Have you ever wondered why a book that has a solid plot structure can receive reviews that say the pace dragged? There are other issues outside of the plot that can cause pacing problems. The four pacing problems I address most often as a line editor are repeated information, unnecessary stage direction, repetition in word choice and sentence structure, and extra dialogue tags. These provide four keys to using pacing to retain readers.
Resist the Urge To Explain
It’s easy to worry whether readers will understand something you’ve written. Clarity is important. But don’t sacrifice pacing because you’re worried about clarity.
There’s an initialism editors use frequently: RUE. Resist the urge to explain. It means you shouldn’t repeat the same information in a different way. This is one way in which fiction writing differs from nonfiction. Your readers will get it the first time. And if there truly is a clarity issue, your editor or beta readers will flag it and let you know.
I read a book by an award-winning author with a tendency to overexplain. About every fourth sentence was a repeat of information, just said in a different way. The book was about a hundred pages longer than it should have been. This book won an award, and by the end of it, I understood why. It was a fantastic story. I started to read the next book in the series, but I only made it past the first couple of chapters because the writing was the same. These books were well-edited in every other way, so either there was no line editor or the author rejected any cuts to these unnecessary sentences.
Many people enjoy this author’s books, so obviously, repeated information does not bother everyone. This issue may be a personal pet peeve, likely stemming from my background in concise newswriting. But I’m not the only one who will put down a book because of this.
Don’t make your readers feel like you think they won’t get it the first time. It will cause the pacing to drag, and readers will get bored or, worse, feel insulted. Read through your manuscript with an eye for repeated information.
Resist Overwriting
Details are important … unless they’re not. The more time you spend describing something, the more important it had better be to the story. This is called proportion.
Readers expect any details purposely included by the author to be important, so don’t write things that can be assumed, particularly unnecessary stage direction.
If your character is leaving the house, readers don’t need to know that he sat down, put on his shoes, tied his laces, stood up, gripped the door handle, turned the handle, stepped out, shut the door, and locked the door. If you specify that he set the alarm before leaving, that’s a cue to the reader that the alarm may be important later. Maybe someone will break in. Maybe the alarm will inexplicably be turned off when he gets back.
Readers expect their attention to details to pay off later in the story. If you include too many details that end up not mattering, they will start to feel like they might as well not pay attention. If you include the details of how a character made coffee, then that coffee had better be poisoned if you want to keep your readers’ interest.
Resist Repetition
Repetition is boring, whether it’s repetition on a large scale (repeated information) or on a small scale, such as repetition in word choice and sentence structure.
Everyone has pet words and phrases that they just really like and tend to overuse, but these can start to stick out after even a couple of uses. This is where editors and beta readers can be so useful. And once you know what your pet words are, do a search through your manuscript to see how many times you used them.
Repetitious sentence structure sets a boring pace. This can be difficult to spot yourself unless you read your manuscript out loud. I loved everything about my son’s fifth grade history curriculum except the fact that the structure of almost every sentence was subject, verb, object. It was interesting content, but it sure didn’t sound interesting when I was reading it out loud. I started throwing in conjunctions and fragments just to change up the rhythm of what I was reading.
Sentence length should vary too. Use a mixture of short and long sentences in every scene, but lean toward shorter sentences for faster-paced scenes and longer sentences for slower scenes.
Resist Overusing Dialogue Tags
Use only as many dialogue tags as you need to clarify who is speaking.
Generally, readers don’t pay much attention to the standard “he said” or “she said.” Unless there is blatant overuse of them.
Dialogue between only two characters needs fewer tags, and tags aren’t needed if there is an action beat attached to the dialogue that makes it clear who is speaking. Comb through your manuscript looking at each line of dialogue, and ask yourself if a tag is needed.
Take an especially hard look at any tags that aren’t “said.” Many times, these repeat the tone of the dialogue and aren’t needed at all. For example, if there is an exclamation point, don’t use “exclaimed” as the tag. Or if a line of dialogue comes off as whiny, you don’t need to emphasize that by using “whined” as the tag. If a character says something particularly sharp, using “snapped” as the dialogue tag is just redundant.
Eliminating repeated information, unnecessary stage direction, repetition in word choice and sentence structure, and extra dialogue tags makes such a difference in the enjoyment readers find in a book. It’s the difference between feeling like a book is taking too long to finish and feeling like the book will be over too soon.
For more ways to improve the pacing of your novel and cut unnecessary words, see this post: Make Every Word Count.