Pacing- story pacing, not reiterative walking- is a tricky beast. The problem, fundamentally, is that you, the author, have to determine not only how fast the story should move but how fast it does move. The first, honestly, is not hard to ball-park estimate, though the refined understanding we’d all prefer can only be assured by experience. The second is where the real trouble comes in, if only because we, as writers, have different perspectives than the readers, different ideas of what’s interesting and no way of so wholly divorcing ourselves from our work as to be sure that we’ve seen it from any single reader’s perspective, let alone all our readers’ perspectives. Beta readers, of course, can be a help, if only to point out that some sections of the story are unutterably boring and some are so frenetic their coffee jumped right of the cup while they were trying to read it, but even when you know where the problem is, it can be hard to determine what the problem is, what part of the story is making it too fast or, possibly harder, too slow.

Today we’re only going to be considering one kind of story, the most common and (in my opinion) most fundamental kind: the story where the plot forms the connective backbone, forms the skeleton which character animates and theology (theme) ensouls. Some stories function off of a character-based or theological skeleton; an episodic tale about a singular character or idea, for instance, is often bound together by something other than plot, though whether the something other is instead of or alongside the plot depends on the individual work¹. Other deviations exist: character studies and explorations of setting (though these often end up being faux nonfiction with stories attached, more travel guide than narrative), for instance. Some stories even mix plot with another backbone before use, as in Pilgrim’s Progress, where theology and plot are one and the same, on a structural level. Regardless, unless you’re writing something truly unconventional, plot, even in conjunction with another element, will be the structure, the skeleton, of your story, the frame that holds it together and to which the rest of the elements are stitched with lesser or greater precision.

The most vital element of pacing to understand is this: the speed of a story is measured not in things-per-page but in plot-per-minute. That is to say that in The Princess Bride, the 40-plus pages of scene description Goldman claims to remove from the book he’s ostensibly abridging (a conceit central to the meta element of the book) would be an unutterable drag on the pacing not because nothing would be written there- the descriptions of dresses and etiquette and food would doubtless be of great interest to a historian, were they real- but because nothing which happens there is really part of the plot. The speed the reader is induced to read at also matters- a book in which each sentence takes a while to read can be much slower than a book of the same word-to-plot ratio in which the sentences intrude into the reader’s understanding just as fast as he can see them². Speaking in rough approximations, a fast paced book is one in which the plot progresses significantly after only a few minutes; a slow paced book is one in which the plot progresses noticeably only after a determined and significant session of reading. Plot-per-minute, not things-per-page, is our concern here.

This means that when you’re asking whether your story is properly paced, you need to consider the frequency and spacing of plot events and plot information. There are two important types of points which the reader will note as plot progression: change in his perspective of the plot and change in the character’s perspective of the plot. Let’s consider them in reverse order, since they’ll make more sense that way.

Changes in the character’s perspective of the plot are the actual changes in the story. They can be the discovery and understanding of new information by the character: what the supernatural beings they’ve been dealing with actually are, what the villain’s plan is, etc. They can be decisions, points where the characters choose (or are forced to choose) one direction over another, choosing to take the Ring to Mount Doom instead of using it. They can be events external to the characters impacting the characters, like a sudden storm rendering the pass over the mountains almost impassible just when they most need to cross it. These changes are defined by being perceptible to the characters, by being internal to the world of the story.

Changes in the reader’s perspective are most subtle but no less important. In these instances, the reader’s understanding of the story is altered- where he expects it to go, what he expects it to be about, who he cares about. These instants may not be perceptible to the character. In a good mystery story, for instance, a reader might piece together all the clues before the characters, might receive that last final bit of information or that flash of intuition which tips him off to the ending before the characters do, or he might realize it long after the characters do. In both cases, the reader’s perspective shift is separate from the character’s new understanding of their situation but no less important and vital to account for³. Regardless, the reader reaches a certain point in the narrative which changes his perspective of the story: he expects no longer a happy but a bittersweet ending, he anticipates not a stealth mission in a forest but a race through the steppes, he learns to sympathize with or admire a character he previously despised.

