The 4 Types of Pacing Problems

Just like a good car ride, you want to maintain a regular pace throughout most of your story.

You can speed up and slow down for sure, but doing either too quickly will risk throwing your reader through a windshield.

So how do you prevent that? Let’s find out!

During the last stream, the subscribers voted that we talk about “pacing.”

Watch the full video here or scroll down for highlights.

The 4 Types of Pacing Problems

• There are two different types of pacing: story and sentence
  • Story is the structure of the novel
  • Sentence is the structure of the words themselves
• There are two different types of problems: too fast and too slow
• So now let’s take a look at the four different combinations, how to identify them, and how to fix them!

Story Pacing Too Fast

• You might have this problem if…
  • Page one starts with action
  • We’re in a location that hasn’t been described yet
  • Characters we haven’t spent time with yet are already interacting with each other

(Example) I dodged the laser-bullet right before it hit me. Throwing myself to the side right at the last second, I could feel it singeing the air hot mere inches away from my body. I hit the ground hard, but I was alive, and I mumbled a quick thank-you prayer as I rolled up onto my feet. Even though it was far away, I could see the Torxicles, holding its weapon pointed at me.

• Tips to fix it…
  • Build up to conflict! Action is only fun if we care about the characters doing it. Don’t start your story with the main conflict, start with a smaller conflict that will build up to it
    • Hunger Games starts with Katniss hunting, not the tournament
    • Harry Potter starts with the Dursleys, not Hogwarts
  • Be sure to always set the scene/tone for every new location, especially the first location where the book starts!
  • Physically describe and give some insight into every new character we meet

(Fixed example: This is the same story as the previous example, but it starts WAY earlier in the story.)

The four seasons in Colfax, New Mexico are a little different than everywhere else. There’s Hot, Hotter, Hottest, and The Sun is Sinking its Fire Fangs Straight into My Armpits. Right now I’m standing outside on the rickety porch hammered and nailed around the front door to Dad’s RV, leaning on a wooden beam that creaks with every sweatdrop from my arms. The straw I’m chewing on is about as moist as desert sand—about as tasty too. It’s not like there’s anything else to do, though. Might as well have a front row seat to watch the few patches of green grass sprinkled among the cracked earth slowly shrivel away to dust.

My shirt was red ten minutes ago, or so they tell me. I’ve never seen it anything other than a soaked blood-maroon. I guess that’s what happens during The Sun Sinking its Fire Fangs Straight into My Armpits, my favorite time of the year.

Story Pacing Too Slow

• You might have this problem if…
  • Page one starts with history
  • There’s no conflict introduced by the end of chapter one
  • We’re in a scene that doesn’t forward the plot or develop a character
  • Your story is more than 90,000 words (which is a hard sell for a debut author)

(Example) It was a long process to terraform Mars. It started in the year 2059, the first year the oceans began to boil. Humanity had no other choice but to find a new home. It was thanks to the work of one scientist, Dr. Brienne Brown, that the Earthification process was discovered. Up until then, it was believed to be impossible to live on Mars due to its lack of a magnetic field, allowing for solar winds to directly interact with the atmosphere. However, if an artificial magnet could be created, generating sufficient electricity harnessed from Mars’s core, then a stable atmosphere could be sustained.

The first stage of the terraforming mission set out in June of that year…

• Tips to fix it…
  • Start with the main character in their present day, not the past
  • Give a small conflict in chapter one that will eventually build into the bigger one
  • No matter how much you might love a scene/plot point, if it doesn’t belong, cut it

(Fiexed example: This is the same story as the previous example, but it takes place in the present rather than explaining the past.)

Molly wakes up at six a.m., Earth time. The white halogen lights immediately snap on in the bunker, fizzling away any sort of dreams she may have been having. Groans come from the bunk below her and the ones on her sides, mixing with angry fists banging against metal beds, probably from a few who are not too happy about being back to reality. Molly does her best to pull back the covers, sit up, and blink her eyes into focus. Over the years, she’s found doing that makes it easier to deal with what comes next: the singing birds.

Right on cue, the speakers start tweeting from the bright ceiling. The windows on the sterile wall, which aren’t windows at all, show the sun rising into a blue sky, over lush green hills. All of it is supposed to make everyone feel good in the morning, but if any of the officers from that dumb blue planet actually ever set foot into the barracks, they’d quickly see that it only does the opposite.

Birds singing and sunrises don’t mean anything when you’ve lived your whole life on Mars.

Sentence Pacing Too Fast

• You might have this problem if…
  • You have recaps of character interactions instead of showing those interactions
  • You tell us what someone/something is like instead of showing it to us
  • Sections of dialogue go on without any breaks between them
  • Characters travel long distances physically/temporally from one sentence to the next

(Example) “We need to stop,” Tom said.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He’s here.”
“Who is?”
“You know who it is.”
“No I don’t, I… oh my god. No. It can’t be.”
“Yes. The Macaroni King has returned.”

• Tips to fix it…
  • Show us the dialogue/interaction between characters, it’s the best part!
  • Don’t be afraid to give several sentences describing one thing
  • Break up dialogue with body language/introspection from the narrator
  • The journey is far more interesting than the destination, show it to us

(Fixed example: This is the same story as the previous example, but padded out to a more reasonable pace.)

Halfway through the field of wilted flowers, Tom came to a stop. I was about to shout out to him to keep moving, bit he thrust a clenched fist into the air, cutting me off. It wasn’t so much his sudden movement that startled me, but the way his hand was trembling in fear.

“We need to stop,” he said, still facing away from me. I crept up next to him, keeping an ear out for anything that felt off. But there was only silence and the rustling of the crispy-dead grass all around us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him in a whisper. Slowly he lowered his fist, and his eyes locked onto me like the sights of a sniper.

“He’s here.”

I narrowed my eyes at his too-simple response. “What? Who is?”

“You know who it is,” Tom said, neither budging nor blinking.

“No, I don’t know,” I said, starting to feel frustrated. “Why don’t you just tell me what—”

Then it hit me. From far off in the distance, a whiff of something blowing through the dirty air that I should’ve smelled long ago. Something that Tom thankfully picked up a minute ago, in our perilous position where seconds mean life or death.

The smell of melted cheese.

I slammed my hand over my mouth, not daring to breathe any more of the forbidden scent. “Oh my god. No. It can’t be.”

“Yes,” Tom said, reaching for his pistol. “The Macaroni King has returned.”

Sentence Pacing Too Slow

• You might have this problem if…
  • There are several paragraphs in a row that just describe things and don’t forward the plot
  • You are afraid to “tell” the reader anything and have to “show” everything
  • There is very little dialogue

(Example) The upper half of the Torxicles was red and hard like a shell, with massive claws extending off either side. Two eyeballs attached to long sticks wobbled around hypnotically at the top as its mandible mouth opened and closed, constantly dripping foamy liquid. The bottom half was slimy and long, ending in six tentacles that were a light shade of pink, with little white hairs dotting every square inch. They flopped and sloshed around, sucking against the floor and constantly twitching, as if in some sick perversion of twiddling their fingers. It wore no discernible clothes, except for…

• Tips to fix it…
  • Focus on only describing the things/people that are integral to the plot
  • A good story both “shows” and “tells,” don’t be afraid to do both
  • Nothing is more interesting than good dialogue

(Fixed example: This is the same story as the previous example, but gets the point much more quickly.)

The Torxicles were disgusting aliens. They looked like centaurs, except with a giant crab where the human should be and a six-tentacle octopus where the horse should be.

• Overall, it can be hard to determine if your pacing is off
• You can use the checklists above, but the two best things to get better at pacing are:
  • READ a lot to absorb the rhythms of good stories
  • LISTEN to feedback from others and implement it
• If you do those, then eventually good pacing will become second nature!

After that, chat voted that we write a well-paced beginning to a story based on these prompts: A ship suddenly explodes in the harbor and the sun is actually filled with living creatures made of plasma. Scientists have captured one.

Here’s what we came up with:

Have you ever scrubbed the deck of a boat for six hours straight? As someone who’s scraped grout, cleaned up blood with a sponge, and disinfected vomit on buses from drunk frat boys at three in the morning, nothing is worse than the old swabbing of the deck.

Dead fish. Bubbling barnacles. Rotten seaweed. All of it and more splashes on board, and it’s my job to push it back into the giant toilet that we call the ocean.

The only pleasure I get from bumping my mangy mop up against the fish heads attached to bloody spines is watching them fall back into the water with a satisfying plop. I imagine each one being a pirate criminal, and I’m forcing them to walk the plank. Their crime? For smelling like a weeklong unflushed toilet.

Despite the nauseating smell, there’s something comforting about it. It reminds me that we all will eventually plop back into the ocean, slowly drifting to the bottom to be nibbled on by anglerfish and those freaky eels with way too many teeth. Even my ex Christie. No, especially my ex Christie.

You’ll notice that there’s no explosions or aliens in this opening, and that’s exactly how it should be. For it to be a well-paced story, The ship exploding shouldn’t happen until the end of chapter 1 or 2, and the aliens shouldn’t make an appearance until about halfway through the book. At the beginning, we just want to get to know the main character, see their world, and gather context for what is normal for them before it all gets thrown out the window.

After that, a subscriber chose for us to write this prompt: a mermaid gets invited to prom by the hottest merman at school.

Here’s what we came up with:

Miracle the mermaid wrapped her arms around her prom date Maximus as the two of them swam together in the final slow dance of the evening. Their tails entwined beneath them,

Miracle pressed her seashell chest against Maximus’s chiseled skin. It was so strong yet smooth, she couldn’t resist bringing her fingers up to run across it. Maximus smiled down at her, his dark hair floating like delicious seaweed, his coral-green eyes looking right into her own.

Miracle couldn’t believe her luck. Ever since Maximus had asked her to prom last week, she’d been practically breaching for joy. She’d never been one of the popular mermaids in school. Maximus had never so much as even looked her way. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, he’d asked her, and she’d stumbled her way through saying yes.

At first she’d thought it was a cruel joke. But then Maximus spent days showing her the beautiful mermaid who’d lived inside of her, who he had always seen but had been too afraid to talk to. He lopped away the shields she’d always put up for herself without even realizing she was doing it. He suggested she cut her hair that was thick like a forest of kelp, get rid of her seastone glasses for droplet-contacts instead. When she looked at her reflection in the water-mirror, she hardly recognized herself. Finally, she could see the Miracle that Maximus had always seen.

“Attention merboys and mergirls!” came a voice over the speaker. It was Mr. Melvin, the school history teacher up on stage holding a sea-leaf with names written on it. “It’s time to announce this year’s prom emperor and empress!”

All the dancing came to a stop. Miracle kept a hand on Maximus’s back, and happily for her, he kept one on her too. On stage Mr. Melvin leaned into the microphone.

“This year’s royal couple is…” He glanced down at the leaf, then grinned to everyone. “Miracle and Maximus! Please come up on stage.”

Miracle’s face burned so red the water around her was in danger of boiling. Everyone’s applause and cheers was just background noise to the nervous buzzing in her head. The only reason she moved was when Maximus pulled on her arm, beckoning her to swim upstage with him.

She was barely conscious of her tail flapping the whole way there. Mr. Melvin placed the starfish crown on her head and the jellyfish crown on Maximus’s head, then stepped back to applaud with everyone else. She stared over the crowd, seeing all the hoots and hollers and bubbles from the commotion, unable to believe that it was all for her.

That was when the rotting fish came tumbling down.

Right on top of her head, a wave of sludge showered her from above, covering her in organ-goo and bones and rotten fish skin. The brown and black sludge reeked of stingray urine as it dripped down her entire body, slowly floating to fill in every crevice that she’d worked so hard to be as pretty as possible for tonight.

To her side, Maximus stood back, covering his mouth with laughter, just like everyone else watching. So it was too good to be true. It was just a cruel joke. A way for the entire school to have one last laugh at Mopey Miracle before they graduated and went on with their lives, forgetting the trauma they’d caused that she would have to live with every waking moment of the rest of her life.

No. She was going to give them something to remember.

Miracle extended her arms to the side and closed her eyes. That just made everyone laugh even more, some of them even swimming in circles and spinning around in the water as they pointed and held their stomachs.

But then a bang came from the wall behind the stage. The first one silenced everybody. Another bang, and the laughs were now screams. Another bang, and everyone in the dance hall was frantically swimming toward the exits, but they were all closed. Locked. Screams rang out, as bang after bang came from behind Miracle. Now she was the only one smiling.

The wall behind her burst open. A pod of killer whales came smashing through the hall, crashing into a group of merteens, clamping them in their teeth, and tearing them apart. They screamed and swam away, but it was all in vain. They could not escape the wrath of whales, nor their arrays of teeth that snapped them in half as easily as sardines.

“Miracle!” Maximus cried, gripping her shoulders as he pleaded. “Did you do this? Stop it! It’s too much.”

The only response Miracle gave was a smile dripping of fish guts as she watched the open-mouthed whale come up to Maximus from behind.

***

The sounds of crashing and stomping from little Miracle’s room had brought her parents upstairs to investigate. They creaked open the door and peeked in to see their daughter playing with her dolls dressed up as mermaids.

Miracle was throwing the dolls around the room after smashing her orca whale plushie into them, cackling as she held up one of the mermaid dolls high above her head, one that happened to be covered in peanut butter and jelly. Behind her lay a book spread open on its cover: Carrie.

Miracle’s dad sighed to her mom.

“I told you she’s a bit young for Stephen King.”

If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.

And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.

Hope to see you next time, friend!

Featured image: Pakutaso (edited by me)