Pacing. Your New Superpower.

How to keep readers turning the page.

Welcome, new subscribers! If you’re just now joining us for this series, or want to catch up, all of my previous posts about writing can be found here. You can scroll to the bottom to read them in order, or simply read what interests you. We’ve covered Premise, Story Shape, Characters, Central Questions, Plot, Story Frames, and much more. But today I’ll be sharing some of my favorite techniques when it comes to Pacing.

Image credit: Stephane on Pixabay

Do something for me: imagine the person who will read your novel. (Hi. Hello. It’s you I have in mind when I do this with my own work). Imagine her there on the train on her way to work—she likely has to get off in three stops. Or maybe she’s in the doctor’s office. She’s brought a book along because she doesn’t want to sit on her phone while she waits. But the clock is ticking, and they’ll call her name soon. Or perhaps she’s in the carpool line waiting to get her kids. School lets out in ten minutes. Maybe she has half an hour to read before bed and she’s cozied up beneath the comforter. Point is, she probably doesn’t have the whole day to sit and read.

This, my friend, is heart of pacing.

It’s science and art. Story and Writing. Pacing, I believe, is the one part of the writing process that has a foot planted in each of these two distinct art forms.

I’ve covered the story part—plot and subplot—extensively in this series (also see here, here, and here), so today I want to focus on building your story on the physical page. I want to give you practical tools to ensure that your reader won’t put the book down.

Here are four techniques that I swear by: