Pace Yourself: An Exercise to Create Rhythm in Your Writing

Like changing seasons that move elegantly into each other, a good story has a certain rhythm. It may move fast or slow, in terms of action. But beyond the action, there’s a pace of telling—how fast or slow the story is told. That pace, so crucial to reader engagement, is almost invisible when it’s done well. And it’s the writer’s job to make sure of this.

Early drafts—not to worry. Pacing is simply the action, the outer elements of the story. You’re just trying to get that word count, fill those pages.

But when you get to revision, you begin to consider this invisible rhythm. You look at your pages and your scenes and your chapters for how fast they are told. Is there variation in the pace of the storytelling? That’s the key to reader engagement.

Pacing is like music

Imagine listening to music that is all one note. It doesn’t matter if that note is played fast or slow, by percussion or horn. After a while, it might feel kinda boring, yes?

Now imagine if you put another note in. Then another. You varied the sound, you maybe included some other instruments.

The sound could still be played fast or slow. But the variation of instruments and notes would create a completely different experience for the listener, right?

That’s pacing. I find it easiest to understand if I think of pacing like music. Do I have all the same note in some places? Do I have any variation to keep my reader’s interest?

Three elements and two mechanicals

You’ll read about pacing as speed. I think of it as something more complex that this. Plot can be fast or slow, as I said, and that’s part of what creates pacing. But it’s the external pace, the easy one to manipulate. Internal pace is harder.

So I like to divide internal pace into three different elements of story plus three mechanicals.

The elements that need to be varied are:

1. dialogue

2. description

3. interiority

The mechanicals that need to be varied are:

1. word length

2. sentence length

3. paragraph length

Tuning your ear to story pace

Best way to learn to recognize pace in your own writing is to study it in others. Read a lot. Read other author’s stories aloud. Listen to audiobooks, if you like that. Good readers can teach you a lot about pace.

You can also use the squint test.

Find a favorite book. Open it, hold two pages up, squint at them, and see the balance of white space to text. Notice how conversation sections have more white space, description and interiority (character’s thoughts, reflection) have less.

Notice how these three elements create pace in others’ writing. Then switch to your own. You’ll find that the best authors vary the two kinds of pace—maybe not too many pages with blocky text. Depends on the writer, of course, but this is deliberately worked on by the skilled writer.

Mechanical elements

I view pacing revision in two stages: the first is to assess the elements above—the white space and the more dense space on the page. Once that’s worked out to your satisfaction, you can do the more detailed pacing with word, sentence, and paragraph length.

I know, it might seem incredibly nit-picky. But trust me, really good writers have learned this skill and polished it to the point of internalizing it, so their writing often flows out with these elements already considered.

But most of us have to attend to them deliberately, in revision.

Here’s what I do—I actually count lines! One of my favorite editors, someone in my past work as an editor who taught me so much, told me about this. We unconsciously create similar amount of lines in our paragraphs. A lot of us do this! It’s something to correct at revision, though—please! Nothing like a page of three-line or four-line paragraphs in a row to put the reader to sleep. Remember that one note?

When we become more aware of this internal pacing, beyond plot speed or content delivery, we begin to apply it in our own work. In this week’s exercise, I’ll share a simple first step.

Your weekly writing exercise

Find two favorite pages of your writing. Early draft or revised, doesn’t matter.

Read it aloud.

Then free write for 10 minutes, answering these questions:

1. What rhythm do you perceive?

2. Is the pacing fast or slow?

3. Where does it vary?

What did you discover, learn, realize? Share your thoughts and questions.Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash