Pacing issues - How fast do you like your fics?

I tend to find that slower-paced fics are nice, because I enjoy really getting to know the characters. But at the same time, I don't have the attention span to be reading more than a couple of longer fics.

One pet peeve of mine is when people throw up a whole lot of backstory at the very beginning of a story. I think you have to start caring about the people in it first. They just have to be interesting enough to get me involved without knowing that their parents were killed in a freak accident, that they watched Anakin podrace once, etc. Would you ask a boring-seeming person about their childhood right off? It's sort of like that.

 

Oh, wow, a zombie thread!

Pacing is an issue I?ve been giving thought to as of late. My early fics were all quite quick, oftentimes too quick. That seems to be common among young writers (young in writing, not necessarily in age ? I?m only 16 but have logged a lot of pages). An advantage is that you couldn?t easily lose interest, since every post had a firefight or some other major event.

Later fics maintained that philosophy, but gave more time to fully explore situations and characters? within reason. Since I?m principally an OC writer, I usually like to convey backstory somehow. Sometimes I don?t, just for mystery?s sake. But when I do, I use an event in the present that will justify the characters talking or thinking about the past. If the knowledge won?t affect the story, either plot-wise or character development-wise, I typically leave it out for later.

For example, Alias Sibul, a supporting character in Galaxy Noir III, was a source of humor and relatively important to advancing the plot. However, he didn?t have the screen time for an arc. So I left why he is the way he is alone in that one. Instead, I wrote the one-poster Broken for a challenge. It was set in his youth, and showed the critical event that shaped him. What I thought was an interesting background still got read, but I didn?t have to bog down the other story with it.

Also, if I know I?m going into a slower patch, I?ll hint at more interesting events to come. Sometimes I?ll start a scene with a line of dialogue, then go to a brief version of the intro oqi talked about, then into the other character?s response.

The story I?m working on now, however, is an epic (way too many characters to introduce, develop, and kill off ) that connects to three other stories, as well as fifteen ?lost years? that the readers don?t see. So I need to establish all-new status quos for almost everyone as well as get into the new plot. I knew to re-establish my main characters in their new environments, I would want a prologue of a typical day in their lives now. The point of the story is how these people adjust to a normal civilian-type life (poorly). Which means that a day in their lives is mundane. So, since I had a brutal serial killer returning soon enough, I showed just a hint of the first homicide within the prologue.

That solved that. But what about the rest? I don?t have the luxury of throwing in extra action sequences that secretly don?t advance the plot, because each firefight should be a big deal and happen at very specific times. It?s supposed to be a mystery, with elements of action, humor, and drama thrown in for kicks and giggles.

Any thoughts? Is there something more exciting than clue-gathering and suspect-questioning I could add alongside? Or should I just accept the slower pace and hope my readers will follow along based on the character issues between bloody deaths?

 

Well, I can't very well ignore a thread I'm being referenced in.
It looks like there are some really clever ideas being thrown around in here on the subject of pacing. The false resolution philosophy - great workaround if you find yourself unhappy with an already established pace. Oqi's Template is, of course, highly effective. Of note:

In stories where chapters change POVs, i.e., a different character in a different situation is the focal point, it?s very important to make sure your reader knows from the get-go what?s going on and whose eyes they?re seeing through or shadowing.

One thing to keep in mind when writing is that when a reader Takes In a given character, they're also jumbling all the incidental stuff into that conception. So the way you write him/her/it, their personal point of view, the setting, the way you describe things while this character is onscreen, it all gets heaped into the essence of that character. Keeping those elements in conscious mind will allow you to jump back into that character very easily. And the more you're aware of this prior to beginning the story, the better off you'll be.

Oqi has some great examples of this in "Burn". I recall that many chapters using Elitrea's POV began with a simile between a current event and death. When you saw "Death was like..." at the start of a chapter, you knew instantly where you were.



To get closer to the topic, I'd say speed is something that should never be consistent. There are times for fast and there are times for slow. In fencing, the key to victory is all in distance. Move consistently slow and you'll never close the gap. Move consistently fast and the problem persists. Only someone who can do both as they please will gain reliable wins.

Literary examples of what I'm talking about that are much, much better than my own stories (which Oqi and C_A insisted on making examples of anyway) can be found in the Terry Pratchet "Diskworld" series, and to even further extremes in "HG to the G" by Douglas Adams. There are moments of extreme intensity, and moments that seem to linger in space for eons. And the decison to use one over the other? sometimes, it is dictated by the whim of the narrator and nothing more. But a lot of times, what you tend to see in a given action scene are a continuous stream of cliffhanger-like moments. You could just sprint through them all to get that 'fast as lightning' feel, or you could use those minicliffies to your advantage, slowing or even stopping altogether your narrative at just the 'wrong' moment. Now you have a series of suspensful moments peppering your action scene, and everyone's reading them intently because they really, really want to know if that blaster bolt caught Dirk Strongbeef in the head or bounced off his helmet. (Of course, it would still be the wrong moment to describe the various species of plant growing in the nearby wood. Sorry Tolkien.)


That said, don't make the mistake of equating fast pace with action. They are not synonyms. Although not a common thing, there are detective novels with a fast pace. Really the pace is dictated by how the story is editorialized. Sure, you could focus on the fact-finding and clue-gathering and incidental-witness-conversing. I mean, I bet some of it is interesting. But if you feel like you yourself are becoming bored, don't be afraid to give your narrator a little ADD. During a single boring conversation, there often as many as ten other things happening within your visual range that are more worthy of your attention. Never forget that.

That's what I have to say about that. And I apologize for the fencing analogy.