A question of pace

[John Dean]

I am editing the first draft of a new Jack Harris novel at the moment and my big preoccupation is pace.

Learning how to write a narrative with the right pace is one of the most crucial writing skills. Get it wrong and you are jeopardising your chances of success. Get it right and you are onto something.

In this case, there are some sections where characters are repeating what others have already said in other passages.

Deleting some lines has removed such sections, eradicated the slowing of pace that they caused and kept the narrative going. Thus (hopefully) keeping the reader interested.

Making such cuts may be painful, given how much effort went into writing the scenes in the first place, but it is a crucial process for any writer. The difference between success and failure.

It probably means that, at the end of the edit, I will have to replace 2,000 words to retain the novel’s length but they’ll be a better 2,000 words than the ones that were there.