December 10, 2019
How to Control the Narrative Pace
Controlling the narrative pace is an aspect of writing that most authors aspire to learn. However, it’s also a fairly misunderstood concept. To learn how to control the narrative pace you must know three things: how, when, and – most importantly – why.
First of all, a quick definition: The narrative pace (or narrative pacing) of a story refers to the speed at which the author offers the story. Obviously, this isn’t linked to the speed at which the events of the story occur.
Indeed, as we’ll see in this post, the discrepancy between the two is a key component. The difference between these two – speed of narrative versus speed of plot – is integral in figuring out how to control the narrative pace.
To Control Narrative Pace, You must First Know Why
Although in the introduction I referred to the why part as a last thing (after how and when), we’ll begin with it first. It’s the most crucial, after all. How can we understand anything at all without first knowing why it should occur?
The reason controlling the narrative pace is important goes back to a core aspect of writing fiction. I have mentioned this many, many times on Home for Fiction. I’ll mention it once more:
The goal of fiction is, deep down, to express affect; not facts (that’d be the realm of nonfictionOf course this is only the ideal. In most real-life cases, there is affect introduced, rather inevitably, and sometimes even deliberately. To put it simply, all too often nonfiction authors will try to appeal to your emotions rather than the truth.).
How Does Narrative Pace Affect…Affect?
When we say that a novel (or any work of fiction) aims to express affect, we mean that fiction – and art in general – aims to instigate an affective reaction in the audience: feelings, thoughts, and states of mind.
A good horror story wants to scare you – and a great horror story does so by going beyond itself, reaching out to you. Dracula isn’t scary because of blood-drinking vampires, but because – operating on an entirely subconscious level – it speaks about repressed sexuality, class anxiety, and all sorts of things that are often unspeakable.
Similarly a good literary fiction story wants to make you reflect on the grand life questions: Who are we, why are things the way they are? Why do we love – and why do we stay in clearly unpleasant situations?
I mentioned these two examples, horror and literary fiction, because they have pretty unique requirements when it comes to controlling the narrative pace.
For a literary-fiction story, pace is of secondary importance; in the sense that, as long as its other, more significant components – realistic characters, ample symbolism, and themes of societal importance – are there, there is some flexibility in terms of pace. The narrative journey can move fast or it can move slowly; it can jump forward years at a time in the span of a few pages, or it can dedicate whole chapters for a single hour.
With horror, however, pace is critical. Since horror focuses on scaring you, it must communicate (among other things) a sense of urgency. It must literally make your mental clock tick faster, creating a crescendo that implies a liminal point.
How Do You Control the Narrative Pace?
There are various strategies to help you control the narrative pace of your work. Remember, deep down it’s all a matter of balancing between speed of plot versus speed of narrative. In other words, it’s a matter of what happens in your story versus what you tell the reader. Find a feel for rhythm.
Don’t Show, Don’t Tell
An old writing adage claims you should show and not tell. Well, when it comes to narrative pacing, I say you should sometimes neither show nor tell.
If you go back to my post on linearity, you’ll see me saying this:
[A narrative] is more than just the sum of its parts. There is a vast abstract area hidden “around” words (quotation marks because it’s not space-bound), where meaning resides. And a nonlinear narrative progression is one of the tools the writer can use to exploit this fact.
Just because event A, event B, and event C happen in your story, it doesn’t mean you should necessarily tell the reader. Moreover, if event A lasts a day, event B a week, and event C a month, that doesn’t oblige you to dedicate a proportional length in your narrative if you do decide to tell the reader. Few things in writing annoy me more than a 5-page description of a brick wall, and you should apply the same methodology with anything not absolutely necessaryWhat is "absolutely necessary" in a narrative could be an entire post of its own; briefly, something that is absolutely necessary in a narrative is something integral for the narrative to make sense. This does not refer to leaving things unexplained - most quality literary fiction should leave empty space for the reader to fill. Rather, "making sense" in this context refers to narrative inevitability. Take a look at my post on narrative endings. to your narrative.
Time, Pacing, and Sequence
Time is the key component of my doctoral dissertation. I have studied it for “five long years” (well, actually more). And let me tell you, perhaps nobody has said it better than Russell West-Pavlov, who argues that time is one of the greatest self-contradictions known to man, as it is
both eminently common-sensical and highly abstract at once … [a] paradoxical mixture of not-needing-to-be-discussed and not-being-able-to-be-discussed [that] constitutes a double subterfuge which is one of the most effective conspiracies of modernity.
West-Pavlov, Russell. Temporalities. Oxon: Routledge, 2013. pp. 4-5
In terms of controlling the narrative pace, sequencing is an important tool at your disposal. At its most basic level this means that, if event C comes after event B, which comes after event A in the plot, this doesn’t oblige you to offer them to your reader in the same order. Let’s visit my post on nonlinear progressions once more. Compare the following two examples:
Example 1
Last weekend I went to New York and met a guy named John. Today I saw John walking down the street here, in Boston. We agreed to go fishing next Sunday.
Example 2
Next Sunday I’ll go fishing with a guy named John. I saw him today walking down the street. I’d met him last weekend, when I’d gone to New York.
It becomes obvious that example 2, where the narrative sequence is different from the plot sequence, carries much more affective weight. “What do you mean ‘a guy named John’, who is he?” “You saw him down the street and now you’re going fishing? I don’t get it.” “Ah, OK, now I see. You’d already met him earlier.”
At this point you might ask how does a differing sequence like this affect the narrative pace. The answer is fairly simple: Precisely because it’s unexpected, effectively (and affectively!) destabilizing the anticipated, plot-based sequence, it creates a temporal “block”. That is, it forces the reader to slow down and figure things out.
“Ah, I see”, you might now say. “So, if I write horror, or crime fiction, or adventure fiction, and I want a fast-paced narrative, I should avoid this, right?”
No; not quite. This will eventually take us to the “when” part of how to control narrative pace, but first we must talk about another, relevant issue.
Compartmentalization
This is pretty straightforward. Long formations – sentences, paragraphs, chapters – make the narrative feel longer/slower. Shorter ones cause the opposite effect.
That’s the reason most genres strongly relying on a fast pace (such as horror, as we mentioned) generally feature shorter chapters. There is an important footnote, however.
Whereas to create a fast pace (the urgency I referred to earlier) shorter formations are required, the perception of length is relative. In other words, such formations will appear short and fast-paced only if paired with longer ones.
And so, ultimately, narrative pacing isn’t solely about speed. Rather, it’s about recognizing how to manipulate the perception of speed your audience forms.
Which brings us to a significant element regarding the control of narrative pace: Deciding when to do it.
When to Control the Narrative Pace?
As I showed you earlier, talking about horror versus literary fiction, genre is a significant aspect of learning how to control the narrative pace. In more detail, however, the rationale behind this has to do with timing.
In other words, each genre has a unique approach to deciding the right time to control the narrative pacing. Yeah, I know, it’s complex; you’re basically controlling timing by… picking the right time to do so. As with many other things, it comes with experience.
Generally speaking, the strategies described in the previous section have a higher impact when you deploy them in the right place. Remember, you can’t just create a narrative full of short sentences, paragraphs and chapters simply to create a “fast-paced novel”. That would only feel like a mad, almost incoherent dash.
So, again, when should you speed up the narrative pace? Which, inevitably, poses the accompanying question: And when should you slow it down?
Slowing Down…
Let’s start with this first, because it’s the hardest to master. Plus, once you take care of slowing down, speeding up almost takes care of itself.
When I was a young(er) and stupid(er) author, I was always in a hurry. I had all these grand ideas that I was eager to put into words. I didn’t care about character development or subtlety. To me, a novel was all about plot. It took me years to realize that plots are meaningless if the rest of the ingredients are missing from the soup.
Understanding this also helped me see the importance of slowing down. I learned to be patient. I grasped the importance of building up reader expectation. Which brings us to what you could now take as the key point in controlling narrative pace:
Narrative pace is about the scenes that don’t matter.
Even if you could write a book that is fast-paced from the first page until the last one, you shouldn’t do that. It’s not about speed; it’s about tempo. Have you ever watched a guitarist shredding at tremendous speed? It looks kinda cool as a technical feat, but unless there’s an evolution – a pacing – between passages, it’s pointless from an artistic perspective.
Take care of the scenes that “don’t matter”, that is, the scenes between action in your story. You don’t like writing them – not as much as the scenes containing the “good stuff”, but they’re crucial (which, paradoxically, means they do matter after all). Why? Because they give your readers a sense of perspective and relativity.
Be patient, take your time, and slow down the pace with such parts.
…So That You Can Speed Up!
Once you focus on slowing down where you need to do so, speeding up is comparatively easier. Besides, these are the scenes where the action takes place, the scenes you’re eager to showAt least I assume; I doubt you’re more eager to write about the family moving into the farmhouse than the spirit haunting it and causing odd noises at nighttime! your reader.
And so, “cometh the hour”, a faster pace will probably begin to occur naturally in your writing: You will probably opt for staccato sentences, brief paragraphs, and short chapters. And you can always go back to these scenes during your editing and treat them accordingly.
Controlling the Narrative Pace Is an Exclusion Process
When all is said and done, controlling the narrative pace is not about what you add, but about what you leave out.
When it comes to the parts of your novel that focus on action and require a faster pace, taking three pages to describe a brick wall is pointless. Well, if you ask me, that’s always pointless, but that’s another… point.
On the other hand, your readers need time to process a fast-paced scene; to catch their breath, so to speak. These parts in-between action are those that you must learn to slow down. Otherwise, the effect is severely diluted.
As Hegel might have said, it’s the presence of these opposite notions – slow and fast – that allows us to understand their individual essence and importance. Imagine watching on TV five Ferraris racing next to one another. You kinda assume they’re fast, but you’d get a perception of their speed only if you squeezed in a VW Beetle between them.