how to pace with writing fantasy.

[miguelsantosfiction]

Any one have any suggestions to pace my scenes. I tend to write short and I don't describe much.

 

[Flaviosky]

Well, I bet not everything in your stories are action scenes or situations of urgency, so you may zoom on your characters to know how the feel or perceive what's happening.

They look around, they sniff, the scratch their hair, they sheathe their swords, anything. That series of actions alone stretches the scene into a chain of small events that don't convey much speed.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Any one have any suggestions to pace my scenes. I tend to write short and I don't describe much.

Can you give us more detail on what you mean in terms of pacy? Dynamics are important, that is to say, changing pace. I think we need more info on your query before we can help.

 

[sknox]

I tend to do the same, but I've learned to regard that as first draft. When I revise, I take pains to consider sights, sounds, smells, but also emotions, tone (of the various characters present), distractions, interruptions, and so on.

That's all pacing within a scene. There's also pacing along arcs, pacing within paragraphs, etc.

But it sounds like what you're describing is the white room; that is, we have character in dialog and only dialog. Little to nothing about the room or other setting. Little to nothing about interior thoughts, reactions, other people, and so on. There's nothing wrong with writing that way on a first draft. You'll learn to go more slowly in the revision.

 

[Dragonlady]

I'm towards the end of a first draft and gave a small scene to my husband to read. He commented it went by quite quickly, so I went back over it, putting in more sensory details - I found this much easier than writing that way to start with. Are you writing in a first person or close third person that lets the reader into the characters' head? Sharing their thoughts can slow things down to, though as others have said, some scenes will naturally move faster than others. What sort of fantasy do you write - epic, action, urban, romance...?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But it sounds like what you're describing is the white room; that is, we have character in dialog and only dialog. Little to nothing about the room or other setting. Little to nothing about interior thoughts, reactions, other people, and so on. There's nothing wrong with writing that way on a first draft. You'll learn to go more slowly in the revision.

This is just about exactly what I would have said if sknox hadn't said it first.

When I was writing what turned out to be my first completed novel I could never seem to make the story long enough, so I kept adding in incidents and complications to the plot, but still I fell short. Then one day, I think it was somewhere around the second or third draft, something clicked and I suddenly learned how to write the kind of description that brings a scene to life (it was far from perfect, of course, but where there had been practically nothing but dialogue and action, out of nowhere it seemed there was suddenly a lot more). So when I started filling in all the other scenes in the same way, the whole book expanded.

Which is how my little novel that could never reach 200 pages as hard as I tried, suddenly exploded into a trilogy.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Sit down, think about the scene that you have written and then put it aside. Sketch out the scene with feelings, senses and thoughts. Rewrite the scene from scratch without looking at the previous draft.

 

[The Big Peat]

If you want to learn to pace a scene, take a scene you like, then write your own scene using that scene's timing as a guide. Their character speaks? Your character speaks. Their character has an inner monologue? Yours has an inner monologue. They scratch a body part and adjust clothing? Well, maybe they fiddle with the cutlery on the table, but they do something similar.

Do that - maybe do it multiple times- and you'll get your own internal sense of how to pace things.

 

[sknox]

When I was writing what turned out to be my first completed novel I could never seem to make the story long enough, so I kept adding in incidents and complications to the plot, but still I fell short. Then one day, I think it was somewhere around the second or third draft, something clicked and I suddenly learned how to write the kind of description that brings a scene to life (it was far from perfect, of course, but where there had been practically nothing but dialogue and action, out of nowhere it seemed there was suddenly a lot more). So when I started filling in all the other scenes in the same way, the whole book expanded.

Just to add on to that, I've found that adding depth to the setting can have the secondary effect of adding depth to the characters. I believe this is in part because they are now reacting to more than just what the other guy said (or threw <g>), but also because it gets me thinking about how they would react. And it grounds me as author more thoroughly in the moment.

I know much writing advice is all about action and moving the plot forward, but for myself I find I am learning more by slowing myself down. Which is sorta depressing because I write slow enough as it is!

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

I'm towards the end of a first draft and gave a small scene to my husband to read. He commented it went by quite quickly, so I went back over it, putting in more sensory details - I found this much easier than writing that way to start with. Are you writing in a first person or close third person that lets the reader into the characters' head? Sharing their thoughts can slow things down to, though as others have said, some scenes will naturally move faster than others. What sort of fantasy do you write - epic, action, urban, romance...?

Turning it around- my problem is more one of getting bogged down in details. So there's a lot to be said in favour of deliberately doing a "white-room" first draft and fleshing it out later. (Terry Pratchett apparently worked a bit like this. His early drafts were often very plain and functional; the complex jokes and linguistic verve we know him for were built up over later drafts.)