“Pace yourself.”
In my running days in the Marine Corps, I heard this imperative regularly. Perhaps you’ve heard it too. It means managing how quickly or slowly you run your distance. If you plan to run a mile, you don’t run the whole distance at a sprint like you would the 100-yard dash.
You can apply this same principle in establishing the pacing of your story and each scene. Not every scene is a dash; not every scene is a slow walk. Over the full length of the story, the pace will vary. But your story must have a continuous forward progression.
“Nearly all narratives…require forward motion and change over time, whether that change occurs in the narrator/characters or in the reader’s perception of the narrator or characters.” ~ Laurie Alberts, Showing & Telling
We want to know the story is moving forward to an end result.
[Read more…] about Pacing — What It Is and How to Manage It