Pacing Your Novel

I just read part of Orson Scott Card's Saints. He is a master at pacing. He took the time when writing each scene to drop the reader into the middle of it. When the family moved into a very poor apartment, he made sure you could almost smell the urine on the ground floor of their dwelling.

He took time to make the dialogue believable. It built and the tension in the story built.

You could see the surroundings for each scene.

He is a master at letting you know what the character is thinking and feeling. The suspense built as each character played their role in the story. He wrote the story from multiple points of view, but you were in only one head at a time, and the thoughts were just perfect.

I chose not to finish the book for my own reasons, but the beginning of the book was superbly done.

The pacing was just as it ought it be. There was building action, but it was not done at the expense of the story. You knew each character intimately. He didn't rush through the plot, causing you to feel cheated at all.

This is a good lesson for me because sometimes I tend to make my manuscript sparse. I can leap from action to action, cheating my reader out of the best part of my story. So, for me, I will work on pacing this week. I will enjoy each scene I write, and then I know the readers will also.

Happy writing, Christy

My books, Love, Hugs, and Hope When Scary Things Happen, and Becoming Free, A Woman's Guide to Internal Strength are available at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, and Familius.com