Hello,
I loved the post! It came in a perfect moment! I wonder if we, authors, are skilled to fix the necessary editings in a novel. We are so emotionally attached to every detail and story that this needed editing may go unnoticed by ourselves.

One thing I noticed while watching the movie “Avengers: Infinity War”. There are two scenes in action at the same time (at the end). How do I know when to cut to the next and then, go back to the previous one? Or is this just intuitive?
Because I’m immersed in an action scene and, in the next moment, I must be immersed in another scene. In a movie, this sounds easy, but what about in a novel?

PS: I’m not being redirected to the “Ride to the Altar” link, but to the Amazon home page 😉

Thanks for sharing! I’ve learned so much from your articles. I like that they are in digestable bites where I can just read one or two at a time and not be overwhelmed. Thanks!

Good to remember. Thanks for the advice.

Thanks for the post!

Great and powerful stuff, Linda.

Great tips on pacing! Thanks for sharing. I’m also looking forward to checking out a new-to-me author. Heading to Amazon now….

Very helpful post. Love short paragraphs.

Good info and a cute bio. Your second half-a-century career change applies to me as well.

Linda, I loved this post and found it helpful I’ll be keeping your great pointers in mind as I write. I love the idea of getting a rhythm going for the reader using shorter paragraphs and sentences. I can’t wait to read your book! Thank you for the wonderful writing ideas!

Ahhh East Texas, iz you as far as Vidor? Vidor is almost clear to the Louisiana border. That is the land of bayous of moonshine and of big bugs. I knows the difference between da swamps and de bayous, you know. Bayous has waters that runs through it and is it, Swamps has water too you know but that water just sits, collects things and stinks. I am not sure which way my writings go. I guess I have chopped my sentences up a bit, makin statements, not really carrying on. And I have meandered like a lazy river also dragging the idea to its conclusion.

I also found this post to be very informative. I am a strong believer that another powerful way to manipulate the reader is to dump them right into the body of the character by focusing on a scene through that character’s perspective. This way the reader will naturally smell, feel, taste and touch and so on, through that character’s senses. Then you add in their personality and mental hang ups into the situation and further agitate those through the plot and locations and other characters and you already have a lot to work with for building a strong emotional connection.

I think the biggest part is mixing the use of things that come natural with those senses in a proper manner. Consider this, not very many people feel without using some type of gesture, especially ones that are opposite of their emotional state if they are tactful, for those baser types of personalities their gestures will easily mirror their emotions. A tactful angry person may put on a very tight-lipped smile while one who is not may have that finger or fist jabbing in the other persons face.

Also, people naturally have a certain thought patterns that accompany such. As a writer we have so much to work with to display a beautiful emotional work of art to infuse into the minds and body of our readers.

I suppose my shameless plug is I am a very passionate person, so it is easy for me to spit this all out and it very easily spills into my own writing, whether I realize it or not.

Something funny is back in middle school I had a sci fi story I was writing and one day realized one of the people getting beat up represented some guy I fought after lunch, after he pushed me backwards across a few concrete benches and the bottoms of my legs got a bit shredded. I laughed to myself since in my mind I was still pommeling him, at least the character in my story which just happened to have all my characteristics but looked nothing like me.

Anyhow thank you very much for your insight on this subject.

One of my absolute favorite examples of pacing comes from David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The chapter’s protagonist, Timothy Cavendish, is talking to Dermot ‘Duster’ Hoggins, a retired police chief who published his book through Cavendish’s vanity press.

They’re at a literary awards party at a rooftop garden in London, where Felix Finch — a literary critic who had savaged the police chief’s book — was holding court. Timothy Cavendish tries to calm Dermot down, telling him no one pays attention to Finch’s reviews:

“‘Come now, what’s a reviewer?’ I reasoned. ‘One who reads quickly, arrogantly, but never wisely.’

The jazz sextet finished their number, and Dermot left my sentence dangling. I was drunk enough to justify a taxi and was about to leave when a Cockney town crier soundalike silenced the entire gathering: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury! Your attention, please!’

Saints preserve us, Dermot was clanging a couple of trays together. ‘We have an additional award tonight, fellow book fairies!’ he bellowed. Ignoring arch chuckles and ‘Ooooo!s’, he produced an envelope from his jacket pocket, slit it open, and pretended to read: ‘Award for Most Eminent Literary Critic.’

His audience looked on, cockatooed, booed, or turned away in embarrassment. ‘Competition was fierce, but the panel was unanimous in choosing His Imperial Majesty of the Trafalgar Review of Books, Mr. — beg pudding, Sir — Felix Finch, O, B, and E, come — on — darn!’

Stirrers crowed. ‘Bravo, Felix! Bravo!’ Finch wouldn’t have been a critic if he didn’t love unearned attention. Doubtless he was already composing copy in his head for his Sunday Times column, ‘A Finch About Town.’ For his part, Dermot was all sincerity and smiles.

‘What might be my prize, I wonder?’ Finch smirked as the applause subsided. ‘A signed copy of an unpulped Knuckle Sandwich? Can’t be many of those left!’ Finch’s coterie chorused hooty laughter, spurring on their commissar. ‘Or do I win a free flight to a South American country with leaky extradition treaties?’

‘Yeah, lovie’ — Dermot winked — ‘a free flight is exactly what you won.’

My author grabbed Finch’s labels, rolled backwards, sank his feet into Finch’s girth, and judo-propelled the shorter-than-generally-realized media personality high into the night air! High above the pansies lining the balcony railing.

Finch’s shriek — his life — ended in crumpled metal, twelve floors down.

Someone’s drink poured onto the carpet.

Dermot ‘Duster’ Hoggins brushed his lapels, leaned over the balcony, and yelled: ‘So who’s expired in an ending flat and inane quite beyond belief now?”

The dumbstruck crowd parted as the murderer made his way to the nibblies table. Several witnesses later recalled a dark halo. He selected a Belgian cracker adorned with Biscay anchovies and parsley drizzled with sesame oil.”

I mean, damn. That’s a masterclass in pacing right there. It’s one of the reasons why Mitchell is so captivating as a writer. But after I’d read the sequence a few times, when I could finally see past my own admiration for his work, I thought about how that sequence could have gone. It’s an author throwing a literary critic off a roof because the critic ripped his book. It’s ridiculous. It could easily have come off as absurd as it sounds on its face.

But no. In Mitchell’s hands, with his impeccable comic timing, it becomes hilarious. And not only does it set up the plot of that chapter, I’m sure it’s also given pause to literary critics holding that very book in their hands, wondering what might happen to them if they savage Mitchell’s book the way Finch tore up Hoggins’. Luckily Mitchell is a nice guy to a fault, but you never know. 🙂

Thanks for the reminder about pacing, KM. It’s so overlooked, yet so critical to how a sequence “moves” in a reader’s mind. We tend to think things like pace don’t exist in books, but they most certainly do.

Cheers.

Great tips, thank you!

Just the information I need as I come to the conclusion of another first draft, it’ll be something to look for in the revision phase. Thank, Linda, for clearly stating this technique.

All the best for your new manuscript!

Helpful article and tips you posted, I would appreciate for this valuable post. Thanks for sharing informative article with us.