Balancing Pace with Reader Inclusion

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Sometimes in my stories, I want to pick up the pace, especially to move the mystery along.   I’ll quickly move through a scene, summing up something that’s happening–a party, a walk that several friends are taking, a picnic–to get to what I think of as ‘the important part’…whatever that might be at the time.

One of my editors at Penguin would frequently type notes in Track Changes at these spots: “Could you expand on this  scene and let the reader see this happening? I think they’d enjoy being part of it.”

The truth is that showing takes time. It takes time to write and read.  But my editor was right: there are parts that I shouldn’t rush through as a writer, even when I feel the pace of the narrative needs to pick up.

For a while, I just gave completely in.  Let’s say we’ve got a carnival going on as a good set-up for our protagonist to be able to casually speak to another character in the story (this character supplies information of some sort for our protagonist).

If I’d originally felt like the story were dragging a little, I might have said something like:

The carnival was fun and exhausting at the same time.  The bright lights, the barkers’ calls, the heavy food combined to make John ready to head home. Although he wouldn’t have wanted to miss the highlight of the evening: when he beat his best friend at the strongman game.

John was finally making his way toward his car when he was surprised by a bitter voice behind him.

That sort of wraps up the carnival in a couple of sentences before moving into a dialogue with a catalyst character.

This is a good example of a spot where my editor might have asked me to elaborate and bring the reader into the carnival.  Before, I might have done that by writing a page or more as to what John and his best friend did and saw, did, and ate at the carnival.  To make sure this wasn’t skimmed by the reader, I’d have provided some character development along the way, or maybe developed a subplot at the same time.

Now I’d (usually) handle it a different way. I still want to move the mystery along. But I’d want to let the reader experience the carnival, too.  It would go more like this:

The carnival was fun and exhausting at the same time.  The bright lights, the barkers’ calls, the heavy food combined to make John ready to head home.

“You look worn out,” said Peter.

“I think I’m ready to call it a day.” John patted his pockets to find his car keys.

“Which is fine, but not until we play the High Striker. You know, the strongman game.”

John sighed, shoving his keys back in his pocket. “Even though I was just saying I was tired?”

“The perfect time for me to win!”

Another few quick lines could be added to show John winning the game and heading back out.

By interspersing dialogue and exposition,  readers can get an inside look at the action surrounding the protagonist and feel part of the scene, while I move things along.  It took me a while to learn to balance these elements.

How cognizant are you of pace in your story?  Any other tricks to edit for pace?

Photo credit: B Gilmour. via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND