 Hello everybody E here welcome back to another from the desk. We're gonna do the format a little differently Today, let me know down there in the comments whether or not you like it today. We're going to be talking about pacing I don't know what episode this is, but I think we're up to the 20s now from the desk I've stopped number numbering them because they don't really need to be watched in any certain kind of order so today the Like I said, the topic is pacing When you're writing the the number one thing you want to make sure that you don't bore your reader even authors who are considered by Most people to be boring someone like a Donna Tartt Believes that the a novelist. This is a quote from her a novelist first Job is to Intertain you want to make sure that the person who is reading your stuff is Intertained does that mean you should try to please everybody? No, it doesn't I think right off the bat You're the very first person you want to try and please is yourself I got this this is coming from this advice is coming from Stephen King. It's not it's not mine It's something he goes over in on writing. You also want to find a a Your your very own constant reader Someone who you are writing the book for it doesn't have in fact It shouldn't be a group of people It should only be one person and as long as that person is happy with the book then you have Succeeded this also goes on when when do you know when pacing or when do you know when your story is a success? the way I judge it is With someone who does not know me if they read the book and pick up on the themes The thematic elements that those kind of things that I was going for the stuff that is not said Literally, but figuratively figuratively in subtext if they pick up on those things I know that I have succeeded in the book like recently my friend Landon read everything is horrible now And he sent me a message saying such and such and such and such and I was like yes Nailed it. Now. I did not write the book for Landon, but he got it And me and him did not discuss anything about the book He didn't know what I was trying to go for what I was doing with the book and he got the themes So that is a success now as far as pacing is concerned. How do you keep your reader engaged? I know some ways Basically you want to do the opposite of the things I'm about to say You don't want info dumps. You don't want entire chapters full of expository dialogue You want to put a little bit a Little bit throughout the book. You want to space out your information another thing from Stephen King is a good story doesn't give up all of its mysteries at once You want if you have one big overall mystery, of course It might seem obvious you want to say that to the end of course But you also need something to carry the reader from chapter to chapter page to page What I do a natural way of doing this is have a point for every single chapter I'm not saying plot. I'm saying once you sit down you start writing Nowadays I write chapter to chapter or page break to page break if the book doesn't have chapters What basically means is I do scene by scene and the purpose of this is but I always leave off the end of the scene Which if you read books like modern-day thrillers, what they'll do is they will cut the the chapters You're not reading to the end of the chapter. You're reading to the middle of the scene and that's how they keep you reading It's a false sense of progression. It makes you feel. Oh, I've read 20 20 chapters already I can read another 20, you know, it makes it really really easy to read now a natural way of doing that is to Yourself leave off The writing of the chapter you're going to leave information for the next day. So instead of finishing that chapter Today, let's say you're writing a certain scene where Someone gets killed. Let's just do a really easy one The death is going to come at the end of that end of the scene But you're not going to write the end of that scene until the next day So that way you when you come back to it tomorrow You are going to be drawn to write that death scene. The death scene will come out in more detail Especially if you've written if you write like 2,000 words a day if you stop at 1,800 and you know what those last 200 words are going to be save them for the next day And that carries the momentum over now how that works for the reader is that they will also Continue that momentum over because writing for long stretches. We tend to rush things trust me This is I am one of the only authors editors have worked with I get this all the time where an editor says you're the First author I've had to work I've worked with where I had to tell them to add more detail and the reasoning for that is as I get I'm up. I'm a panther. I don't want to get in the plotting pantsing Discussion here, but I write everything I try to get my thoughts out as quickly as possible because my my rough draft is my outline It's my me telling myself the story And eat but even when I go back and do multiple drafts. I don't get the whole thing I don't get the whole picture and sometimes I don't add in the stuff that other people want to see and like Okay, why don't you tell us what the room looks like silly that kind of thing? but your excitement and your need to tell the story is going to carry over to the reader if you are excited for something if a scene is exciting your reader is going to be One of them at least because there's at least one other person that has your same taste out there But there's no guarantee that this is the job for you. That's another thing That's another problem. You have to look at is whether or not, you know, this is for you. Can you fake it? Yeah, you can fake it There's plenty of bad writers out there doing very very well for themselves but You you want and even even on their end you want to have fun With the work because when you do not have fun with it it shows Now what you can do is you can always fall back on Artificial progression, which is literally stopping a chapter in the middle of a scene modern-day thrillers do that It's like I said, it's an artificial way of progressing the Making the reader feel like they are progressing farther into the book And artificiality isn't always a bad thing. I don't suppose I don't care for it myself But it it seems like a cheat Just like most most cliffhangers feel like a cheat especially if it's at the end of a book It's like now I have to wait until the next book comes out It's less of it. It feels like less of a cheat in a in from chapter to chapter because you have that chapter ready to go Right, but it's the same thing. You're leaving people on a cliffhanger at the end Whereas the bit you you have your main story cliffhanger and then you have your little subplots or whatnot And you have your scenes. How is the scene gonna end is your character going to survive? So