The Importance of Pacing

How to Keep Your Story Moving and Master the Balance of Tension

Understanding Pacing

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Pacing is easy to understand but hard to master. In simplest terms, it is the speed at which your readers devour your book. But that’s not all. It’s not just the literal speed they read at, but how fast the plot moves along which, to the reader, feels like they are reading quickly or slowly. That’s the catch: it’s all about feel. And how are to you measure something so nebulous and immaterial?

There is a short piece about varying sentence lengths that has become so popular it’s now a meme. It’s by Gary Provost and goes like this:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals – sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short medium and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music.

Provost, G. (1985). 100 ways to improve your writing. Dover Publications.

Much like sentence length in a paragraph, pacing needs to be varied throughout the novel for it to be most effective. If it’s all fast paced action, it reads like the first paragraph; it becomes monotonous. Even when the action is fun and engaging, even if it keeps you on the edge of your seat when you start reading it, eventually it needs to slow down. And the opposite is also true; a story feels slow and sluggish if it is scene after scene where nothing much happens. Both of these scenarios could spell the death of your story and add it to a reader’s Did Not Finish pile.

The Role of Pacing in Narrative Structure

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Much of pacing feels instinctive to writers and readers. “This part drags,” is a common phrase for too slow pacing that we just feel innately, often without understanding why. Planning your story or writing to a specific narrative structure, or plot blueprint as I like to call it, can help with this.

There are quite literally hundreds of plot blueprints you can choose from, as this topic has been studied extensively as far back as the Ancient Greeks with Aristotle. In fact it was Aristotle who is credited for the basic three-act structure (setup, conflict, and resolution) that is the basis for nearly all story structures we use today.

Nearly all stories you read today will use some form of a three-act, twelve beat structure. This is broken down into the following rough steps.

Act One

Normal Life

This is where you show the starting point for your story. Who is your protagonist and what is their life like before everything changes?

Something Happens

Something occurs which changes the protagonist’s normal life and threatens to upend everything.

The New Normal

The protagonist reacts to the above event, often in response to their fatal flaw or misbelief. They often try to fight against the change.

The Point of No Return

The protagonist, having failed to return things to how they were in the Normal Life section, accepts that things aren’t going to go back to normal and adapts to their new situation.

Act Two

Plans

Having reached the point of no return, the protagonist begins to make plans on how they intend to achieve their goals.

Subplot

If your story has a subplot this is a good point to introduce it. Short stories, novellas, or middle-grade novels don’t always have subplots, as they add complexity and length to a story that is often not needed.

Climax

The protagonist attempts to carry out their plans. This usually fails in some way, or succeeds but not without more problems arising. It is the middle of your story so make it count!

New Plans

In response to how the climax ends, the protagonist reacts. Their want may have been achieved but it didn’t bring them the result they are looking for.

Disaster

Nothing goes right despite the protagonist’s best efforts. The bad guys have a big win, the romantic interest breaks up with the protagonist, the killer strikes again.

Act Three

Darkest Moment

The character is driven to the edge of despair by the disaster. They want to give up. All seems lost.

Go Big or Go Home

The protagonist picks themselves up, pulls themselves together, and dusts themselves off, often with the help of a friend or sidekick. They make a final push towards the ending, knowing now what they need and how to achieve it.

The Ending

The result of the final push. Whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy will depend on the story you’re telling, but it should conclude the story and wrap everything up.

All story structures follow this basic path, some with more detailed beats, some skipping parts entirely. But if you were to graph the tension of the overall narrative using these beats you would see a line that goes up and down, increasing and decreasing the tension.

Of course it is possible that the pacing can be off in each of those story beats, which could affect the whole feel and flow of the story, but by following a plot blueprint and adhering to the referenced percentage word count, you should be able to keep the overall story flowing.

Different Types of Pacing

The pace of your novel can be either slow or fast and, over the whole thing, should be a mix of both.

Fast pacing is generally used for action sequences or places where the plot is urgent. For example, this can be a fight scene, or when the protagonist is told that their best friend has been kidnapped. Things are particularly tense and the protagonist (and therefore the reader) wants to get on with it!

Slow pacing is used most often as a reflection period, for the protagonist to digest what has happened. This gives your readers a chance to catch their breath, to release some of the tension that had just been built up, and to convey information about the world, setting, or characters.

Techniques for Controlling Pacing

As was discussed in the opening section of this article, sentence length can play a pivotal role in controlling the pacing of your novel. Fast, short sentences speed up the pace. Longer, more detailed sentences slow it down.

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Some tips to speed up your story if you feel it’s dragging are:

• Avoid description unless absolutely necessary.
  Your protagonist won’t be paying attention to the details of everyone’s clothes if they’re avoiding being stabbed. Neither will your reader care. I’m not saying there should be no description in fast paced sections, but that it should be focused only what is important to the story at that particular time. If your flowery description of the city skyline can be moved to a point in your story where things aren’t so dire for your characters, then move it.

