Move along now - some thoughts on pace

[John Dean]

As a writer, the question of pace dominates my thinking. Whether I am doing final edits on a novel or starting a new one (both of which I have done in the past week) the rate at which the story moves is crucial.

Pace should not be confused with speed. A story with good pace need not necessarily move fast but what it will do is move at a pace that ensures that the reader does not become bored.

The key is to work out the job that each passage does  - what do you want a scene to achieve? Is it to pass on plot information, is it there to inject energy through dramatic events, is it there for right relief?

Having identified the end goal, the writer needs to ensure that every word, every piece of dialogue, every event, helps achieve it. If it doesn’t, it’s slowing down the pace and must go.

So, it’s a good idea to read through your draft and pick out any areas where you feel the plot slows. Keep only what is necessary to tell the story.

It may mean cutting out scenes that you thought were important when you wrote them. That happened to me with my recent novel, Last Man Alive. My editor at publisher The Book Folks suggested that three fairly short sections could go. I thought that they were important but, having looked at them again, they only repeated what had been said elsewhere in a different form and were disrupting the pace of the story. When I deleted them, the story was none the worse for it.

It's those kind of decisions that can dramatically improve a novel because get the pace right and you’ll keep the reader turning the page.