Your Plot Drags? Fix It.

Authors don’t always realize their plot drags until they step back and take a fresh look. It’s always good to give your story a rest for a week or two, if you have time to spare, and then read with new eyes. The brilliant words can dull with time and that means authors need to dissect the plot, the language and techniques to bring the story to life and make it shine again .

In December of 2007, I discussed four technique problems that affect the quality of a novel: POV, pacing, dialogue and passive writing (show don’t tell). Here are a few more elements that deal with faltering plots to add to that list:

• Descriptions: Bringing a scene to life takes balance. Too much description can bog a novel, but too little loses some of the ways in which your reader can envision your story. Describing each pebble on the path is a bit too much, but describing how a path meanders into the woods weighted with tree limbs, their fingers reaching for the sun can add to your novel. First the language is vivid. Next it can set the tone. Using the phrase “fingers reaching for the sun” can add a sense of foreboding to a suspense novel as can the word weighted. It can also reflect the characters personal burdens, his despair and heavy-heartedness. Use description effectively by making it do more work for you.

• Language and Grammar: Although grammar and punctuation are important elements, especially in narration, remember that even narration comes from a POV character. We are looking at the scene through a character’s eyes. Keep the vocabulary, sentence structure, and tone reflecting the POV character. Use the career lingo and regional vocabulary to make the language real for a specific character. Don’t forget we often speak in partial sentences. We don’t always respond to a question with an answer. Sometimes we restate part of the question: “Hit by a car?” or we respond to requests with: “You want me to what?” Listen to conversations and make your dialogue real. Short sentences add excitement or urgency. Longer ones are more thought-provoking or romantic. Plots bog when dialogue becomes chitchat or when the language is stilted.

• Slow Action Scenes: Though you are trying to make an action scene exciting, learn when to present move by move detail and when to tighten your descriptions. As I said that short sentences in dialogue add excitement, the same happens with description. Joe saw it coming. The chair hurled past. He ducked his head and hit the floor. These three sentences create an image of excitement and action. The same idea can lessen the excitement with too much description. Joe watched the man enter the room, his eyes nailing Joe to the spot. With a quick move, the stranger grasped the chair, raised it over his head and flung it toward him. As he watched it sweep past, Joe ducked and threw himself on the floor behind the sofa. See the difference? Sometimes the readers feels more emotion from fewer words that create more tension and excitement.

• Missing Information: Authors are required to do research for most every book, and often gather far more details and ideas than they can use. Sometimes in trying to be discriminating by choosing only what seems the most important details or facts, the author ends up with the feeling that something is missing. Before adding more information, have a second party read that scene or chapters where the problem seems to occur and decide what will fill in the blanks. If the missing pieces are historical, do more research or try for a reasonable guess, and you can always add a line in your letter to the reader—that you’ve taken an author’s prerogative to make historical changes or additions. If the knowledge on any other topic is not readily available,(for example whether or not a certain code can be deciphered by a computer program and how long it would take), you can use your imagination. If you watch TV, you’ll see many police shows use tests and equipment that stretch the truth. Again it’s screenwriter’s prerogative. If you acknowledge the deception, readers will be less likely to write long scathing letters to tell you how stupid you are.

• Giving Your Book A Classic Plot: When your plot seems to be unraveling, think of other novels you’ve read even childhood tales and fairy tales. Notice the classic story structure and review your novel to make sure you’ve provided good motivation, a strong personal goal that makes a difference in the life of the main character, and a series of growing conflicts with powerful opposition. Opposition can be a person, a group, a belief or a deep-seeded fear. Then make sure you provide a satisfying ending that gives a reader pleasure. If you do this, you can stop worrying. If you’ve missed one of these important story elements, revise your plot to make it more dynamic.

These additional solutions can help your novel to be saleable and a great read.

Transitions and Pacing

Sometimes readers of this blog ask questions that are good ones to share with everyone. This blog reader ask a question related to pacing, which was how to create effective transitions. Transitions are connected with pacing because they are used to move the character from one situation to another, and when the change doesn't move the story forward or make an impact on the character's goal, then it can be short, providing the reader a sense of place or a new situation.
Here’s his comment:
Hi Gail, Thanks for your blog. What a blessing it is. On the subject of pacing, I'm questioning how you show the passage of time, fast or slow, without being boring. For example, I get tired using phrases like "after a while" or "in a few moments." Do you have any answers to these particular cliches. I've just written: "He rolled over, cradled his head in his arms, and sobbed, allowing the tears to flow. After a while, he raised his head and wiped his dirty face on his sleeve." but it doesn't feel right.

