PACE TWO

If you remember, before the Christmas blow out, we were looking at pace. Now let’s discuss what slows it and what creates it.

Slowing Pace.

Nothing slows the flow more than over use of prose. It’s a shame for what writer doesn’t enjoy writing the descriptive sections? But admit it, if you skim a book, which parts do you choose to neglect?

In dialogue keep a beady eye out for characters making long speeches. People don’t in real life and it is even more so with fictional people. Whereas we can waffle, character in books don’t. There is no need for polite talk, what they say is only relevant to show character and to MOVE the story along.

The flow will stall if you use unfamiliar words or make references to little known facts. Your reader might even stop and look them up and perhaps not bother to go back. The same can be said for strange names.

Do watch out for repeated words, scenes and setting. If your plot is predictable then you will find the pace declining. There is nothing like a twist to get the steam up.

Watch out if you have been fiddling endlessly with work, the freshness and thus the pace can easily be deadened.

Encouraging Pace.

Remember the engine? Pulsating away with your strong plot with equally strong and believable characters.

Conflict is one of your most important tools. Conflict can take many forms. Large as with jealousy or war. But don’t forget that misunderstanding can add conflict too.

Wise use of causality creats pace. The happening that leads to another. And it can surprise the reader – making them hungry for more.

I warned about deadening your writing with muddied work, so it follows that good spare writing adds that elusive pace. As does good dialogue where you can give information quickly and with lack of artifice.

And you know that one of the simplest devices is to vary the pace and by doing so you add to it. Strong phases followed by weaker. Hysteria followed by peace. Tragedy followed by its kissing cousin comedy.

Above all that strong story line you have created nothing makes a reader hungry to know more than the NEED to know.

See, it’s not as hard as you thought.

Apology.

Apologies everyone but Christmas has got the better of me. And then I thought I'm probably not alone and who wants to read about Pace with such important things as eating, drinking and pressies. So Happy Christmas every one. See you in the New Year.

PACE

Jenny is confused by pace has she too much or too little? Katie wants to know how to sustain it. Mary Jon asks how to judge the balancing of pace?

Why is pace so important in commercial fiction? If you think page turnability instead, it makes it clear why it is. Without it the reader is more likely to give up. Without it you are unlikely to sell it in the first place.

What is pace? Pace is the engine of the book. It keeps us moving forward, it keeps us reading.

However, beware - too often pace is misunderstood and is regarded as a need for excitement, drama, cliff hangers, big events. The chapters are littered with hooks. Pace can be all of these things – in the right place, time and amount. If not treated with respect, if not controlled, then the opposite could happen and this pace will be killed off.

How? Overuse and exaggeration of pace reminds me of many of the singers on the X Factor – they belt out the songs, the louder they sing, the more noise they make the better they think they sound. We all know that is not the case.

The Engine.

Lets go back to my analogy of the engine. Humming away in the background, giving the book life and movement but unnoticed –that is pace. It is there all the time. It’s like the beating of your heart – rhythmic, stable, constant.

Suddenly the engine is revved up, just as hearts beat faster. As dramatic moments, thrills, dangers are added making us sit up, making us read.

And then the engine slows, a calmness is created. And what does that do? It highlights the drama you have just allowed to unfold, it does not diminish it.

Those singers need variation in their songs. We need variation in our writing. If there is too much drama or too much calmness then the work has a sameness to it which is the antithesis of pace.

Barbara Cartland.

Barbara Cartland is the mistress of pace. She wrote short, snappy paragraphs often of a couple of lines, which makes them easy to read, she uses hooks everywhere. There is pace in her books by the bucket load and she gets away with it.
So why can she but I advise that you don’t?
Because her books are short. If that form were used in a long book of over 100,000 words the reader would become exhausted by the relentless excitement, you would tire of it. .
I call this boom-boom pace.

Plot.

So often the most important tool of pace you have in your armoury is overlooked and that is the story itself.
A good strong plot with good strong characters which grasps the interest, holds it, leaves the reader asking for more. It is so obvious but perhaps that is why it is neglected.