• Keep dialogue to the point.
  Much like sentence length, dialogue can be used to both lengthen and shorten a scene’s pace. If the protagonist’s best friend has just been kidnapped, they will likely be frantic, speaking in short, sharp sentences. Don’t be afraid to use fragments or one word sentences here.

• Read it aloud and focus on where you take a breath.
  Even though most people read inside their head (unless they are still learning), they still pause and take a mental breath where the punctuation tells them to. This mimics what happens when someone reads aloud. If you want to quicken the pace, the reader’s breaths should also be coming quite quickly, and reading aloud can make this obvious.

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If your story is too fast all the time and you want to slow it down, here are some tips:

• Add background and description.
  Maybe your protagonist takes a moment to really take in the scene before them or look out over a valley. By describing what they see (and hear, and smell, and feel), you can slow the pace down and give a sense of peace to your reader. It is a good time now to include descriptions of elements that are important but maybe not critical during fast paced moments.

• Have a lengthy conversation.
  Stories are about people, and sometimes people like to chat. Dialogue is a great way to get to know your characters, how they think and what makes them tick. Some friendly banter is not only a great and entertaining way to learn about your characters, but if the conversation isn’t frantic, it can help to slow things down.

• Use a flashback.
  I say this with a word of caution: the flashback needs to fit where you are in the story if it is to work. I’ll be writing a longer article on how to use flashback effectively in the future, but for now suffice to say that if it is the right time, using a flashback can slow things down by informing the reader of some important event that happened in the past or some strong memory the protagonist has.

Common Pacing Pitfalls to Avoid

Pacing can be difficult to come to grips with, especially for new writers. Often it only really comes together in the editing phase of the story, unless you are one of those heathens who can edit as you go (kidding!).

When you’re particularly excited to get to the good bits of your story, the pace can reflect this. It will be rushed and too fast. Emotional scenes and breathing moments are rushed over or skipped entirely in order to get to the next exciting point. In a first draft, this is fine; you need to get all the details down so you know what you’re working with first. But when you start to edit, or if you already have a meticulous plan, and are writing in a linear fashion, then it can be tempting to skip the ‘boring’ bits to get to the good stuff.

Resit the urge!

Or at least allow yourself to jump around and remember to come back to the slower moments.

Alternatively, if you really love your characters and like seeing them interact with each other, or if you have a gorgeous description scene that you love tweaking and altering so that it’s just perfect, you could fall into the trap of dragging the story too much. I get it. One of my favourite things to write is dialogue between two or three characters and having them just bounce off each other.

Cut it all ruthlessly! Kill your darlings!

Or at least move it to a point in the story where the pace can afford to go a little slower.

The Exceptions to the Rule

As with all writing advice, there are always exceptions and counter arguments. How to best manage pacing is no different.

One example is the age of your readership. When writing for children or middle grade (around age 6 to 12), you want to have far more fast paced scenes than slow, plodding ones. There still needs to be the peaks and valleys of tension – even children will get bored if it’s all action – but the slower sections will be much shorter.

Another example is literary fiction. This genre is not worried about being a commercial success and therefore it doesn’t matter so much if a reader’s expectations on how a plot progresses are not met. The focus is far more on the characters, introspection, and beautifully written prose. This has the effect of being a slower paced read.

Case Studies and Examples

One example of good pacing is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling. As the second book in the series, all the important aspects of the world has already been developed and conveyed.

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The tension starts fairly high with Harry being locked in his room, his guardians refusing to let him attend Hogwarts that year. That tension is then relieved by the great escape and the light tone and sense of fun with the flying car.

The school year starts with its usual optimistic tone and hopeful feeling, until tension begins to rise again with the first attack, Mrs Norris (the caretaker’s cat) is found petrified. The mystery is established, but the stakes are still low for now.

Quidditch and other school activities, like the polyjuice potion, are used to lighten the tone from attacks and the darkness and threat of the Chamber of Secrets, while still moving quickly to keep the reader engaged.

All the elements of Tom Riddle’s past is drip fed to the reader, including both layers and plot twists, steadily increasing the tension. The more clues and information is revealed to the reader, the more tense they become.

Finally comes the dramatic confrontation: Harry enters the Chamber of Secrets, using all the clues he has so far gathered, in order to rescue Ginny before it is too late. There is a sense of urgency – if he’s too slow Ginny may die, if he rushes he could be rushing head long into his own death. He comes close to defeat himself with the basilisk poison but in the end defeats the basilisk with the help of Dumbledore’s phoenix, and destroys Voldemort’s diary, thus ending the threat to the school and all its inhabitants.

