Six Weeks of Favorite Writing Prompts: Week #1, Pacing
Welcome to my six weeks of summer and my all-time favorite writing prompts. I am dedicating my next weeks to expanding into possibility in my writing and revision, so I wanted to share these with you. They are essentially a way to play. To get out of the serious, brow-furrowed mode. To explore what could be,x not what already is.
Are you game? Here’s the first one, which has to do with messing up your too-tight or too-loose pacing.
What is pacing about, anyway?
Pacing is rhythm. How fast or slow your story moves. How much you go into the leaves on the trees of the forest or breeze over the forest from a vast distance.
It is a delicate and very important aspect of writing.
I find it’s best approached in revision after we can see how much of a forest we actually have. But you can definitely play with pacing—and learning how it works—at anytime.
Good pacing? It draws you in, as a reader, and doesn’t let you go. Well-paced stories are the ones you can’t stop reading.
Pacing depends on a balance of expanded and contracted moments, creating a rhythm between the two.
This week’s prompt works so well to teach us about our natural (often unconscious) tendencies of expanding or contracting. Try the prompt below for fifteen minutes this weekend and play with pacing.
If you adjust, correct, and balance your pacing, with conscious awareness, your writing will soar.
Your weekly writing exercise
If you have a piece of writing to play with, here are the steps:
Choose several pages of writing. Read it out loud.
Whenever you get interested, as you read, highlight the paragraph that pulled you in. (It’s essential to read out loud—you’re switching from a writer’s viewpoint to a reader’s.)
Contract (condense) that paragraph into one sentence, as short as possible, without losing the essence of the larger paragraph.
Now expand this one sentence into five new sentences (a new paragraph). Which was easier for you, expansion or contraction? Think about whether this short exercise helped you see anything about your natural tendency as a writer.
Now find a section of the pages that doesn’t draw you in. Apply the aspect (expand or contract) that was the most difficult for you in steps 3 and 4. For example, if you had trouble with expansion, expand the section to three or more paragraphs. If you had trouble with contraction, condense the section to half its length.
Read the new writing out loud. Can you notice the difference in flow, in music, in pacing?
If you want to start fresh with a new free write, here are the steps:
Set your phone timer for fifteen minutes. Begin to write about a childhood event that influenced you greatly. Don’t overthink this exercise, just let it rip. No editing along the way!
Stop writing when your timer rings. If you have to, stop sooner, but try to write for the entire fifteen minutes.
Read the piece out loud. Whenever you get interested, as you read, highlight the paragraph that pulled you in. (It’s essential to read out loud—you’re switching from a writer’s viewpoint to a reader’s.)
Contract (condense) the paragraph into one sentence, as short as possible, without losing the essence of the larger paragraph.
Now expand this one sentence into five new sentences (a new paragraph).Which was easier for you, expansion or contraction? Think about whether this short exercise helped you see anything about your natural tendency as a writer.
Return to your original free write about the childhood experience. Select your favorite section, a paragraph or two.
Apply the aspect (expand or contract) that was the most difficult for you in steps 3 and 4. If you had trouble with expansion, expand the section to three or more paragraphs. If you had trouble with contraction, condense the section to half its length.
Read the new writing out loud. Can you notice the difference in flow, in music, in pacing?
What did you learn? What did you notice?
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash