How do you judge the pacing of your stories?

Especially right now, I think that I sometimes get too quick to the point and not let anyone theorize on what is going to happen next and sometimes even tell them too much too early. I'm trying to fix this with not much luck atm.

 

It really depends on the genre of the story. Sometimes you want to put people in the action right away, adding in bits of plot information through narration and then settling back down after the current problem has been taken care of. Other times you'll want to start slow while gradually picking up the pace before a big climax to an episode.

As I'm trying to write my own stories, I tend to lean back to look through it all and ask myself, "does this fit with the overall theme of the story?" or "is there a way I can make this scene shorter/longer?" Again, it depends. All of this is self-taught though, so I'm not really an expert in this sort of thing.

 

I guess that we'll just have to figure it out together. Good luck with your book!

 

I'm on all of your threads omg

I'd say the biggest struggle a writer faces is self criticism. As an artist, you can tell if something is wrong because it may not look right, depending on your style. There are references and such to tell if certain body proportions aren't correct, or if something was drawn incorrectly. With writing, we don't really have those references, so it's a lot harder to tell when something is wrong.

That being said, I think you can tell if your pacing is too fast if you plan to have a long story and by, say, the tenth chapter you've already reached a major plot point. If your story is more drawn out, those sorts of things tend to take longer to get to. If the reader knows the story will be on the longer side, I'm sure they won't necessarily mind waiting for a bit, and be content with reading the other things along the way. As for pacing being too slow- I guess you can tell this when you reach a certain point in the story and you still haven't gotten anywhere or revealed anything important.

I think a lot of it depends on what you're really aiming for, and as mentioned above, the genre. I think things like drama can have faster pacing, but it's forgiven because it adds to the tension and overall drama and conflict to the story.

 

That's certainly true! That, and it may not line up to your specific writing style.

Honestly, there are people who are quick to drop something if there isn't any action or something groundbreaking every chapter, which can get irritating as the writer. But to combat fast pacing, something I've tried doing is making 'filler' chapters- chapters where characters are just doing normal things amidst all the chaos they're going through. Of course, there's still some important stuff that happens to help advance the plot, but otherwise some chapters are just slow. And there really isn't anything wrong with that.

Though, doing filler chapters entirely depends on the kind of story you're writing and the plot, so I wouldn't say it works often.

 

Pacing is something I've always struggled with, but for me I split my story into arcs and in each arc I set out key points that need to be achieved. Afterwards I try to justify what the story would benefit from between each point, such as character growth, world/lore reveal etc etc.

 

Pacing. I don't know what to say for this one. I just write what feels right and most of the time, the pacing is okay. Sometimes things feel like they drown on and on, but when I reread it, its actually quite fast. One thing I guess I try to do to speed things up and cut out a lot of busy words is to show what my characters personalities are rather than telling you what they are. Often times this works pretty well. In my currently published story, I spend a lot of time on action scenes primarily because that was the main focus of my story, decent action. My next story will have far more complex themes, and I'll spend a lot of time on those themes.

I think there are two ideas to consider if you feel something's slow or fast, how does the scene build your story, and what is the main focus of your story. If a scene builds the story and is the main focus, make little changes to the pacing. If a part doesn't build the story, but is the main focus, make little changes. If a section builds the story, but is not the main focus, you may want to consider speeding it up. If something doesn't build your story and isn't part of your focus, just remove it altogether. I think these ideas go beyond pacing as well, but they are the rules that I try to abide by.

 

I'm thirty-ish chapters into my Moon novelization and just arriving at Kiawe's trial. I used to rush things a lot, but seeing how I'm doing some worldbuilding and character development in between the game's storyline, I don't consider it much filler.

Not totally sure how I judge it, but I do know that going at an extremely slow pace can actually hurt in the long run since the story gets drawn longer and mulling over the events that are anticipated end up fizzling out.

 

Pacing is not something I really worry about. Since most of my stories are short, everything is wrapped up and dealt with before it drags on too long, so generally it isn't even an issue. I don't like slow stories myself, so I tend not to have the characters in the same place for very long - even if the flow or pacing doesn't seem to be very fast, I make sure there is at least some progress or development going on. Sometimes some background information is necessary to understand the area, plot, or characters, but I throw in only as much information as I feel is necessary.

Now, if I were writing a full-on novella? I'd probably not change a whole lot, since it would be the same thing as that which I already do, just a little bit longer. I suppose one day I'd like to challenge myself with one of those again, but short stories are just so fun that I don't even know if I want to look back.