Hi, my name is Lynn D. Jung, I am a
science fiction and fantasy writer, and I talk about writing
and books on this channel. And today we're back with another
writing advice or tips video. Today we're actually going to
talk about the bane of many a writer's existence, and that is story pacing. Whether your pacing is too fast or too slow,
there's all sorts of issues you can run into with this, and pacing really, really
affects reader experience especially. Generally speaking, you want story
that can carry you along but still has sufficient breaks to allow the
reader to really absorb what is going on and to allow the characters moments of
development and growth and introspection. In my opinion, every story has
slightly different pacing needs, and unfortunately I cannot address all of
them in this little video with eight tips, but I'm just going to share some generalized
tips for you guys that have actually helped me address various pacing issues in the past,
and I hope they'll be helpful to you too. But of course, like always, prescriptivist writing
advice is for the birds, we don't do that here. If these tips don't work for
you, that is totally fine! But yeah, let's go ahead and dive right into it. So, tip number one—I don't know
why I did six—tip number one: figure out the beginning and end of each scene
before you actually sit down and write it. This is really helpful for me because it makes
sure that I'm working towards something. So, figuring out the ending of the scene is
actually a little bit more important than figuring out the beginning, but
it's nice to have the bookmarks. But for me, if I don't really have a clear idea of what I'm working toward in
a scene, I end up rambling. I get lost in the weeds, and the pacing
of the scene slackens a lot as a result. And this is a problem for me even
though I'm someone who usually outlines, because my outlines tend to kind
of look at the bigger picture. I'm either outlining on the
chapter level or act-by-act, and not necessarily looking at each scene
individually until I sit down to write it. So it's been really helpful for me to take
a moment to figure out how those scenes will play out, even if it means just sort of taking
a couple minutes before I start writing it. And if you're someone who would rather discovery
write your scenes and sort of ramble around until you figure out that perfect ending, then I highly
recommend revising with this technique in mind, and basically going "Okay, does this service the
ending? How can I make the scene more compact? hHow can I make sure that it's very, very
focused toward that end point of the scene?" Tip number two is to determine the logical
consequences of each choice your characters make. The Three C's, which I've made a
video about, and I'll link that below, is a storytelling fundamental that
has helped me upgrade my writing. Basically, the 3 C's are
Context, Choice, and Consequence. So you have the scenario that each scene starts
with, you have the choice that the character makes, and then you have the
consequences of that choice. And what this does is it creates
a very logical chain of events, and if readers can sort of anticipate
that consequence based on that choice they're going to be more inclined to
keep reading and figure out what happens. I just find that writing with the Three
C's in mind helps give my stories a really compelling and coherent flow, and this
in turn just really helps out pacing. It makes your work very readable and it
makes the pacing a little tighter as well. Tip number three is more of a revising tip, but this is to actually look out for scenes
where your characters are only talking. If it's it's a dialogue-only scene, they're
not doing much else, it's only a conversation, depending on the vibe that your story has,
depending on what genre you're writing in, too many of these might not be
a good thing for your pacing. It might slow your pacing down quite a bit. If you stumble upon a scene
like this in your draft, then an easy fix is to just give the
character something to do or amp up the tension or make it so that there
are higher stakes to that conversation. Nowadays there's a lot of
emphasis on banter in writing, and I don't think there's anything
wrong with banter, I really enjoy it. But especially in genre fiction, if it's just
a banter scene and nothing else is going on, that's going to slow down your pacing. That's going to make the story sort of lose
that momentum. And you don't always have to shoehorn in an action scene or a chase scene,
sometimes it is better and more necessary to focus on the characters and the dialogue
and the emotions of the moment. So you could always take a look at that dialogue scene and
figure out what emotions are happening here, where is the underlying tension coming from,
what are the stakes of this conversation. Just make sure that something is being
pushed forward in that dialogue scene, even if it's just a character arc or two. But generally speaking, plain dialogue scenes, especially too many of them, are not
going to be super compelling to read. I find this is especially true
in the early stages of a book, like the first act, before you've kind of
built up goodwill and trust with the reader. Personally for me, reading a
bunch of dialogue scenes in a row, especially ones where things are being told to me
through dialogue—I find that really frustrating. I find that it slows down
the pace quite a bit as well. Tip number four is to study a plot beat template
or formula like Save the Cat or something else, and figure out what beats you need
to hit in your story and when. So, pacing isn't just scene-by-scene
or chapter-by-chapter. It also occurs on that macro level. I
don't follow Save the Cat religiously, but generally speaking I do expect
a midpoint twist or a midpoint peak, like something should happen in the middle of
the book that shakes things up a little bit. And without that, I kind of feel like the
plot turns into a straight wobbly line. So even if you're not a believer in templates and
plot formulas, which at a certain point I think that most writers should graduate from those and
just kind of follow their instincts, when it comes to story beats, if you're having trouble with
that macro-level pacing, if you're having trouble figuring out where the next tension beat is going
to come from, something like that is usually helpful to just refer back to, to kind of figure
out your footing get a sense of what you need. Tip number five is a line level pacing
