Sort of a sequel thread to my "how do you judge the pacing of your stories?" thread. Do you feel like the pacing in your stories is fairly consistent, or does it tend to slow down at times and speed up others? I know a lot of people tend to feel like their fight scenes tend to be faster paced, sometimes to the point of being rushed. So is your pacing consistent, does it change depending on the scenario, and do you think this is a good or bad thing?
I update my fic every two weeks on Mondays. Considering that it takes quite a while to write up an 8-10k chapter, I'd say it's alright. I do balance work and my social life in there as well and even though I'd rather do weekly updates, the story is progressing slowly but steadily. Chapter pace wise, I do initially rush fighting/battle scenes. I'll often go back and rehash it, adding little snippets of detail to help stretch it out. Just gotta be careful and not add TOO much as it eventually become unnecessary filler.
I think my pacing is fairly decent. Fight scenes are my weakness, though- I kind of get so caught up in the moment that I don't realize until rereading it how short the scene really is. But overall, plot wise, I think it's pretty solid. Granted, some chapters are slower than others for various reasons- whether that chapter is meant to be a sort of inbetweener, or just about characters getting from point A to point B- but I tend to warn my readers of when my chapters are going to be slow, so that at least they know what to expect.
I don't think I'm too good with pacing? The start is usually fine but then I get the "goddamit i just want to finish the story" feeling and I feel like I rush it to finish the story. Hence why I'm not proud of a super heavy scene in one of my fics, it's just too short now that I look at it...
It's hard not to rush endings. I have that same issue a lot. I'm starting to get that way with my book right now, actually, which is what led me to making this thread. Varying pacing isn't necessarily bad as long as it's done purposely and for a reason. Slower to build tension or depth of emotion, faster to build excitement. But, of course, you can only ever say so much, so a scene going quickly might not be the same thing as being fast-paced. Maybe that's why my endings always feel rushed to me.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I'm really not that good at pacing. There's a number of reasons for this - after spending a long time working on my descriptions, I tend to go out of my way to describe things and that makes everything very detailed, but also quite slow; I do most of my work during NaNoWriMo, where I'm half "gotta finish this aaa" and half "let me just write something they're words aren't they??" which means that I'm paying no attention to my pacing at all; I have an affinity with writing out random unnecessary conversations because I love seeing how my characters interact with each other; and when I do write fight scenes, I just don't know how to write them, which means I rush through them, focusing on the bits that don't involve actual fighting and writing one-sentence summaries for the ones that do. Pacing is something I should work on, I guess ^^'
Pacing can be really hard. I'm working on a part now that spans several months. I don't want it to drag on too long, but pacing time skips is weird. I've never tried something like this before.
My pacing is consistently...slow. I always worry that if I don't put in enough detail, the writing will come across as choppy and hard to read. I realized perhaps I need a mix of fast and slow pacing when I read one of my less detailed works and really enjoyed it, but wanted more details, versus when I read one of my more detailed works, and realized certain details were totally unnecessary. As for stories overall, my last attempt had a lot of filler that I could have cut out so that's what I'm looking to edit in my next work!
Omg it's Wings! Where have you been? I feel the same way about my stories. That's pretty much the reason I started this thread. Or the first thread that this one was based off of anyway. But that's why it's good to go back and reread/edit things after a while.
Hi! I’ve been taking a break from LV since school just got to be too much for me, but I’m really hoping I can time manage better and start visiting the lake a little more I feel pretty appreciated that you remembered me, it’s been a while since I posted anything after all! Right now I’m doing a huge chunk of editing on something I hope to start posting in the summer, and I realized my pacing still has some inconsistencies. Another way I’m keeping the pacing in check is to only write things that drive the story forward or reveal character. Then I can add a little extra stuff, if I think it’s nevessary.