The final conclusion is wrapped up quickly without dragging it out. Harry’s friendship with his companions grows deeper, he gets recognition for his acts, and he heads home.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has all the twists and turns of a thriller novel and the reader is kept engaged by both the fast moments, the peaks in the story graph (namely, the increasing number of victims) and slow moments, the valleys in the story graph (Harry’s introspection on everything that’s going on).

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That’s an example of good pacing, but an example of poor pacing is the third book in the Animorphs series, titled The Encounter by K. A. Applegate. As the third book in the series, the main conflict and important story elements have already been developed, so starting from a similar place as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. This should mean that the story is free to be plot driven. We already know the characters, we know about the main enemy, and we know the process of how transforming into animals works. However, instead of focusing now on the plot, this story is focused on the internal struggles of one of the characters, Tobias, who has recently become stuck in the form of a hawk.

Tobias was my favourite character of the series up until this point; I related to the loner and introspective personality when I was in school, so it felt like Tobias expressed a lot of what I was thinking and what I felt. I was looking forward to reading a book from his point of view and with the recent disaster of being stuck in hawk form, I was eagerly anticipating how he would adapt to that and use it to become perhaps the most important member of the group. In this, I was disappointed.

The first two books set the tone for the series as being action packed and this book didn’t follow on that setup, instead focusing on Tobias’s own depression and isolation. The themes of Tobias’s struggles are repeated throughout the novel without any real conclusion. Tobias doesn’t come to terms with his transformation. He doesn’t come up with a way to use it to his advantage. The negative character arc he is on doesn’t help the overall plot.

And speaking of overarching plot, this book doesn’t have any major plot advancements. The alien threat is real and urgent, and yet the group, and especially Tobias, does nothing to fight against it. Overall, while the negative character arc is interesting from a technical point of view, and depression is a compelling theme to write about for a young adult book, the lack of variety in the content of the book and near absence of any true plot meant that the book dragged.

Exercises to Improve Pacing

Like all skills, the key to improving is practice, practice, practice. This can be done simply by writing lots of stories and reading lots of books, and then seeing what works and what doesn’t. Critically examine why something works or doesn’t. With understanding comes mastery.

Shorter writing exercises can also help hone this element of craft. Think about an action that occurs in your story. For example, one character punches another. Write that event in, say, 10 words. Short, snappy, and to the point. Now write it again but this time use 100 words. Focus on the feel of the character’s knuckles connecting with the other person, on the rage they feel that led them to react, on the surge of adrenaline. Notice how the exact same action can feel completely different.

Pacing is difficult to write on the fly, but it can be easier to fix during editing. For your first draft, I would recommend not worrying too much about pacing, and just write the story you want to write as it comes to you. Once you’re finished and you read through it again, you’ll likely instinctively know where the pacing feels off and those are the areas you can focus on, either tighten them up, or pad them out depending on what’s needed. Other readers can also help with this, saying where they got bored or where something felt rushed. For me, at least, pacing is an editing concern. I find it much easier to see what needs tweaking when I already know the scenes and the order they appear in.

Master Pacing for a Compelling Story

Mastering pacing is one of the most important things a writer can do to ensure their novel draws readers in and makes it impossible for them to put down. Variation is the key here; there needs to be a mix of ups and downs so that a reader is invested in the urgency of the plot, but also has time to breathe and get to know the characters.

Using a plot blueprint, or a narrative structure, can help ensure the overarching story hits all the expected peaks and valleys. A reader comes into the story with certain expectations and ensuring that you meet those expectations will ensure you have a satisfied reader at the end of it.

Use tools like sentence length, dialogue complexity, and description to either slow the pace down or speed it up.

And finally, don’t worry too much if it is difficult to get right on your first draft. It is a lot easier to see the forest for the trees, as they say, when your draft is complete. Editing with pacing in mind can save you a lot of stress, rather than trying to get it perfect on the first try.

References

Carpenter, C. (2012, April 24). 7 tools for pacing a novel and keeping your story moving at the right pace. Writer’s Digest. Retrieved February 12, 2025 from https://www.writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/7-tools-for-pacing-a-novel-keeping-your-story-moving-at-the-right-pace

Chase, J. (2024, October 2). 10 ways to master pacing in writing and keep your readers riveted. The Write Practice. Retrieved February 12, 2025, from https://thewritepractice.com/pacing-writing/

Reedsy Editorial Team. (2018, October 13). Pacing in writing: 10 powerful ways to keep readers hooked. Edited by Villirilli, D. Reedsy. Retrieved February 12, 2025 https://blog.reedsy.com/pacing-in-writing/

The Magic Violinist. (n.d.). How to fix your plot and pacing with the four act novel structure. The Write Practice. Retrieved February 12, 2025, https://thewritepractice.com/four-act-structure-novel/

Weiland, K. M. (2009, July 12). 5 ways to use pacing to tell a powerful story. Helping Writers Become Authors. Retrieved February 12, 2025 https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/5-ways-to-pace-your-story/