The other day I received an email that a friend and fellow writer sent out to the AAAWG email list. It was about how one handles pacing in a novel. Initially I didn’t have a cogent answer, and I still don’t think I have a satisfactory answer, but I ended up by responding with this:

I’m afraid I don’t really know how to answer this question as I have approached it primarily by gut feel. Perhaps a more honest answer is that I have really ignored the question of pacing and just wrote the novel (or short story) with the assumption that it would work out as I went. One (implied) concession to pacing is that as I near the end of a major draft I read the story through as fast as I can (no edits) and see how it hangs together. I think one of the things I am trying to determine when I do these quick reads is to see if I have achieved a good pace. One of my stock questions to my beta-readers is about pacing and I rely on their less-biased feedback. You can also tell a lot about pacing by asking your beta-readers when they put your story down (or just give up) to do other things.
Anyways, that’s my pre-published opinion.

Anyone want to share their insight into pacing a novel?

Related posts:

1. Writing update
2. Soliciting answers to: What novels or short stories stand out in your memory as “weird”?
3. Final (major) edit pass of “Death Rides for Free” done
4. Starting “Winters’ Unexpected Arrival”
5. Just finished the beta version of “Death’s Harp has One String”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Novel, Pacing, Question, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.