Where is Fancy Bred? Thoughts on Pacing in Scenes

I’m doing developmental editing on The Keystone this month, with a focus on story pace.  This has made me think about what pacing actually is, based on my experiences sharing manuscript critiques. We non-academically trained writers talk about “fast-paced” vs. “slow-paced” as if it’s an objective property of the text, like word count. But what if it’s not? What if it’s something else altogether?

The Reader's Problem

Write a big chunk of a novel and hand it to a test reader. Chances are, unless you’re very experienced, you’ll get feedback like: “The story moved slowly here.”

So you trim that section: cut unnecessary text so the reader spends less time on it. And yes, that can work.  But here’s what bothers me: the story itself isn’t moving. It stays right where it is. What moves is the reader’s attention.

I believe a passage drags when the cognitive effort required to finish it is too high for the reward the reader gets in return.  If that’s true, then pacing problems are really about structuring effort and reward: Does the reader run out of momentum before getting a reward that renews it?

The Writer's Problem

Much of the usual pacing advice—trim adverbs, start late, leave early—is easy to follow. You don’t have to think too hard; you apply it mechanically, like following a checklist. And that can work: for many scenes, these simple fixes will help get the reader through the story.

That's because the usual rules of thumb reliably reduce reader effort.  But mindlessly applied, they do nothing to preserve reader delight, much less add to it.  If you're not careful, you can reduce a dramatic scene to something like an AI summary of a rambling Zoom call.  The limitation of the usual pacing advice aspiring authors get is that it is algorithmic -- not diagnostic. We need to diagnose before we start prescribing medicine.

Your job as a writer isn't to get the reader through the manuscript as quickly as possible.  It's to deliver on the promises you made in the back cover blurb.   For that reason we *have* to focus on the subjective experience of the reader trying to get through the text.

If a Scene is Bad, it Had Better be Short

Cutting is an excellent thing for us amateurs to consider, because we often write scenes that don't offer much reward for the reader's effort. We write scenes that beg for mercy-killing. Cutting a great scene down might improve in some way, but it won't improve the pacing.

Your Manuscript is Easy for You, So it Always Feels Well-paced

I think this explains why amateur authors almost never detect pacing problems in their own work: you already know what your manuscript means, so it's easy for you to read. One of the best ways to learn about balancing effort and reward is to critique other writers’ manuscripts. Approaching someone else’s story opens your eyes to where you struggle to stay engaged, and then you can discover why.

Ultimately you will need test readers' help with your manuscript, but their time is precious. Before sending a manuscript out for critique, scan your scenes for “walls of text” or info-dumps where the reader is asked to do a lot of mental work for little reward. Especially look for places where effort is demanded for no reward -- e.g. pointlessly rambling passages, or continuity errors. Your manuscript benefits the most when you make good use of the test readers’ gift of their time.

Slow = Bad; Fast = Good?

Finally we have to ask: is slow necessarily  bad? No. Nobody complains about a slow good scene.  They will complain that bad scene packed with action is "slow", because their progress through it feels like a slog, and trying to pick up the pace by stuffing more of the stuff that's creating the problem into the scene will only make that slog harder.

Making that bad scene better means making it easier and/or more rewarding; that sometimes results in a scene that takes up more space on the page but feels shorter to the reader.

Sample Rewrite

Here's a very brief sample rewrite that illustrates my ideas.  To setup, this is from a rom-com space opera about a neurodivergent-coded space captain struggling with her feelings for her ex-husband, who she's just kicked off her ship:

This too was spotless. He'd stripped the bunk and left the folded sheets and blankets on top. She remade the bunk and climbed into it, inhaling his lingering smell. That brought her back when she'd first known that smell. She was hardly more than a girl but she'd had the whole galaxy at her feet.

A passage this small isn't a pacing problem, but page after page of this kind of writing, where the reader is forced to supply all the details for himself, wears the reader down, and they start skimming.  Now here's my solution to the problem, and it's not to further cut this tiny snippet down, it's to make it huge:

This too was spotless. He'd stripped the bunk and left the folded sheets and blankets on top. She remade the bunk and climbed into it, inhaling his lingering smell. Soap. Archie preferred unscented soap, something Kate noticed almost immediately when she first met him. Plain soap was one of her favorite smells. Beneath that a faint, sweet-sour-proteiny hint, like fermented milk. And then something spicy — cardamom? Was that because he liked cardamom in his coffee?  Instantly, she was back on the flight deck of the shuttle where she met him, and there he was.  She’d thought of him back then as a strange *man*, but to her eyes right now he was just an adorable boy. She wanted to cradle his cheeks and kiss him on the forehead…

Is this better? I haven't workshoped it yet so I can't be sure. But I think so.  You shouldn't thoughtlessly apply my advice either.  If you're writing pulpy adventure story, you don't want it to sound like literary fiction. Remember: your job is to fulfill the promise you made to the reader when he picked up the story, whatever that may have been.

Takeaways

• Pace is felt, not counted—reader momentum sets it.
• Control momentum with two levers: effort and reward.
• Cut what asks too much and gives too little.
• Reward is subjective—match it to your genre.
• Never trade delight for brevity.
• Sometimes longer reads faster—embrace it.
• Diagnose before you prescribe—understand the scene first.

What do you think?

So — what do you think? Is cutting always the best solution to what a reader identifies as a pacing problem? Do you have any examples of writing where you’ve improved pacing, or have pacing issues? If you post them  (not too long please), maybe we'll take a stab at work-shopping them.