Katie to sustain pace – a well structured story. Jenny a constraint on boom-boom isn’t a bad thing. And Mary Jon – you know, I think that the problems here are mainly because you are all worrying far too much. There is only one voice that will tell you honestly – dear old Inner Voice. And you can help IV by reading out loud, that will soon show up the bits that are dragging.

Once again this is a huge subject so we’ll do more next week when we look at what adds pace and what detracts.

Characterisation Part Two

Reasons for actions.

Pause for a moment and see if you can think of anything you do without a reason for doing it?
From doing a 5 mile run in the morning or not doing it.
From shopping at Tesco rather than Waitrose.
Of choosing a blue jumper over a yellow one.
Of not answering the phone or rushing to do so.

With the little things you are not necessarily conscious of why you do something, but there’s always a reason.
Right down to why you scratched - because you had an itch.

And so it is with fictional characters but more so. Everything your character does in the tale you have given them is for a reason; you don’t waste time and words on actions that have no relevance or reason to the plot, to the character you have created. For example, you might answer the phone and it’s a wrong number - but characters in books don’t. Unless the wrong number has a significance, then it becomes relevant.

Drinking tea, coffee, gin. Often characters in books do a lot of tea consuming. Fine, people do. But we don’t simply want the information they are having a cup of tea but rather why are they? What use is it? What information does it give us other than they are thirsty? No, we need to know the reason they have stopped, they are not allowed to simply enjoy the tea but we use it, perhaps for them to be thinking, and thus give us information.

Making Characters Real.

People in books, no matter how realistic we kid ourselves they are, are not real. They are amalgams, they are fictional. If you wrote a real person exactly as they are it is doubtful that they would appear at all “real” and probably they would be immeasurably boring. So, what do we do, we exaggerate them. You don’t need to go as far as Dickens did, but at the same time, these fictional people truly are larger than life. The danger is to make them into caricatures, or clichés - so we need to keep a watch on ourselves that we are not doing that.
Also we avoid the risk of making them too similar so that the reader becomes confused as to who is who? How? I give them little tics so one is differentiated from another - fiddling with hair, whistling, nervous cough etc.

Emotional Intensity.

Something else to think about - often these characters we create lead lives of such emotional intensity that it is unlikely that a real person could sustain the pressure without being hospitalised. To maintain the pace we hurl incidents at them at an alarming rate. To get it all in within the confines of the size of the book - drama, emotional crises, tragedy or happy incidents will follow in quick succession. (Another thought, aren’t we clever to do it and yet have the reader unaware of the artificiality that it is? Time for a mutual pat on our backs.)

Handsome? Ugly?
There is always the danger that you know these people so well that you forget the reader doesn’t. We need to know what they look like, and in that we don’t mean just the colour of their hair and eyes. We need to know their size, the shape of their face, how they walk, how they sit, the sound of their voice, their laugh . . . a myriad things. Please don’t fall into the trap of a clichéd appearance – the feisty girl with red hair and green eyes; the dumb blonde. You can do better than that.

Flaws.

Are you perfect?
Do you admit to certain flaws?

And so it is with fictional characters.

Why do we give our characters flaws.
Because without them they would not be real.
Without them you risk them being boring.

With flaws you give motivation to a character perhaps the desire to overcome them. Or from their reaction to these flaws you give substance and motivation to other characters you are writing.
You write a bad person and you grab the interest of the reader for their flaws alone.

Even if you have a perfect person, for e.g a nun,
This nun is saintly but how much more appealing she will be if she has a little flaw - perhaps an addiction for jelly babies.

But you could also have an apparently saintly nun whose flaw is for gossip, or envy and again she becomes far more interesting.

You can use the big flaws to your advantage too.
For it will give you a greater understanding of the person.

Why is a woman promiscuous.
Why has another had an affair.
Why is someone an alcoholic.

Problems and the solving of them will be affected by the flaws you choose to give a character.
One who worries is going to have a bigger problem dealing with bankruptcy rather than the one who never worries about anything. The jealous woman is going to be more suspicious of her man returning late than one who does not know what jealousy is.


Dealing with conflict aided or hindered by character flaws will add to the conflict and thus the pace.