The Craft of Writing: Pacing
Pacing is hard. How do you make your writing interesting?A while ago, I saw a question on a writing forum that asked, “I'm writing a zombie story. I feel like it’s too fast paced. How can I rewrite “She regards the grave for a moment. Suddenly, the ground below her stirs” to slow my pace? How can I make this more interesting?
I like this question because it's a perfect example of how to move from “writing as a string of events” to “writing as an immersive story.” Novice writers often have a utilitarian approach to writing, telling a story as a sequence of events that happen: She regards the grave. The ground stirs.
The secret to effective writing is to put the reader in the story. Let the reader see what the character sees, hear what the character hears, feel what the character feels. You’re not just relating a sequence of events in chronological order, you’re placing your reader within the world.
So how can we do that here? We know the events that happened: first, she, our unnamed character, looks at a grave, and then the ground stirs. What does it mean to put the reader within that scene?
Here’s my stab at re-writing this scene in a way that uses the character’s senses and perceptions to put the reader there:
She knelt on the soft earth of the fresh grave, eyes alert. The granite headstone, still crisp and unweathered, read only “Kevin Salem, 1974–2021”. No epitaph, no wisdom from a life cut unexpectedly short.
A handful of red and yellow roses, slightly wilted in the sun, lay in an untidy heap at the foot of the headstone, mute testament to the fact someone had cared enough about the late Mr. Salem to make a show of being present, but not enough to put the flowers in a vase. The lush, thick grass had not yet begun to encroach on the mound of earth beneath her.
She looked around. Apart from her and a handful of squirrels that regarded her with the alert indifference peculiar to small scurrying creatures, not a soul disturbed the graveyard’s quiet. She rose and brushed the dirt from her knees. “Guess I was wrong,” she said aloud. The squirrels made no reply.
She turned to go. A speck of earth shifted, a tiny motion easily missed by someone less alert. She watched it for a moment, holding her breath, willing it to be a trick of light and shadow.
The ground stirred. “Well, shit,” she said.
Her earpiece crackled. “You got one?”
“Yeah, I think so.” She stepped back and drew her sword in a single fluid, graceful motion.
This rewrite does the same thing, but now we aren’t simply being told that she first examines a grave, and then notices movement; we’re being given a picture, seeing through her eyes, feeling her tension.