Pacing: The heartbeat of your writing

Pacing can make or break the life of your written work. Too slow and your reader's mind wanders. Too fast and they're left wondering what happened. How can you make the pacing of your piece work for you?

First, pay attention to genre and intention. Short fiction that feels long is all down to pacing. What slows down the pacing in a short story? Big chunks of description that aren't moving the plot along. If your character hears a strange noise outside and it takes three pages for her to investigate the noise because you've described each room she passes through, you've slowed down the pacing and the suspense.

Ask yourself if your sensory details directly relate to the problem at hand. If not, consider swapping them for details that do. If your character hears a strange noise outside, does the reader care what each room she walks through looks like before getting outside to investigate? Probably not. Your reader would care about how your protagonist is feeling in that moment. Are they scared? Sweaty? Do they think the noise might be coming from the abandoned shack in the woods? Can they hear their own heartbeat in their ears the closer they get to the sound? Those are plot moving sensory details that keep your pacing on track.

Not varying sentence structure is another pace killer. Alternating between short or simple sentences and longer compound and complex sentences keeps your reader from getting fatigued. Too many simple sentences make text robotic. Too many long sentences make things move slower. The best way to get a feel for the rhythm and pacing of your sentences is to read them aloud. Notice how many breaths you take between groups of words. These breath units will speak to the pacing of your piece. 

Lastly, trust your reader's ability to fill in details. When reading, our minds paint the scene for us. Therefore, large paragraphs of description are rarely necessary. Instead, try peppering sensory details into the action when it feels natural to do so. 

Don't: Molly heard a loud booming outside--not consecutively like a hammer into a nail but sporadically like thunder. The shadows on her bedroom wall danced in the moonlight to the hooting of the owl that lived in the tree outside her window. Walking toward the back door, she lingered in the dining room where the wallpaper seemed to move in time with the fan's blades. The wood floor felt cool under her feet because it was fall and the days had grown so gloomy that summer felt decades away from their little farm in the woods. 

Do: Molly heard a loud booming outside. Not consecutively like a hammer into a nail, but sporadic like thunder. She wondered if it was coming from the old mineshaft at the edge of the property. She threw on her robe. Boom. Boom. "What if the old man's back to look for his treasure?" she whispered to no one. Boom. She stepped into her boots, her heart in her throat. Boom. Boom. "What if he's mad that it's gone?" She ran to the kitchen, grabbed a flashlight, and fled into the dark. The booming grew louder the closer she got to the edge of her grandfather's land. Molly's hands began to shake. She wished she wasn't alone.