 Drama: June 29, 2016 Issue [#7699] |
  Drama
This week: How to Fix a Flawed Pacing Edited by: Joy  
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Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
Jimmy Buffett
I picture my books as movies when I get stuck, and when I'm working on a new idea, the first thing I do is hit theaters to work out pacing and mood.
Maggie Stiefvater
The middles of my books are often the toughest for me to write. If the pacing flags, I deal with the problem by looking around at all my characters and figuring out which one I can kill.
Nora Roberts
Beginnings hook readers; endings create fans.
Martha Alderson
With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, a proper sense of closure.
Garth Ennis
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about fixing the pacing flaws in our stories.
Thank you for reading our newsletters and for supplying the editors with feedback and encouragement.
Note: In the editorial, I refer to third person singular as he, to also mean the female gender, because I don't like to use they or he/she. |
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Pace in a story is its sense of timing. It determines whether the rest of the story elements will succeed or not. Some writing teachers attach pacing to voice, meaning both the writer’s voice and the voices of the characters. They claim if you change the voice, you change the pace.
If the story’s pacing is not working well, however, this might be due to a few other additional factors, such as:
 Not enough conflict
Unclear character motivations
All dialogue and no action
The action moves too slowly or events do not happen soon enough
Too much description or backstory and information dumps
The writer hasn’t established what was needed to be established in the earlier parts of the story.
Once you figure out what is hurting the pacing of your story, you can work on remedying it by employing the following author's tools and techniques.
 You can add more conflict to the existing conflict or add something totally unexpected, which is called loose cannon, or intensify your antagonist’s traits by making him meaner, richer, smarter, more powerful, or more brutal.
You can add a subplot or subplots and use the trick of cutting back and forth among the subplots and the plot to encourage readers’ enthusiasm. Watch out that you don’t use more than two or three subplots to avoid the confusion in your storytelling. In addition, make sure that the subplots relate to the central plot strongly for the sake of unity.
If you feel the story is dragging, check the transitions between the scenes, which means avoiding too much distance between the scenes.
To make your protagonist more proactive, you can put more stress on him by increasing the tension on him through romance, mystery, puzzlement, and emotional pressure.
Since point of view is a critical part of pacing, you can tell your story from a unique angle, for example from the POV of a five-year-old in Emma Donoghue’s Room or from beyond the grave in Alice Sebold’s Lovely Bones; or you can use multiple POVs of the primary characters in the story, which works in any genre by building anticipation and keeping the readers on their toes.
You can enhance your scene-by-scene plot structure by using reversal scenes, which means following an action scene will be the reversal of that action scene repeated a few times but without overdoing it, or else, the readers will become bored with the same repetition.
You can add a time element called the ticking clock, which sets a time limit within the story for the protagonist to achieve a goal, such as finding and defusing a bomb before it explodes.
Make sure the language you use in telling the story is direct, concrete, and possibly with more Anglo-Saxon words than Latin-based ones. Also, longer sentences prolong the pace and shorter ones quicken it. The best practice is alternating the two, plus using short sentences in fast action scenes.
Another pace-fixing device is deleting the lackluster and uninteresting scenes and, if important, referring to the action in them in a sentence or two inside another scene. This cutting tool usually works wonders for many novels and novellas.
For more information on the subject, you may wish to consult some of the earlier newsletters by the Writing.com editors who have also addressed pacing.
"Pace Makers" by Sara♥Jean 
"Story Pacing" by Leger~ 
"Five Ways to Pace Your Story" by Lonewolf 
Until next time! 
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Today's my lucky day--gonna take care of that memory.
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 This Issue's Tip: In the resolution of your story, seek a balance and momentum, so that the end is not too slow and tiresome or such a rash cyclone that your readers become shocked and confused or think that they need to reread to figure out what just happened.
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Feedback for "Writing the Violent Scenes"
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Cat Voleur
This was a great newsletter!
I didn't previously subscribe to the drama newsletter because I don't read/write a lot of things that fall primarily into the drama genre - but I'm going to go subscribe. This topic is obviously applicable to horror writing - but a lot of the advise that you gave was good advice for writers in general.
It was entertaining, informative and I think I learned a lot reading it. You also featured one of my all time favorite Stephen King quotes, it's always neat to see other people appreciating the same quotes I do.
I also want to say thank you quickly for featuring my story. It was really neat to hear that it had been featured in a site-sponsored newsletter, especially knowing how many amazing stories you have to choose from. It means a lot to me.
I look forward to reading more of your newsletters in the future!
Sincerely,
Cat
Thank you very much, Cat.
Drama lurks in everything when we look carefully.
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Quick-Quill 
Violence is subjective. I wrote a portion where a woman is accosted by a priest. While nothing really happened, the action was intent on him coercing her to do him favors. Only two people women were offended at the action and most of my readers are devout religious women and men. I wasn't too graphic, but the intent was there. Later the MC gets beat up pretty bad. The resulting ride to the hospital and recovery showed how bad he was hurt. I liked what you wrote in this Newsletter. keep them coming
Thanks, Tina.
Yes, violence can be silence-like, only to be felt.
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Joto-Kai 
I can think of many reasons violence is desired in fiction.
The mind learns from stories. It craves especially stories about things where trial and error pose a threat. High-stakes activity, therefore, draws readers' attention. Also, the spike in stress can trigger a release, a pleasant relaxation during the denouement. Thus, by slightly elevating our distress, you can actually temporarily end it.
These two motives are sufficient to justify the sharp edge of our stories.
I agree. Thanks for the input.
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Red Writing Hood <3 
Some of the hardest scenes I've ever had to write were ones involving violence. I've wanted to bypass them, but have forced myself to write them. It takes weeks, sometimes--just to get them down.
They are difficult to write. They make me jittery, too.
Thanks for the feedback, Red.
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willwilcox
Thanks for the plug 
You're very welcome.
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