Tuesday's Writer's Tip - Hints About Pacing #MFRWauthor #BWLPublishing #Pacing #Hints

One of the writer's jobs is to control the pace of their story. Writing always in quick staccato prose can leave a reader breathless and move the story to an abrupt ending. Writing in long flowing sentences fullof phrases and clauses can make the reader feel like they're mired in mud. The choice is for the writer to decide.

An action scene is usually told in shorter sentences to drive the action along. But sometimes both the characters and the reader need a break. Though in an action scene, if the sentences are long and the action is broken by long descriptive passages, the reader wants to shout "Get on with it." So pacing is important to any story.

A book is made up of scenes and the writer must decide if a scene is to be fast, slow or inbetween. This can be hard to decide but of curse in writing, there are general rules. Also remember in writing, rules can be broken. The book has a beginning, a middle and an end. All these parts have their own pacing and learning just how to pace the story is important. So in the next few weeks, we'll look at each segment of a book.