DITW—Pacing Is Everything, Part 1: Dialogue

November 14, 2024 by Harvey

In Today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* DITW—Pacing Is Everything, Part 1: Dialogue
* No Writing Yesterday
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“My three favourite things in life are eating my cats and not using commas.” Anonymous, from a meme

“At one point, [Dean Wesley Smith] wrote about writing but those days are long gone. Your TNDJ fulfills that role admirably and is one of the reasons I subscribe.” Dr. Harold Goodman

DITW—Pacing Is Everything, Part 1: Dialogue

Introduction

What follows is an extremely abbreviated look at a massively complex subject: Pacing in fictional dialogue. Later, in another post, I’ll offer a peek at pacing in fictional narrative.

I hope to cover the entire topic in depth sometime in the next year in a new nonfiction book. Of course, when the book is ready, I will announce it here.

Owing primarily to space constraints, in these posts, I will not include specific examples of the pacing techniques in dialogue and narrative, but the book will be replete with them.

In the meantime, I encourage you to look for examples of these techniques (or the lack of them) in your own work. This is an excellent chance for you to learn from your own writing.

Pacing Is Everything

If you want to write a page-turning story or novel, pacing is everything. Part of my purpose here is to turn on its head the inane myth that the word “pacing,” as it applies to fiction and “a page-turning read,” always means “fast-paced.”

Certainly, a dialogue exchange or the narrative description of a scene can be fast-paced, but it can also be paced more slowly. Each type of pacing—slower or faster—is effective in its own way and to its own ends.

But both kinds of pacing will cause the reader to keep turning pages.

And both types of pacing have that effect for exactly the same reason: to enhance the tension mounting in the reader to find out what happens next.

Note: If you feel compelled to disagree, check in with yourself. Do you want to disagree because of an original thought on writing dialogue or because of some soundbite or myth you picked up from a critique group?

Some readers might skip over dialogue they see as less-important, but they don’t know what’s going to happen later in the story either. Those readers who don’t skip but who read through will be richly rewarded. (And yes, the same general rule applies to narrative.)

As subscriber and fiction writer Balázs Jámbor wrote in a comment on a post in November 2024, “Whenever the story needs to slow down, it changes the sentence lengths and [even the] depth. Pacing really is next level stuff.”

Notice Balázs’ use of “it,” a pronoun for which the antecedent is “the story.” If I may paraphrase, Balázs wrote, “Whenever the story needs to slow down, [the story] changes the sentence lengths and [even the] depth.”

Note that “the characters” change nothing. And “I” (the writer) changes nothing. The changes to sentence (and paragraph) lengths and even to depth are made by the story itself.

How very right he is.

If you trust yourself and your characters and write into the dark as the story unfolds, both types of pacing (faster and slower) are subconscious acts committed by the story to advance the storyline.

In turn, if you write into the dark, both types of pacing are also subconscious acts you, the writer, will committed subconsciously in presenting the story to readers.

This is true of both dialogue and narrative.

Pacing in Dialogue

The best dialogue is always a natural give and take, just as if the reader is eavesdropping on two or more people engaged in a “real” conversation.

And that spontaneity—not whether the content of the dialogue is presented as “fast” or “slow”—is the only requirement for good dialogue between or among characters.

Sometimes the dialogue is rapid fire and “fast,” as in a high-action scene or a hot-blooded exchange.

Sometimes the dialogue is more relaxed and more slowly paced. The resulting effect of the more slowly paced dialogue gives the reader a respite from the tension.

More slowly paced dialogue is also an opportunity for the story (again, not you, the writer, or even the characters) to casually drop red herrings, and/or to provide important but quiet and gently delivered information the reader shouldn’t miss.

If you are a fortunate one who writes into the dark and if you find yourself wanting to cut a bit of dialogue because it feels slow or inconsequential, that is your critical mind seeping in.

Don’t cut the dialogue.

Trust the process. If you must, highlight that bit of dialogue and check it again after the story is complete. When you check it, if you still feel it is unnecessary, you can always cut it then. Chances are, you’ll leave it in.

If you write into the dark, neither you nor the characters know where the story’s going. Only the story itself knows that.

I should mention here that the importance of relaxed dialogue is a point on which I and many other writing instructors disagree.

Just because dialogue is more slowly paced or even seems bland doesn’t mean it isn’t (or won’t become) important to the storyline.

The common wisdom is that all dialogue must advance the plot. But that statement is misleading at best. It leads some to the erroneous inference that dialogue has to be about recently completed, current, or upcoming action. That is nonsense.

Sometimes dialogue that appears more relaxed or sedate or even inconsequential on the surface is just as important (or even more important) than the faster-paced rapid-fire stuff.

Note: If a passage of dialogue wasn’t potentially important to the storyline when the story gave it to you and when you wrote it down, it wouldn’t be on the page or screen.

• Again, the characters don’t know what’s coming next as the story unfolds, just as you don’t know what’s coming next in your own life.

• And if you the writer enjoy the freedom of writing into the dark, you certainly don’t know what’s coming next in the story either.

Only the story itself knows, or—more likely—it doesn’t care. It’s simply unfolding like everyday life everywhere.

If you trust yourself, your creative subconscious, the characters, and the story (which is to say you write into the dark) the story will unfold as it should, not as you or the characters direct it to. And it will be excellent, which is to say, authentic.

After every novel, novella and short story I write, I include a disclaimer at the end of the backmatter. As the final sentence of that disclaimer, I wrote, “What you read here is what actually happened there.” That is my guarantee of authenticity to the reader.

Whatever the pacing, good dialogue gives the reader insights into the characters’ personalities and how the characters view each other and the world around them.

A Note on Foreshadowing

Good dialogue is a also a great way for the story to foreshadow what’s coming later.

Note: Yes, there is foreshadowing when you write into the dark. But foreshadowing isn’t something you—the writer—or the characters do intentionally.

If you will only trust your subconscious creative mind and allow it to work, foreshadowing, like the unfolding and writing of the story itself, is a natural function of the creative subconscious, not of the conscious, critical mind. Foreshadowing occurs both during the writing and during cycling.

If readers are to believe your characters are real people and engage with them, they have to be in the story with the characters. Readers have to see and hear those characters having real conversations, both the exciting and the more mundane (again, just as in real life).

And all such good dialogue advances the storyline. It all goes into building the picture of the character (and the dialogue exchange and the story) in the readers’ mind.

Coming soon, “DITW—Pacing Is Everything 2: Narrative”

No Writing Yesterday

to speak of. I got too involved with watching the guys running new power lines to the house, putting up a new transformer, a new panel on the house, a new meter, etc. That opportunity doesn’t come along often.

So I decided early to take the day off. Of course, that dropped my wpd average for November into the tank (2717 wpd), but I’ll get it back.

I managed to touch the novel a little off and on, but not enough to talk about. I’ll start fresh this morning with a cycling session. After that the novel should be off and running again.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1360

Writing of Blackwell Ops 31: Jack Temple

Day 1…… 1620 words. To date……. 1620

Fiction for November…………………. 35318
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 872450
Nonfiction for November…………….. 13250
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 347670
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,044,159

Average Fiction WPD (November)…… 2717

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 16
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 98
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 255
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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