Yesterday, my friend recounted a story to me in which someone said to her, "Now don't rush, but hurry up!" The more I thought about it, the more I realized just how perfect this statement is. This is exactly what you want to do with you a novel. You want to hurry yourself to the action; to the real meat of the story. But you don't want to rush getting there, or leave out any of the crucial parts.
Pacing is a complex problem that will come with every novel. Of course, we all go into a novel with a certain plan, knowing roughly how much time we are looking to cover, and how we want the narrative voice to read. But the difficulty of figuring out the level of detail that you want to describe, how to do so in an interesting manner, and then keeping this consistent throughout can sometimes prove challenging — particularly when you want your pacing to keep the reader engaged, and always wondering what will happen next.
This is something I've been thinking a lot about over the past two weeks while working on my third round of revision for my manuscript. My mentor instructed me to go back through every scene, and really evaluate how I could tighten things up, or if I really needed a scene at all. This type of evaluation was really aimed at the questions, "Do your readers really need to know this?" and "How does the exposition/dialogue/event further the story?"
As I went through my manuscript line by line, I realized there were three main areas were I could enhance and contribute to the pace of my story. First, I looked for material that I could cut. These sections were in some way unnecessary. This could be a description of a place or person that just doesn't need to be in the story, or a conversation that doesn't further reveal or build character, or maybe just a statement of the obvious that the reader can glean for herself. Perhaps it' two lines, or two paragraphs, or two pages, but cutting unnecessary material can increase the pacing significantly.
Next, I really looked at dialogue. Dialogue is something that can help the reader get a lot of information in short spurts, and deepens character. But because you want the dialogue to have a quick movement, longer monologues and lengthy conversations are often something to avoid. This was particularly important for me because of the age of my character. Thirteen year old boys are not often very verbose, so I tried to pare down my character's words particularly when it came to any type of repetition.
The third area I looked at was exposition. In my first draft I had tons of exposition to start the story. Now, most of it is gone, and the action of my story starts right when you read the very first page. This meant that I had to figure out ways for information to come through a variety of sources as the novel continued, but not in such away that it slowed down the action. Good exposition can be one or two lines, so I tried to focus on key pieces of information, rather than general descriptions.
While this is something to be aware of in the first draft, I think pacing is an element that needs to be looked at in revision, when you've gotten everything you wanted down on the page and can then see the whole scope of what you're working with. And just as pacing for each of your projects will be different, so, too, will your revisions. But the key thing is that for each of your manuscripts, you only want to include what's necessary. You want to plunge your reader into the action and keep them steadily wanting more and not feel as though they are plodding through or digging for some buried treasure. You want to remove the debris from the path and provide a clear line toward the destination, all while not take too long to get there.
So like following any treasure map, creating the right pacing may not be easy, but it certainly can be done.
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