Guest blogging today is my good friend, award-winning author Ann Voss Peterson, who pens intense, emotional suspense and thrillers for Harlequin Intrigue. With her 23rd nail-biting Intrigue, A COP IN HER STOCKING, now on bookstore shelves, I think it’s safe to say Ann has mastered the art of suspense – and I’m delighted to have her here to chat about one of the most important writing techniques in a writer’s tool kit. Welcome Ann!
Thanks for inviting me, Linda!
Today I’m going to tackle a bit of a thorny topic but one that’s near and dear to my heart. Pacing. It’s one of the last things you master before you can write a book of publishable quality, and for good reason. Pacing can be tough. Is the story too slow? Too fast? What is just right?
There are a lot of articles out there featuring lists of tips and tricks for speeding up novel’s pace. If the story slows, kill someone. Add a ticking clock. Keep a secret. But I believe it’s more important to understand the WHY behind something than to just stick in a trick here and there. So in trying to understand pacing, I wanted to know why some prose feels fast and some feels slow. And this is what I came up with.
Pacing isn’t about speed.
That’s right. Pacing doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with how fast the action unfolds on the page. Think about it. We’ve all slogged through novels that felt either slow or sketchy and undeveloped. And it has little to do with genre. There are plenty of frantic thriller novels that feel as if they’re moving as fast as a glacier, just as there are literary novels or family dramas which don’t have a lot of exterior “stuff” happening, yet leave us breathless. So if a novel’s pace isn’t about speed, what IS it about?
The secret to pacing your novel is making the reader NEED to turn the page.
Well, I just happen to be a reader. I’ll bet you are, too. So in my quest to understand pacing, I asked myself what makes ME want to turn the page, and here are the four things I found.
1. Sequence: I turn the page to uncover what happens next. Stimulus and response.
2. Conflict: I turn the page to discover who wins.
3. Delayed Gratification: I turn the page to learn the answers to my questions.
4. Escalation: I turn the page to see how on earth the protagonist gets out of this mess!
That’s it. The secret to pacing. Those four concepts. Don’t believe it could be that simple? Think about the tips and tricks I mentioned above. If done right, killing someone is going to provide conflict. It’s also going to give those story stakes a boost (escalation). That’s why it can make a slow area feel faster paced. But it only works if the murder does those two things. If it doesn’t effect the stakes or if it doesn’t increase the conflict, it’s going to muddy your story instead of making the reader need to turn that page.
How about the other two tricks? The ticking clock is an example of escalation. The characters had to do something in your story (right?), and now they have to do it in a very short time span. Keeping a secret is an example of delayed gratification. The reader has to race through those pages to find out what the secret is or to see it revealed to another character. And of course, the character’s reaction to that secret is her response to a stimulus...sequence!
I give a workshop on how to use each of these things to improve the pace of your story in everything from the construction of sentences to the structure of the entire novel. Obviously that would make for an overly long blog post. :) So instead of me telling you ways to use these concepts to make your prose and your story FEEL fast, you tell me.
What makes you NEED to turn the page in books you read? Are any of these tips and tricks examples of sequence, conflict, delayed gratification or escalation?
To catch an example of the way Ann paces her novels, pick up her 23rd published novel, A COP IN HER STOCKING, a Harlequin Intrigue in stores this October. Also check out Ann's website at www.annvosspeterson.com
8 comments:
Excellent analysis of what makes good pacing. Not speed but that need to know. The workshop rocks too!
Thanks for sharing your tension building techniques. I have read your books and they're great. As a fanatic, obsessed Stieg Larsson fan, I'm always trying to figure our what it is about his books that made 46 million people to date buy his 1st book. I still haven't determined what it is, but his three books were the first ones I've read throughout without stopping (except for bed) in years. Wish I could figure out what it is -
Ann and Linda,
Great discussion! I'm taking notes.
Great to see you here Susan, Lynn and Jacqueline! Thanks for the nice comments.
We talk a lot about reading like a writer. We also have to remember to write like a reader. Or at least to analyze our writing through our reader eyes.
Great advice! It is a tricky thing to master (or begin to master), but it does make a WORLD of difference to the story.
Ann, I'm late to the party; sorry!
You're right, of course. I've felt this in my own reading. An author who can't write characters for beans can still keep me engaged for a whole series if she knows how to pace her storytelling.
I'm a sucker for a secret. Mad women in attics; bodies under the bed. The thing is, when that big, dark secret is revealed, it had better be worth the wait, or else I'm skimming the rest of the book.
Ann, those were spot on points. Thanks for your post. Your cover is great, by the way.
Wonderful advice, Ann! I'm looking forward to reading your new book.
Sheila Seabrook
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