Mike’s concern regards the bolded phrase. The phrase drops into the paragraph to show time passing without capturing the flow of the writing. In this case, the transition can come in a variety of ways, but it is best when the author can retain the emotion that the character is feeling.

My response included these possibilities for the phrase: After a while.


After his tears subsided, he. . . This shows passing of time but with more detail of what is happening.

Drained dry, he. . . (Same as above.)
Wiping the last tears from his eyes, he . .. This includes time passage while offering character action.

Frustrated with his own weakness, he... This shows character emotion and broadens characterization.

Slamming his fist into the pillow, he wiped his dirty face on his sleeve, tired of his struggle. Action and emotion.

Struck by an idea, he. . . This reflects hope, brightening the emotion and broadens characterization. It also moves the story forward with the possibility of resolving a conflict or at least changing it. This transition also adds the possibility of conflict

When showing the passing of time from one action to another, use phrases the leads the reader to the next emotion and tells us something about the character. Is the character relieved he'd cried and rid himself of the emotional weight? Is he frustrated with himself, angry, thoughtful? Has he made a decision about what to do? This provides his crying with a double purpose -- to express his emotion and to lead the character forward with his purpose?

This is only one kind of transition, showing the passing of time during a single action. Next blog, I’ll talk about other kinds of transitions that helps move the story along, especially in moving characters from one place to another.

Tension and Conflict Part 5 - Methods to Create Tension

Earlier I described the difference between conflict and tension. Conflict is the action of two opposing forces. It is the butting of heads between ideas, needs, desires and wants, or it can be a single individual wanting two opposing things. What makes conflict important is the tension it creates. Tension is the emotional response to the conflict. Without it, the conflict would not have much impact on the reader.

Many methods can be used to create tension, and I will cover some of them here, but I’m sure you can add others to your list.

1. Introspection:
Introspection is the head and heart of the character, a combination of their thoughts along with the emotional encroachment on the person’s sense of security or confidence. When a character delves internally into a conflict, he reveals something unknown to the reader or even a new awareness for him. He is encouraged to dig deeper into the problem, and it leave readers with questions about how this situation can be resolved.

Introspection dramatizes the conflicting feelings and clashing ideas within the character or between two characters and it creates dilemmas for both parties. Often backstory is used here to introduce past problems and bring them to the present. When incidents or beliefs from a person’s past affects how he or she responds to life today, it creates this kind of internal tension. These are often secrets that the character doesn’t want others to know, but fighting for their idea or goal can result in revealing this secret. Think of people running for political office. They knew their past follies will be displayed to the world.

Sometimes through introspection, the characters face competing desires. They want two opposing things: success but they want privacy. A common conflict that creates great tension is when a character’s wants actually is opposed to what he needs. He wants success but what he really wants is happiness, and the success will not provide it.

Introspection can also reveal how a character’s perspective is not necessarily the truth, as illustrated in this dialogue from one of my unpublished novels.

Heroine: “I keep reminding myself it’s not the same, is it? Things change. We’re different now.”
Hero: “Are we?” He studied her face, hoping she’d back down on her comment. He’d stayed pretty much the same, always wishing he’d find another girl like her. Someone he could talk with and be open with. Be himself. With others, he felt as if he should try to impress them.

2. Ticking clock:
Tension is always created by adding a ticking clock to the plot line, such as a time restraint or deadline. The problem must be resolved in a certain amount of time. Stories that deal with marriages of conveniences are usually based on this premise. The hero or heroine must marry within a certain time period before they can inherit the family wealth. This works well in a suspense. The bomb will detonate at midnight. It must be found. The kidnaped child will die without it’s medication. The good guys must find the treasure before the bad guys. This technique creates exciting tension.

3. Dialogue:
Novels are dependent on dialogue, but dialogue can be used in a variety of ways to create tension other than arguments. What creates tension for the reader is to hold back information by leaving things unanswered or interrupted or by creating doubt when the character says something that doesn’t quite fit or adds an issue that hasn’t been initiated. Other elements of dialogue that creates tension are silence, subtext, and avoidance.

