Definition
Pacing is the rhythm of your narrative - how quickly or slowly events unfold for the reader. Fast pacing uses short sentences, rapid dialogue, and action to create urgency. Slow pacing uses longer descriptions, introspection, and detailed scene-setting to let the reader linger. Great pacing is not about going fast or slow; it is about knowing when to do each.
Why It Matters
Pacing is one of the most common reasons manuscripts get rejected. If your story moves too slowly, readers get bored. If it moves too fast, they feel lost or emotionally disconnected. Learning to control your pacing means learning to control your reader's experience on a moment-to-moment level.
Types of Pacing
Famous Examples
McCarthy uses sparse, fragmented prose to create a relentless forward momentum that mirrors the characters' desperate journey. The pacing rarely lets up, keeping the reader as exhausted and anxious as the father and son.
Tartt takes a deliberately slow, immersive approach that lets the reader live inside Theo's head. The pacing mirrors his grief and displacement, picking up speed only when danger arrives.
Collins is a masterful pacer. She alternates between fast-paced survival sequences and slower moments of strategy and reflection, giving the reader just enough rest before the next crisis.
Common Mistakes
Vary your pacing deliberately. After an intense action scene, slow down for a quiet character moment. Readers need contrast to feel the impact of each.
The middle of a novel is where pacing most often dies. Keep introducing new complications, revelations, or smaller turning points to maintain momentum through the second act.
When you reach the scenes your entire story has been building toward, slow down. Give the reader time to feel the weight of the moment rather than blasting through it.
In fast-paced scenes, cut description to the essentials. Save your lush, detailed prose for moments of reflection or world-building.
Try It Yourself
Take a single event - a character receiving shocking news - and write it twice. First, write it in 100 words, focusing on speed and urgency with short sentences. Then write the same moment in 400 words, stretching every second with internal thought, sensory detail, and physical reaction. Compare how each version makes you feel as a reader.
Novelium maps your manuscript's pacing as a visual curve, showing where your story accelerates and where it drags.
Spot Your Pacing Problems Before Readers Do
Novelium's pacing analysis visualizes the speed and intensity of your manuscript chapter by chapter, so you can find sagging middles and rushed climaxes at a glance.