Both of these types of changes are perceived by a reader as a Something Happening, and when that Something Happening intersects with, changes, the plot, that Something Happening matters to the pacing. It counts for another notch up on the plot-per-minute speedometer. Of course, they can be done wrong. A change in the character’s perspective might come to the reader not as a change but as a long overdue and cliched ‘well that had to happen’ or as a ‘that might as well happen now, I guess’. A change in the reader’s perspective might fall somewhere you didn’t expect or never actually happen (at least in the way you wanted). I’ve played a little bit of a trick here too, with my distinction between the characters and the reader, as ultimately the character’s perspective is of causative importance only. Stories are, after all, communication; if the change in the characters does not produce a responsive change in the reader, it doesn’t matter to the story, to the plot. If it doesn’t matter to the plot, it’s blank space, so far as pacing is concerned.

Of course, pacing isn’t the be-all and end-all of the story. Elements of your story will often not count for a notch on the speedometer. These aren’t immediately bad. Setting description, for instance, may not bear directly upon the story, but the sensory and tonal impact upon your reader may make large portions of the story function at a much higher level, can lift other elements higher, despite their local lack of plot relevance. Theological elements, characterization (a favorite of mine), and action (which is only directly relevant to the pacing when the expected outcome in changing; swords being swung is just as much not a part of the pacing as a description of the local wildflowers, unless the sword swinging induces the reader to expect or understand a change in the plot) are all important parts of stories which won’t immediately impact pacing. Don’t forget about them. Pacing is about what’s between plot points just as much as what’s between them. Think of it like a ruler- if you want to measure in inches, the inch-marks are vital, but the blank space between them is equally vital, because without that blank space the inch marks wouldn’t mean anything. The story shouldn’t be composed entirely out of plot points. Your job is to make the plot points come at the right speed, in the right order, with the right tempo. Your job is to make the plot points matter when they arrive and arrive when they matter⁴.

Stories can have all sorts of pacing. Some need quicker pacing, to keep the reader on the edge of his seat, unsure if the bomb is going to go off or the romance is going to implode. Some need slower pacing, to allow the ideas and characters and plot to marinate in the reader’s mind till it reaches completion. Consider which one your story needs. Then, once you’ve decided, consider which one it has. How far apart are your plot points, the change in the story which the reader cares about? The distance between these, in reading time, is what makes the pacing fast or slow, frenetic or relaxed, thrilling or contemplative. Be careful; consider the opinions of other writers⁵ as authorities on the subject. If possible, get somebody else to read it for you; as authors we’re all apt to see a part of the story that readers yawn at as being immensely interesting and tense, bound up as we are in the intricacies of the story and knowing the significance of that bit in ways the reader can’t and won’t. Pacing, done well, can help ensure the reader will not leave your story behind for another, at least not until you’re done with him, so do it well.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Even in such an example, the plot will likely form the backbone internal to each individual episode.

2 – How fast I read Clausewitz’s On War is a whole different beast from how fast I read Power’s Declare (see a review); likewise, how fast, in terms of pages per minute, I read Sir Walter Scott’s novels differs from how fast I read The Hobbit or C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

3 – Indeed, often the characters might undergo one change and the reader another. E.g. the characters make a plan without explaining it on the page. The reader knows there is a plan but not what it is; the character knows the plan and what it is. Both have experienced a change in perspective, but the changes are informationally different. Technically speaking all perspective shifts will differ similarly, even between different readers, due to differing original perspectives, but that’s not really relevant here.

4 – Besides plot-centric pacing points, there also exist what I call ‘illusory pacing points’. These are parts of the story which some readers- possibly including your target audience- will care about enough for them to keep them occupied, though they’ll almost always fail to register as pacing points in terms to speed. In other words, they can hold your reader’s interest like plot point do, but without turning up the speed of the pacing, without becoming tick-marks on the dial for plot-per-minute. Examples, for me at least, include intricate worldbuilding information, intriguing characterization, and some sensory descriptions. Individual readers will have different responses to these parts of the story, to an even greater extent than to plot points, but for some, this can retain their attention through slower paced stories they would normally grow bored of, though only for so long.

5 – For another resource on pacing, check out this video.