• Silence - Silence is when the character doesn’t respond or when a conversation falters and no one speaks. The reader knows that the characters are dealing with what’s been said, and it helps create tension. Here’s an example from my novel And Baby Makes Five.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Chad making gentle circles on Nate’s back, the child’s contented look evident.
"I fed him a short time ago so he shouldn’t be hungry,” she said.
“He wants attention. We all need that some times.”
His words sounded melancholy as her pulse tripped. Everyone needed to be loved and caressed. She’d been without that kind of relationship since she’d married Miguel. His love had become rough and his drunken words, vile.
Silence settled over them until Chad turned toward her. “Do you understand what I’m saying?"

In this lack of response, the reader is drawn to their own questions. They last two pieces of dialogue spoken by Chad demonstrates his personal need for attention and his need to hear her response.

• Subtext - Subtext is difficult to create but it’s an excellent form of subtle tension. Subtext is the implicit or underlying meaning behind the words.
Women 1: Do you like my dress?
Women 2: The color’s great.
Obviously reference to the color doesn’t answer the question, but it says a lot. A man flirts with a woman as they look at a lovely handcrafted table and chairs
She: Gorgeous. Those legs Look at the lines.
He: I have been.

• Avoidance – Avoidance can is witnessed when a conversation seems to go in two different direction as one character is evasive or non-committal, or when one character answers a question with question. This is an excellent example from: Lisa Samson’s Tiger Lillie in a conversation the home owned by the first speaker’s mother. You can feel the tension as you read it.

“I asked Rawlins if I could work for the ad agency, Mom.”
“I already know his answer. Do you think you could paint some murals here for us? It will be a while before we move in—until your father retires, which might be years from now.”
"Rawlins said the ad world is too competitive. He doesn’t want me to become jaded.”
“I was thinking maybe a garden scene in the kitchen.”
“Maybe I could sell my paintings.”
“Or do trompe l’oeil. Here would be a good place to start.”
“I really want to go to college.”
Mom looked around. “Of course, the master bath has lots of potential, too.”

4. Character’s Perception:
In real life, we each see things differently. Our perception brings with it memories from our past and undertones from our experiences and beliefs. Tension is created not by what’s been said but what the words mean to the character. For example, if we’ve had a happy childhood and a good life, the word “home” brings a warm and happy feeling. If home was a horror for us, then that word will trigger other ideas. Give the character some perception challenges and use this technique to create an intriguing kind of tension.

5. Pacing:
Pacing has been covered in other articles, but it is a great tension technique. Remember while the plot is the journey of the characters in your novel, pacing is the speed at which you deliver the action. It’s like a roller coaster ride with moments of calm but always with the anticipation that the next challenging hill is coming until the roller coaster pulls back into the station and you climb out. Journey’s end. By moving a scene to another character or situation while you leave another scene hanging works very well to create tension. You can read other articles on pacing to learn how to create the fast and calm scenes. One style is using scene and sequel which I’ll cover in my next blog.

Outlining #5 – Pacing Needs Planning

The screenwriting outline article I shared with you lists a fifth and final major point for creating a dynamic story—pacing. Pacing is not only important for screenwriting. It is vital for plotting a novel. I’ve stressed this before in other articles on writing, but this will be a good review.

5. Pacing needs to flow like a river with all its hidden dangers. Through outlining the author can visual pacing before writing the book. He can see the river's calm and the turbulence and then place these scenes in the most meaningful way to impact the story.

I use the analogy of climbing into a canoe and heading down a river to a specific destination. This would be your story. It begins when your character steps into a new life event, experience or awareness. Once on a journey, it ends somewhere, and most people know their final destination. A novel must have one.

So let’s say, you’re going on a canoe trip. You climb into the boat and know you’re heading five miles down the river, but you have no idea what awaits you on your journey. The river begins calm, perhaps a few riffles in the water, but then things happen. You begin to struggles with the current. It draws you into rocks or into the trees near the shore. You battle your way out of that and then find rough water ahead, a whirlpool that’s drawing you in, another struggle to bring you back to calmer water. Then a new trial awaits you. Ahead you a towering boulder and you fight the current that sucks you in. Safe again, but then you see white water and the current picks up. Your job is to make it through the rocks to reach the calm by manipulating the canoe, fighting the current, and staying in the boat. The trip continues from one set of white water to another, each more powerful and more frightening, until you see a waterfall ahead. What can you do? Give in and go over, jump out and swim to a boulder (if that’s even possible), or be strong enough to land the canoe on shore. These are choices you must make and then achieve.

In your novels, pacing is that same kind of troubled journey. Making your character face choices creates tension, and each choice causes your characters to deal with challenges and conflicts. As the author you must decide which conflict comes first, which challenge, which danger. If you begin your novel at the waterfall, everything after it seems easy. You must decide which event adds tension to the story yet leaves room for more dangerous or more emotion conflicts to follow.

Making these decisions and organizing your plot events to build greater disasters and controversy as your story proceeds is pacing.

Pacing Your Novel

As always, I love to hear author Randy Ingermanson share his knowledge of writing fiction and the next best thing is to read it in his Advanced Fiction Writers Ezine. Randy has granted me permission to share his article on pacing with you.

Randy says:
When I sold my first novel, one of the comments I got back from the editorial team was this: "The pace for this novel was perfect -- never too fast nor too slow."

I was surprised, because I'd never thought much about pace. Certain things come easy to every author, and other things come hard. Pace comes easy to me. What is pace? It's the amount of time you spend on each part of the story. The Goldilocks Principle applies to pace -- it should be neither too fast nor too slow, but just right.

There isn't any tidy little rule you can memorize to define what the perfect pace is for a story. A general rule is to vary the pace to suit the tension in the scene. So most often, you'll want to zip through the boring parts of the story and take more time on the exciting parts. That seems very strange, doesn't it? If you're showing a high-speed car chase, surely you'd want to make it read fast, wouldn't you? Which means using fewer words, doesn't it?

Yes and no. Yes, you want it to read fast. But no, you don't want to spend fewer words on it, you want more.

There's really no paradox here. Ever seen a football game in which one of the players makes a huge play, dodging first one defender, then another, all the way down the field, finally dancing into the end zone for a touchdown? What happens next?

You can bet your shirt that the networks are going to show the whole thing AGAIN, this time in slow motion, dragging out every twist, turn, head-fake, missed tackle, fancy step, jump, roll, block, clip, and lost helmet, all the way down the field. Showing it in slow-motion takes a lot longer, but it doesn't cut the pace. It INCREASES the pace.

Why? Because when the play ran at normal speed, you missed most of the action. You saw a guy running and you saw guys missing him. It all went by in a blur so fast that you couldn't take it all in.

When they ran it in super slo-mo, you saw every little move. You saw your man do an inside-outside-inside fake. You saw the defender respond to each fake in turn, finally over-committing in the wrong direction. Then your man cut to his right and sped on to the next defender, faking left, then right. You saw the defender freeze, then set himself low for a tackle. Then your man leaped right over the defender.

And on down the field. When your man reached the sidelines, you saw him threading a needle between his blocker and that thin chalk line. You saw every block, every weave. You saw the last desperate flying tackler miss your man's heels by an inch.As he entered the end-zone, you saw his gait change to a high-stepping strut, saw him raise the ball in triumph. And then the normal pace resumed.

It took ten times as long to see it that way, but this time, YOU SAW IT ALL. You saw every action, every reaction, in beautiful, sharply cut detail. That's what you came to see. With that one play, you got your nickel's worth for the game.

In your novel, the moral equivalent of super-slo-mo involves spending far more words than you normally would, but using much shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. You alternate rapidly between what your point-of-view character is doing and what his opposition is doing. If your paragraphs are normally three sentences apiece, they might drop down to two sentences or one. If your sentences are normally ten words apiece, they might fall to five words. Or three. Or one.

You can't keep that up very long, of course. That would be crazy. In the same way, it would be crazy to watch an entire football game in slow motion. You want to ramp up the pace only for the high-tension scenes, where the stakes are high.

Slowing down the pace works the opposite way. Longer sentences. Longer paragraphs. Fewer actions and reactions. More interior monologue, longer dialogue.

Why does this work? It's really very simple. The reader reads fiction hoping to have a Powerful Emotional Experience.

Inside a scene, you provide this by showing actions and reactions between your point-of-view character and the other characters. Every time you show your POV character reacting to the other characters, you have a chance to provide an emotional hit point to your reader.

If you have short actions and short reactions (using short sentences and paragraphs), then you score emotional points with your reader faster. If you lengthen out the actions and reactions, then you score fewer emotional points.

Naturally, it only makes sense to speed up the pace when the tension is high. If you try this when the tension is low, the story is going to drag. (Imagine showing the team's huddle in slow-motion.)

There are an infinite variety of paces you can use as you work through each scene. You speed it up and slow it down, possibly several times in the scene.

How do you know when you've got it right? That's easy. You've got it right when it feels right. Fiction is about creating a Powerful Emotional Experience in your reader. Tweak the pace until you're doing that, and your reader will feel like Goldilocks.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 14,500 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.

Pacing — Too Fast or Too Slow? Part II

Part I on Pacing–Too Fast or Too Slow covered the problem of slow pacing. Although slow pacing is common, pacing that is too fast is not usually a complaint from editors or readers, but it does happen. Too fast pacing can be a detriment to a good read.

Pacing is too fast when the reader has no time to breathe or digest the story. It’s a race from beginning to end or more often, it’s a pleasant stroll, but as the end approaches, the story tumbles forward and ends. This happens most often when authors have a word count restriction and realize the book must end soon. Rather than cutting other less important elements, they just barrel along and the ending can leave readers feeling unsatisfied. They want to savor the romance or the criminal’s capture or enjoy the resolution of family issues. So why and how do you slow down pacing?

Pacing needs to be slowed when it disappoints readers. They want to watch the ending happen. They want to understand the nuances of these characters that they’ve lived with for 300 or 400 pages. They want to experience the joy of character’s emotion as he finds the hidden treasure, or captures the criminal, or falls in love. To make a greater emotional impact on the reader, these scenes must be more detailed and more character-driven than plot-driven.

If a scene revolves around a mother watching a speeding car head for her child, the author wants the emotion and drama to peak. Slowing the scene down frame by frame, emotion by emotion, works best. Using Dwight Swain’s technique of motivational stimulus leading to reaction, you want to present feeling, action, then dialogue. For example, in the scenario above, the mother of the child freezes in times. She turns icy, her heart explodes, her adrenalin kicks in, and she races forward, her arms flailing, and she screams. Emotion must work this way. Picture this as a movie, each frame capturing a moment in time.

Pacing needs to slow following a dynamic action scene where conflict and crisis filled the pages. This gives the reader breathing time. It provides the main character with a moment to gather the facts of what happened and to digest the information. These are scenes in a thriller or suspense when the detective reviews the evidence or tries to understand how he’d let the criminal slip through his fingers. In romance or women’s fiction, it’s a time when one character ponders the relationship and makes decisions what he’ll do next. Even Shakespeare knew that high drama can only be sustained for a time and then needs a release. His tragedies always provided an occasional comic scene to allow the audience to recover from the weight of the tension that had followed.

Techniques to slow pacing:
• Provide more detail
• Use the frame by frame feeling in presenting the scene
• Use longer sentence with more descriptors.
• Add sensory details
• Use introspection techniques, back-flashes or flashbacks. (Know how to use these well.)
• Use more narrative in shorter paragraphs and less dialogue.

By using some of these techniques, you can provide a more satisfying novel that doesn’t slow the story but provides meaningful scenes that allows the reader a more thoughtful, calm respite.

Pacing — Too Fast or Too Slow? Part I

Pacing is the tempo of the story, the speed at which information is provided and the dynamics of the rising tension. It has to do with the amount of dialogued compared to narrative scenes. Pacing, then, has to do with my elements that cause it to move on it’s journey down the river of life, the calms, the eddies, the white water, and the rapids that lead to a waterfall ahead.

Authors often hear from editors or critique partners their pacing is too slow. Pacing is too slow when it bogs down with too many details, too much narration in the form of description or introspection or lack of conflict. Without conflicts growing, one after another, you have no story. This is probably the biggest problem for new writers as they plot their story. Slow pacing bores a reader and leaves the story in a slump. It’s vital to have good pacing when trying to sell a novel or to keep your readers after you sell. So what can you do to accelerate the pacing?


Here are some strategic methods to use as you’re plotting:
• Provide strong need or goal that can either change or be the demise of the character or his purpose
• Create powerful opposition that deepens the conflict
• Set up a compelling situation or duty that binds the character to his struggle
• Establish one problem that can be solved in two ways and force a decision
• Stay in one POV throughout a scene and make sure it’s the person with the most at stake
• Balance action, dialogue, introspection, and narration throughout the novel
• Resolve one conflict with a new one already established

Techniques to escalate pacing:
• Check each scene for a crisis situation. Something must be happening of importance.
• Dialogue moves a story along. Write to allow white space on the page.
• Avoid long, involved paragraphs. Use short paragraphs and sentences of varying lengths.
• The shorter the sentence the more excitement grows.
• Don’t over-describe the action. Clip it and focus only on the most important actions
• Tension arouses emotion so focus on the conflicts and slow up on the setup.

If you follow some of these guidelines, your pacing show improve and don’t forget to review the techniques described in Plotting Act II that provides many ways to improve pacing and to avoid what we call the sagging middle.

Plotting - Pacing and How To Enhance It

Pacing and plotting go hand-in-hand, and pacing, the ebb and flow of the story, can be affected by boulders in the stream or open, smooth water. Tension is really what I’m talking about. Pacing heightens or releases the tension of the story to keep the reader engaged and alerted to the meaning behind the character’s goals and motivations.

You can affect the pacing by using various techniques to enhance the ebb and flow of your story. First make sure that before one crises has been resolved a new crises arises worse than the last. I can’t say that enough. These conflicts are what keeps the reader enthralled in your story.

Next use control when it comes to backstory think "minimum." Although the character’s past is vital to who he is today, dumping that information on the reader at the beginning of the novel is both passive, boring, and unnecessary. Allow your characters to grow on the reader. Feed tiny pieces of information to them only as needed, and if you can give a subtle hint to a problem rather than telling them, the technique is even better. How about this in a character’s introspection. I can never tell her the truth about what happened. If I did, she’d turn her back on me. This could be the thoughts of a man in regard to the woman he loves, or it could be a daughter or son’s secret from their mother. But lines like such as that arouses reader’s curiosity and pulls them into the story much better than having the man think. I’m so sorry I stole that money. If I told her, she’d turn her back on me. Backstory is more effective when the reader has begun to care about the character, so the longer you can wait the better.

Foreshadowing and forewarning are also great techniques to heighten interest in the calm waters of your story. A woman hears that her sister will becoming to town, a sister she hasn’t spoken to in years. A man learns that his wife’s first love has joined his company and he will have to work with the man and socialize with him at company events. A rifle that has always hung on the wall as a display is missing. A woman’s favorite knife cannot be found in her kitchen when she’s alone on a stormy night. These all work to alert the reader that something is bound to happen.

Tension can be stretched by interruptions. These interruptions can be caused by another person or by the environment. They are the distractions that make a quiet moment hum with concern or silences a romantic moment. The hero leans toward the heroine seeking a first kiss and the telephone rings or the heroine’s child bursts into the room. A man and woman are having a serious conversation as car lights flash on their living room wall and they hear sounds outside. A man sneaks toward a lighted window to look inside and a dog barks. The interruptions cause the reader to release their pent up breath, feeling as involved as the characters in the novel.

Whether stretching tension, foreshadowing a coming event, effectively using backstory or piling one conflict on another, you will learn that good pacing is an important element in plotting to capture the reader and hook him right to the end.

Plotting — The Technique of Pacing

It’s difficult to talk about plotting content without talking about pacing. Pacing is the relationship between action and reflection, the difference between action-packed scenes and ones more laid back with discussion or introspection. Think of a roller coaster. This ride is a series of swells and dips. Just as a person on the roller coaster needs a break from the climbs and fast dips, so the reader needs a break from the intensity created in the action scenes. Tension is important in all scenes but the tension is more contemplative, collected, or more romantic in nature.

Fast-paced scenes usually show physical motion or create excitement by stimulating emotional responses in decision-making, heightening the romance or creating awareness of some new information or new deductions.

While intensity drives the plot forward in the action scenes, the reflective scenes allows the meaning of what happened to settle in. This is the time when a character notices his change or growth, when the romance has a moment to play out, when the clues are reviewed in a suspense or the key suspects are pondered.

Pacing is one of the difficult techniques to learn, and one way to understand it is by reading your favorite authors and noting the balance of their active scenes to the reflective ones. When do the authors take a pause for thought to weigh their relationships with others and with God in Christian fiction?

Pacing is related to the idea of scene and sequel. Scene refers to things happening and sequel refers to the other character weighing their thoughts on what happened and what it means to them. This is important when the author has multiple POVs (points of view). In romance, perhaps the hero and heroine have a disagreement. As the scene plays, we only understand the problem from one point of view, let’s say the heroines, so a sequel follows next so the reader can hear and see how the hero has reacted to what happened. Even though you show the hero’s reaction as he responds to the heroine’s issues in her scene, you don’t really know what’s going on in his head until the sequel provides that information. This might be a time to reveal the hero’s secret, something that has troubled him for years and now the reader understand why he has reacted as he did. Scenes and sequels help the reader to invest caring about both the hero and heroine or any two characters in a book who have POVs. Caring about the characters is the key to writing a book readers love.

Pacing can be reinforced by placing plot details in strategic positions. I will cover that in the next blog.