Pacing over intrigue and excitement?

I would say that adding intrigue and depth is part of good pacing. There are times when characters really do need to slow down and check things out. As long as it's interesting, I don't think this is a problem. Also, an unchanging pace, whether fast or slow, can become predictable and boring. It's good to vary the pace of events.

The pacing should work with intrigue, excitement and depth. We don't want to break the momentum at a cliff hanging moment to feed the reader a bunch of back story or info dump. But nor do we want to proceed with the story at breakneck speed and leave out important and interesting parts.

Generally, I'd say backstory and so on should be woven in, in small bits, and only when needed to clarify what's going on at the time. However, if you're writing a SFF novel set in a different world, that might not be enough. And if you're writing a young adult boy meets girl trope we're all familiar with, you may not need much back story at all. Length also matters. Flash fiction leaves little room for anything outside of the moment to be spelled out; a novel has more space for unpacking.

You might want to put your story up in Share Your Work or get beta readers. Or have someone read it out loud to you so you can just listen. When your attention wanders, so will the readers'. When the person who is reading it out loud to you says they're lost and don't understand why your character is doing something or whatever, you need a bit more clarification there. Good luck.

GigiF said:

Hey all.

Just looking for a few opinions on this.

So I've cut about twenty odd pages in the middle of my story because I felt the pace slowed right down at this point. The characters have reached this major location and they needed to spend some time there figuring things out.

This location and this point in the story are quite crucial as several major plot points occur.

But as the plot points were discovered and as the one or two characters found out certain things they needed to find out, I felt I was lagging here for too long.

Problem is that I feel I've lost a bit of the intrigue and character/world building that took place in the pages I've lost.

So, my question is - where would you sit on this issue?

Would you lose intrigue and depth for better pacing? Or would you always choose to keep those things and let the pacing suffer a bit for twenty odd pages?

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First off, twenty-odd pages doesn't tell me much. That might be a whole lot of words, or not so many.

I had the same problem, pace change and getting characters from one place to another without turning the book into a quest. This is where it sits now. I traded a couple of old chapters for a couple of new chapters. It was impossible to delete the whole bit and just say 3 weeks later without losing important parts of the story. If I'd taken it all out and skipped ahead, the MC's reasons for what he does later in the book, would have been lost. Sometimes things just have to slow down for a bit. Maybe that's a good thing. Reader gets a breather.

My advice: Put it back, then try a little word cutting.

I don't think it's really possible to say without reading it. I will say I'm much less concerned about pace than I am with being bored. Slwoing the pace, giving readers time to breathe, can be a good thing, as long as the characters are still doing something that interests me.

GigiF said:

Tanks for the replies all.

Just a side question here - does the answer differ if it's a childrens story? I can see how adult readers push past extended slow paced sections of a story knowing full well it'll kick in again soon. But my MS is aimed at the MG crowd which I assume don't mind some slow down but not for too long?

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Well, have you read the first two Harry Potter books? i think one of the things Rowling did perfectly in these two books was handle pace.

I write a lot of MG now, and I try not to slow the story down too much, but sometimes slow works very well, with the same conditions as adults. Children or adult, slow should never, ever mean boring.

Stick the stuff someplace else is what I'd do. Just preserve those 20 then go over your ms and seek spots where the material would fit better.

Usually that does the trick. If you feel the material important don't just chuck it.

My observation is that "parts I want to cut, but.." more often means an underdeveloped scene than a surplus scene. So:

Does it feel like it's lagging because it wasn't fully developed? that is, had you skipped over the interesting parts in the name of "pace" ??

The best analogy I ever heard when it comes to writing excitement for a reader was from Alfred Hitchcock who said (paraphrasing here) - a good story is like a rollercoaster. There needs to be ups and downs in emotion and mystery.- You need to make the reader excited but then relieve some of the pressure before bringing the level up again.
even in the relaxed times of your story you can introduce new questions for the characters. Another option after a long period of relaxation in your story is to have action begin rapidly, without any building. Simply have something dangerous or exciting happen without warning, like an unexpected drop during a ride in the dark. Hope this helps.

GigiF said:

Tanks for the replies all.

Just a side question here - does the answer differ if it's a childrens story?

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Not really, but here's the thing - whenever I've hit a part in my writing where I've felt the pace started to drag, alpha readers felt it even worse, and no matter how vital I felt that part should be, that meant it either needed removal, relocation, or reworking.

The roller coaster analogy only works so far - you've got ups and down, and the flat spots in between are brief. If you had thirty seconds in the middle of a ride with the cars just going straight, it'd be really boring.

Anyway, if your intrigue and depth is interfering with the story pacing, at the most basic level it means the first two are in need of more work.

Thomas Vail said:

Not really, but here's the thing - whenever I've hit a part in my writing where I've felt the pace started to drag, alpha readers felt it even worse, and no matter how vital I felt that part should be, that meant it either needed removal, relocation, or reworking.

The roller coaster analogy only works so far - you've got ups and down, and the flat spots in between are brief. If you had thirty seconds in the middle of a ride with the cars just going straight, it'd be really boring.

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That's one reason I don't use readers, alpha or beta. Pace should slow down at times. Way down. Almost to a stop.

As for the roller coaster, I don't think I agree with you analogy. Going in a striaght line can be just as scary as going down a steep hill, if you do it right. It depends on what the characters see coming.


A rest period, a stretch of no excitement, can be terrifying, if the characters see an apocalyptic even bearing down on them, one they know they can't avoid.

It's a pretty common technique. A rest period, a chance for readers to catch their breath, all the while knowing something terrifying and unavoidable lies ahead.

Jamesaritchie said:

Pace should slow down at times. Way down. Almost to a stop.

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But only at appropriate points. I'm not sure why you ignored that part and you really kind of went off on a non-sequitur.

Like I said before, most time when both myself and whomever is critiquing hit a patch that they feel throws off the pace of a story, that's a good sign there's a problem with it. If you need to cut 'intrigue and excitement' for the sake of pace, it means that whatever is comprising the former is in the wrong place in regards to the latter.

The answers don't change for works for kids. If you go to fast, you lose them. If you go to slow, you bore them. The story needs what it needs.

Perhaps you can find away to combine the material in those pages, taking it from 20-10.

SYW is a great suggestion. There is a section for work for kids.

GigiF said:

Thanks for the opinions everyone.

I agree about pacing needing to slow down and sometimes to a slow crawl - my problem was that I slowed down for a very long time - those 20 pages + another 15/20 of what I've got left. It was just too much, too long so something had to give.

I was just going to cut and be done but after reading the comments above I'm trying to take the core, key elements of those chapters and integrate them into the scenes I've been left with after I took them out.

Thanks again - you're all awesome.

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Sounds like the right thing to do. Just remember, if you think it's slow, they definitely will think it's slow.

GigiF said:

Problem is that I feel I've lost a bit of the intrigue and character/world building that took place in the pages I've lost.

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Just rewrite it until you get it correct. And welcome to the world of a writer.

Jeff