hack: it's to cut unnecessary words. Pacing is so finicky that it's even affected
by your word choice, your sentence choice, the flow of your sentences and
your dialogue, and everything. So tight line writing is also actually
going to influence and improve your pacing. Some words that I tend to look out for
when I'm cutting are unnecessary filter words. For example: "She saw the birds flying
overhead," versus "The birds flew overhead." "She saw" is the filter word here, you don't really need to filter that stimuli
through the point of view of the narrator. Another thing to look out for is the unnecessary usage of imperfective aspects—okay
so as it turns out I had this wrong. Imperfective aspects are actually a broader
concept that kind of has more to do with time, and what I'm really talking about here
is the usage of auxiliary verbs. So from here on out, I am talking about
auxiliary verbs. Sorry about the misunderstanding—which I absolutely
like... I had to look this up. I had no idea there was an official term for this. In grammatical terms, this is basically
when you put a "to be" verb in front of another verb. So something like
"It is raining," versus "It rains." "It is raining" is using an imperfective aspect. A lot of people tend to do this
with character action. For example: "She is running," or "She is smiling,"
instead of "She runs," or "She smiles." And finally, the big one for me—and this one is
a little bit more vague but this is a personal issue I have—and it's repetitive flowery
descriptions that all mean the same thing. So in my early drafts especially, I really
tend to kind of throw around a few different metaphorical phrases or pieces of imagery
to kind of figure out which one fits best. And then I kind of leave them there. So
you'll see me writing paragraphs about like, spring trees blooming, and I'll
use 10 different adjectives, three different sentences, to
essentially describe the same thing. In revisions of course, I don't want that to
bog down the pacing of the story or to just be ridiculous and flowery for no reason, so I have
to go back and figure out which sentence works the best, which one is the most concise or which one
is the most interesting, and cut everything else. Tip number six is to watch out for tracking. I actually plan on making a video
about this concept entirely. This is another thing that I haven't
really seen a lot of writing channels, writing advice folks, talking about,
and that I sort of started to notice in my own writing and in the writing
of people that I have edited for, and that I've realized actually does
weaken writing and weaken pacing. Tracking is when a writer literally tracks a character's every minute movement.
Instead of "She grabbed the glass," it'll be: "Her fingers twitched. Her wrist flicked
toward the table she cast her gaze downward and pursed her lips in consideration—" Sorry
I'm reading—"before she grabbed the glass." It's just unnecessary for something so small.
Unless there's major significance in the character grabbing the glass, you really don't need to do
all that, you can just say she grabbed the glass. This is really noticeable in action
and fight scenes for me. You can tell if a writer has really studied
something like sword fighting because they will literally describe every
tiny movement that the swordsman makes. And sometimes, tracking does
work in context. For example, again, if there's major significance
in the character grabbing the glass. Or if the point of view character is a detective
and is watching the suspect's movements very, very closely and is trying to get a read of
what they're actually thinking and feeling. But generally speaking, if you are
tracking a smaller action like this, it's going to slow down the whole
scene. So, keep an eye out for tracking. All right, tip number seven is: watch
out for and cut filler dialogue. I'm very bad about this because I
tend to hear dialogue in my head, and I just sort of write it verbatim. There's a lot of like... "Um, but, um," like weird little noises that
people are making in my dialogue. I don't need all that. Mo one needs all that. And my dialogue also tends to read in a really
roundabout way. Just trim your dialogue down. Make it get to the point. It does not
need to read the way actual people speak, it just has to convey what you need to convey. So I guess generally speaking, just look
out for super long dialogue portions and try to cut what you can, because
again, it does affect the pacing. And tip number eight is to ask for
an outside opinion. If you're really having trouble identifying where exactly
your pacing is too slow or too fast, you can always find beta readers, critique
partners, or professional editors. I know this can be scary,
especially for newer writers, but really there is no better way to
improve than to find someone who has really good insights and opinions and get
them to look at your work and have them tell you what you're doing right and what
you could improve on, that sort of thing. Not to, you know, shamelessly plug myself
but I actually do offer free editorial services on a first come first serve
basis once a month over on my Patreon, if you want to check out a
cost-effective option I guess. But—and here's the key point here—before
you just throw your manuscript at someone, identify what specific areas you sense
or feel like you have trouble with, and then come up with specific guiding
questions for the people reading your work. So instead of just asking like, "Is
the pacing here bad?" you want to ask something more specific. For example, "Where did your attention begin to wane." "Were
you able to follow what was happening in this action scene?" "Where in the book did you
feel the most engaged while you were reading?" Questions like these are really
helpful... what am I saying. If you ask questions like these, even to someone
who hasn't done professional editorial work or is just like your co-worker or friend or
family member who kind of reads for fun, they should be able to answer really
specifically and accurately regardless. Because it's very much based off their
reading experience versus any insights into writing craft that they may or may not
lack, and it's going to to help you pinpoint exactly what areas need work, because pacing
really does boil down to reader experience. And that's it! Those are all
the tips for today, short video. Thank you so much for watching, and let me
know if you have your own pacing tips in the comments below! I'll see you next time, bye :)
