It’s All About Pacing
August 18, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* It’s All About Pacing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience, and not necessarily on the screen.” film director Alfred Hitchcock on how to keep cinema audiences on the edge of their seats (emphasis added)
“[Hitchcock was] a master at the art of slowly ratcheting up tension on screen… [T]he key to suspense was not merely shocking the viewers but subtly manipulating their perception and emotions.
“[He] knew that for the suspense to work, it had to be rooted in the audience’s anticipation of danger. So viewers needed to be aware of things that were unknown to the film’s characters. Then they could work out ahead of time what might happen and worry about the outcome.” Myles Burke, BBC “In History” newsletter (again, emphasis added) (See Of Interest)
It’s All About Pacing
An enjoyable reader experience in any short story or novel is all about anticipation. And anticipation is all about pacing.
I’ve talked several times in the Journal about the importance of pacing. If you key “pacing” into the search box at the Journal website, you’ll find several posts on the topic.
(If you encounter the necessity of a password, and if you’re a paid subscriber, email me. But there are several posts that do not require a password.)
How much you let readers see of the setting and the character(s) and when you let them see it is all about pacing.
How much information you “leak” to readers in the story and when you leak it is all about pacing.
Of course, if you’re writing into the dark (which I so strongly advocate) you might wonder how you can know what to leak and when.
The answer is, you don’t. But as you learn pacing and hone the technique through practice, your characters know. And that’s what matters. So to return for a moment to a common theme of these posts, Trust Your Characters.
Write everything your characters give you, everything that happens in the story. Use that level of detail to allow the reader to “rest” (slower pacing) or to heighten the reader’s anticipation (suspense about what’s coming, faster pacing).
Maybe most important for writers to understand, pacing is not only essential for thrillers or suspense novels. It is essential across the board, in any genre.
And pacing is there in your story whether or not you manipulate it to good effect. So you might as well make yourself consciously aware of it so it will seep into your subconscious where your characters can make use of it.
I’ve personally (and successfully) used this technique in both shallow and involved romance scenes and in action-adventure, western, SF, mystery, magic realism and thriller genres.
As Hitchcock is quoted as saying in the article, “The film can be about anything at all, as long as I’m making that audience react in a certain way to whatever I put on the screen.”
If you insert “story” for “film” and “page” for “screen” you’ll see the relevance for short story writers and novelists. Remember, before any film hits the wide screen, it’s written.
Finally, and maybe best of all, the technique of pacing is also an endless well of excitement and growth for the short story writer or novelist. As I said, I’ve used it successfully, but I’m also still learning more of its nuances almost every day.
Those writers who are very fortunate inherently “feel” this technique. They have only to apply it, continually, through practice.
But those who don’t “feel” it can learn it. Whichever you are, take the time to learn it and to continue to learn it as you practice by putting new words on the page.
The only thing more important than learning pacing is learning the alphabet in the first place.
Don’t miss reading the first article in Of Interest. It’s a master class on storytelling by a master storyteller.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Alfred Hitchcock on his film-making secrets It worked in the 1960s and it works today. This one article is a masters class on writing fiction. Bookmark this article and read it more than once.
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week:”Libraries” Read this.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 710
Writing of Blackwell Ops 27: Sam Gentry
Day 1…… 3004 words. To date…… 3004
Day 2…… 2111 words. To date…… 5115
Day 3…… 1726 words. To date…… 6841
Day 4…… 2092 words. To date…… 8933
Day 5…… 1306 words. To date…… 10239
Day 6…… 2523 words. To date…… 12762
Day 7…… 3018 words. To date…… 15780
Day 8…… 1443 words. To date…… 17223
Day 9…… 3024 words. To date…… 20247
Day 10…. 2275 words. To date…… 22522
Day 11…. 1566 words. To date…… 24088
Day 12…. 2009 words. To date…… 26097
Fiction for August…………………….….… 26097
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 520594
Fiction since October 1………………… 758147
Nonfiction for August……………………… 15490
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 262500
2024 consumable words………………… 717590
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 11
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 93
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 241
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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