the action scenes. If it continues in this vein, the reader may
even become bored with the action. It is the ebb and flow of strong emotions or
action that set the pace, allowing the reader to recover from one emotional
high before being plunged into the next.
More subtle changes in writing also
can affect the pace of your story. In my novel The Summoned Ones, I have
a short chapter called “The Race.” This chapter was about a group racing on
horseback to a pass before their enemy could close off the escape route. In the
chapter, I flipped frequently back and forth from narrative to dialogue. I kept
the dialogue brief and punchy, and the narrative paragraphs short.
I presented the just-completed
chapter to an early beta reader. The next day, he pulled me aside and said,
“You can’t do that to your readers.”
I asked innocently what he was
talking about. He replied, “I was worn out by that chapter. You have to give
the reader a break.”
I didn’t reply to his comments or explain
my method. I merely handed him the next chapter, in which I had purposely
slowed the pace.
Afterwards, he told me not to
worry about his prior concern, because this chapter had slowed the pace. I then
revealed to him the effort I had put into “The Race” to make it so fast-paced,
and how I had attempted to convey the emotions of the hard-charging horse ride.
These concepts illustrate how pace
can be used to achieve balance. The sometimes subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle
equilibrium of opposing forces can allow a reader to experience the emotions within
a story without being overwhelmed.
About the Author
Darryl Woods is a storyteller who hones his craft entertaining
coworkers. He also enjoys regaling family and friends with stories of
his upbringing in rural Ohio, of the motorized contraptions his father
fabricated, and of the timber cutting and sawmill work he did with his
father-in-law. With an appetite for reading fantasy, it was inevitable
he would choose to write about an epic journey in a world dominated by
magic and sword fighting.
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About the Book:
