Quick, Read This!

Keeping the pace up in fiction is not as easy as it sounds. I know I’m not always wonderful at it, though I (hopefully) am getting better at it. If you read my Shakespeare trilogy (soon to be available from Baen books webscriptions) this was perhaps my greatest failing. (Well, it’s either that or the fact that I went after near-authentic Shakespearean language. No, don’t ask. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was fun.)

In fact, before the Shakespeare trilogy, the last unpublished big book I wrote got rejected by an agent saying that my issue was timing (aka pacing) and that this simply can’t be taught. He was right, my issue was timing. This came from the fact that I couldn’t find a plot with two hands, a cane and a seeing eye dog, not even if said plot were, at the time, biting me on the posterior. (What, your plots don’t bite? Lucky you.)

He was wrong that it couldn’t be learned. Almost everything in writing can be learned. The idea of genius – the myth of someone who is born with all the abilities he or she will need to make it in this field, is wrong. (In fact, the older I get and the more I write, the less I’m sure there is any native component to writing, save the compulsion to tell stories.)

Start as you would with anything else. Read books that have great pacing. Laurell Hamilton’s first three books are three of those. But if you wish for something more sedate, but which still keeps the pages turning, read mysteries. At least, read highly structured, traditional mysteries. I recommend, of all things, the ones in which I stumbled onto one of the essential mechanisms: Elis Peter’s Brother Cadfael.

Of course, to begin with you need a coherent plot that’s long enough for the book. What do I mean by that? Well… that’s a subject for another post, but let’s just say you need to make sure there is enough to the plot that we won’t get to the middle of the book and wonder why we’re still reading. Okay, let’s put this way: theft of diamonds – probably enough for a novel. Theft of lollipops – probably enough for a short story. (Unless the lollipops are laced with arsenic and people start dropping like flies, one a day, and you’re trying to trace it before the next person dies.) Colonizing a planet – novel. Colonizing a bedroom – unless you’re a microbial life form, probably enough for a short story.

Second, make sure your character’s actions are LOGICAL. If your character takes a break, while trying to find the bomb, to go window shopping, I just lost my interest in your character.

The first, most important “sense of timing” mechanism is the obvious:

Have a ticking clock.

Sometimes these are real clocks. “There is a bomb somewhere in the city. You must find it before the clock reaches midnight.” This is often a timing device of thrillers.

However, there are other timing devices that don’t tick – though they can tick, if you really want to – the most important of which is: We have to do X before something terrible happens. This too is often the timing device of thrillers. “We have to find the lollipop before my child eats it.” And of romances, “I have to interrupt the ceremony before she marries that jerk.”

There is also the timing device who is literally a person: “We have to solve the murder, before John turns himself in.” Or “we have to figure out this designer plague before Bob becomes a werewolf.”

Now, with timing devices, you have to show them. You can’t just set up the clock at the beginning, then let it run in the background and never remind the reader. You have to show it, intermittently throughout the novel. The child inches closer to the poisoned lollipop; the bomb ticks; the woman gets into her wedding gown.

“But I don’t want to have an obvious timing device” you say. “My plot is loser than that. I don’t want a definite timing device. I want something more unstructured.”

Well… you can always have – the great chase. Someone wants to kill your character. They’ve started adding these to romances, I think to keep them more interesting. It’s also a great way to add spice to cozies, though the person might only be THREATENING the character – but the character doesn’t know that.

In plots structured this way, I ALWAYS try to have two people chasing/attacking the character. That way, when things get slow in one plot, I throw in a guy with a machine gun. (Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.)

Three caveats for that type of plot:
1- Have it make sense, when you turn it around to the villain’s pov. Even if the villain is mistaken or silly, the actions must make sense for the villain. You can’t have the man with the machine gun come LITERALLY out of nowhere. The villain has to have sent him over for a reason. Something provoked it right at that moment.

2- It has to escalate. The violence, chase, whatever has to get more severe each time. You can’t just keep repeating the same action, every time. Also be very, very, very careful of repetitive scenes.

3 – It has to matter. Unless the threatened character is likeable and you’ve done enough to make us like him, it will not fly.

Another way to hide tension and therefore make the pacing faster is to make us care desperately about the character and want the character want something he/she just can’t get easily. That’s what I used with Darkship Thieves, interspersed with “chase scenes.”

The Don’ts are as Important as the Dos, so try to remember – Don’t have your character stop to do her nails. Don’t let her sit around thinking about that beautiful summer day when she was a kid. (Unless you keep it short, and it ends with an explosion she almost fails to duck from because she’s reminiscing.) A down-time is fine – think three guys in the car in Draw one In the Dark, or the time they have while “hiding” in the hotel room – but don’t have them forget they’re running. Give them bad dreams, or something. They can get comfortable at the end of the novel. Until then, keep the pointy boot at their behind.