on and so forth Um, there there are ways of making a book unput downable That's even a word um making a book fast-paced without even having chapters Um, it all depends on you know the the point of view that you're writing the book from Let's say you for instance, uh, my book the sound of broken ribs. It has no chapters. It has three parts Um part one is about a hundred pages long part two is about a hundred pages long And then the last part is just a few pages long. Uh, basically that's not Exact but uh, that's basically how the book is set up and then it's broken up into page breaks How how I kept the momentum forward without any chapters and kept people reading was I did an alternating pov between two different characters. Um, sometimes I stuck in a third character or a fourth character Um, but if you want to do that you want to make sure that there's no confusion in whose head you're in always start your chapter with You know the the new character's uh name or you know something that makes it very positive very Very apparent right off the bat that it's another character. Um, another way to do it is to have a alternating Uh present day and past situation like in my novel life after dain You're gonna hop back and forth between present day and the past where it's a more natural feeling cliffhanger situation Um, where you have you show a certain section in the present and then you show why that's important in the past And then you jump back to the present show, you know some more what not and that's a that's a nice natural way to progress the story um I don't recommend doing the cliffhanger chapters. Um, but they are extremely Popular You can pick up any thriller that is out right now. You can pick up Just i'm trying to think of one that doesn't do it Um, and every single one of those those chapters is going to end in either the middle of a thought Or the middle of a scene. There's a famous one that I like to bring up from uh Joseph Knox's sirens where he has a chapter the only thing in this chapter that I'm talking about It is a page and a half long and it is only the description of a building But he gets it out of the way. He sets it aside in its own little chapter and then he moves on with the story Um, I think that's hilarious. Um, another thing is you don't want to get the reader into a false sense of flow Another thing is if you're going to do short chapters only do short chapters If you're going to do long chapters, you need to pick the length of your chapters the longer those chapters are They need to be consistent throughout Um, I'm reading a book now which has annoyed the hell out of me. Um, the chapters were anywhere from 15 to 20 pages long And then all of a sudden I have a 50 page chapter Um, it breaks the entire flow of the book. I don't know when I want to stop Do I want to stop? Do I even want to read the book anymore? That's odd That's an odd thought but that's a thought I had Do I even want to read the book anymore because those 15 to 20 page chapters were long as they were And now I have a 50 page chapter. I have to get through. Um, at least with people like John Irving Who writes 50 to 100 page chapters? You know or Donna Tart, you know what you're getting into Um, once you read that first chapter and that first chapter is 50 pages long, you know If you're a type the type of reader that you know has to finish a chapter you know that you're going to be there for a while So another way to set up your pacing is to make sure that all of your chapters are the same length That gives the the reader themselves an idea That how long they are going to be there? Um, some now some readers don't pay attention to this I'm just telling you tricks that I've learned throughout the years Um, some readers just don't care that they'll stop in the middle of a chapter They'll dog ear the page and move on about their business and come back to it later I'm not one of those readers. I will dog ear, but I will not stop in the middle of a chapter Unless it's an emergency now As far as the story goes with pacing and this is probably what most of you are here for Again, you want to have fun if at any point in time you have to you stop and go man How am I going to speed this up? You were screwing up about 300 500 words ago If you are already tired of this chapter this scene or whatever you need to find a way to whittle it down Does that mean you need to stop right then and do it? No, that's for later drafts Always with the first draft you're telling yourself sell the story Get it out get it done and then come back to it once it's done because the the secret here is you cannot fix What does not exist? So you want to finish it now You really uh pacing is a second draft third draft fourth draft kind of thing You don't want to be worrying about these things when you're trying to get the book done Um, these are things like spell check. I know it sounds weird spell check grammar check all that stuff editing of any kind You want to save that stuff until after the rough draft? Um, the rough draft is called a rough draft for a reason you want to get it out and get it done now For pacing and story elements you always want to make sure that you are progressing the story forward on every single page There has to be at least one line that progresses the story forward that makes your reader go Okay, this is important to the plot whether it be a line of dialogue a line in a narrative Whatever it might be you want to progress it and that's how you chop up exposition Let's say you have uh, something that you need um, you need four lines of dialogue to convey a certain message You take those four lines of dialogue and you chop them up into natural dialogue while somebody's talking about don't do this But somebody's talking about the weather somebody's asking how their cousin's doing Then you want to sneak in those things. Oh by the way such and such Oh by the way this and that but nobody ever sits no nobody even people who tell stories naturally, you know like around a campfire No, no one sits down and tells a story from a to b. There's always a back back and forth There's always some kind of you know flim flam of the time frame there It's just the way the human brain works it jumps around with important information And that's what you should do with your stories is jump around with important information That keeps the reader reading and that keeps them engaged and they get just enough information to keep on going But you still have that mystery there to keep them going all the way until the end I hope all that makes sense if it doesn't let me know down there in the comments below I'm happy to add and answer any questions you guys have about the writing process But until next time I have been a you've been you this has been another from the desk. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye. Bye