Mari is Writing

~~

The city that sprawled out below Icekeep glittered in the freshly fallen night. Darkness clung to the shadows beneath gently creaking lanterns and dusted the angled rooftops of the buildings lining the road. Where there were no flickering lanterns, nyxstones embedded directly into walls provided a soft glow of light. The upper district of the city, gathered closest to Icekeep’s outer wall, was also its wealthiest part. It relaxed far from the noise and crowds of the docks and harbours below, standing high above the cluster of squashed together apartments and shops that cluttered the central district. Here, the white and blue buildings were wide and sprawling, fat beasts kept satiated with innumerable wealth and the sort of cocooned peace only afforded to the wealthy.

Arc and her friends were seated around a large circular table on the mezzanine of a darkly preening five-storey establishment, their dark wood table littered with carefully stacked cards and piles of translucent blue chips. The hotelier hovered close by, having assigned them the house’s best dealer and ensuring not a second passed before their empty drinks were refilled. He was giving Arc a headache.

“This is why I wanted to go somewhere in the lower district,” she muttered to her friends.

~~

The city that sprawled out below Icekeep glittered in the freshly fallen night. Darkness clung to the shadows beneath gently creaking lanterns and dusted the angled rooftops of the buildings lining the road. Where there were no flickering lanterns, nyxstones embedded directly into walls provided a soft glow of light. The upper district of the city, gathered closest to Icekeep’s outer wall, was also its wealthiest part. It relaxed far from the noise and crowds of the docks and harbours below, standing high above the cluster of squashed together apartments and shops that cluttered the central district. Here, the white and blue buildings were wide and sprawling, fat beasts kept satiated with innumerable wealth and the sort of cocooned peace only afforded to the wealthy.

Arc and her friends were seated around a large circular table on the mezzanine of a darkly preening five-storey establishment, their dark wood table littered with carefully stacked cards and piles of translucent blue chips. The hotelier hovered close by, having assigned them the house’s best dealer and ensuring not a second passed before their empty drinks were refilled. He was giving Arc a headache.

“This is why I wanted to go somewhere in the lower district,” she muttered to her friends.

They made a deal with that witch. They wanted a son, and they got one. A son, one made out of clay and wood, flexible enough to grow but sturdy enough to withstand its destined path, enchanted to look like a human child. The witch asked for only one thing, and that was for their daughter.

They left the girl readily.

The witch raised her as her own, and called her Thyme. The princess grew up unknowing of her heritage, grew up calling the witch Mama, and the witch did her very best to earn that title.

She was taught magic, and how to forage in the woods, how to build sturdy wooden structures and how to make the most delicious stews. The girl had a good life, and the witch was pleased.

The girl grew into a woman, and learned more and more powerful magics, grew stronger from hauling wood and stones and animals to cook, grew smarter as the witch taught her more.

She learned to deal with the people in the villages nearby, learned how to brew remedies and medicines and how to treat illness and injury, and learned how to tell when someone was lying. 

Every time the pair went into town, the people would remark at just how similar Thyme was to her mother. 

(Thyme does not know who and what she is. She does not know that she was born a princess, that she was sold. She only knows that one night after her mother read her a story about princesses and dragons, her mother had asked her if she ever wanted to be a princess.)

((Thyme only knows that she very quickly answered no. She likes being a witch, thank you very much, she likes the power that comes with it and the way that she can look at things and know their true nature.))

The witch starts preparing the ritual early, starts collecting the necessities in the winter so they can be ready by the fall equinox. Her daughter helps, and does not ask what this is for, just knows that it is important.

The witch looks at Thyme, both their hands raised into the air over a complicated array of plants, tended carefully to grow into a circle, and says, sorry.

Pacing is basically the speed of which the action in your story unfolds. Pacing keeps the reader hooked, helps to regulate the flow of the story and sets the tone of the entire book. So how can we write it?

Genre & Tone

Really in any novel the reader has an expectation that the book will be fast paced or slow. Readers will go into an action novel, expecting it to be fast paced. Readers will pick up a romance novel and expect it to follow a steadying climb of pace as the story goes on.

Pace is a good indicator of how the story is going to feel. If you want your readers to feel as if they are in a calm environment, you don't place the events immediately one after the other. If you want your readers to feel some adrenaline, you keep the curveball coming.

How to utilise Pacing successfully

1. Give your readers time to recover

When readers are reading a fast-paced novel, they need a breather and so do you and your characters. By peppering in a few moments between peaks of fast pace, you are allowing your readers to swallow down what they've just read and allows you to explore it further. Consider this like the bottle of water after a run. You need it or you'll collapse.

2. Track Events Carefully

When planning your book's outline or at least having a vague idea of it, you have a fair idea when things are going to happen. Usually books have an arc where pace gets faster and faster until you get to the climax where it generally slows down. If you're writing a larger book, you have to space out your pacing properly or else your reader will fall into a valley of boredom or find the book a bumpy ride. The climax should have the fastest pace - even if you start off at a high pace. Your story always should peak at the climax.

3. Localising Pace

If you want to put your reader into a certain state of mind throughout a chapter or even a paragraph, pay close attention to your sentence bulk. Long flowy sentences but the reader at ease, slowing the pace for them. Short, jabby sentences speed things up. An argument or a scene with action should be quick. A stroll through a meadow on a lazy summer's noon should be slow.

4. Information is Key

When writing pace in your overall novel, the reader should be given more information as you go through the story. You begin any story estentially with the who, what, where of everything. But peppering in all the whys, you broaden the story and keep the reader feeling more able to keep up with everything. For example, in any murder mystery your reader is given the body. As the story goes on, your reader should be given more and more information such as the weapon, the where until you get to the climax.

5. Off/On Stage

don’t start each paragraph with the same word. glance through a page and look for instances where three or more paragraphs start with “the” or your narrator’s name, then edit those. it’s fine on occasion, but not consistently

try to avoid using too many proper nouns (read: names in fantasy) that start with the same letter. it’s impossible to avoid that all together, but it’ll save your readers from confusion

on that note, don’t dump capitalized term after capitalized term on your readers. it’s absolutely not necessary to capitalize everything. think about how it would be if we capitalized Fork, Knife, and Spoon every time we typed them in a book. it’d get exhausting after a while

if you’re listing things in a sentence, try to keep it at three things, tops: it’s better for it to be apples, oranges, and bananas, than it is apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, and kiwis

sometimes a book you want to write will be beyond your current writing ability. it’s fine to let that idea sit in the ideas folder for however long it takes you to reach the level of writing chops necessary to write it (yes i’ve had this happen to me before; i waited before i wrote my Tyranny WIP until my writing abilities were able to match my vision of the book, and that got me my agent)

just bc a book is in third person doesn’t mean each POV doesn’t need their own voice. they do. it really shows when you give each narrator a different voice from the others and makes your work a helluva lot more enjoyable

if you’re worried something you wrote is too dramatic (yes there’s such a thing), go watch a clip of Whose Line is it Anyway and come back to the page. if it makes you cringe, consider cutting it

anyway go ahead n take this quiz which is kinda a temperature check for writeblr

I might mess around and just drop a whole Heir of Eternal Winter chapter for you guys (abridged bc spoilers)

You know... as a treat ❤️

Ive most recently written 2 so which would you rather?

- Arc and her friends playing cards, nursing wounds and getting into tense standoffs with enemies.

I might mess around and just drop a whole Heir of Eternal Winter chapter for you guys (abridged bc spoilers)

You know... as a treat ❤️

Ive most recently written 2 so which would you rather?

- Arc and her friends playing cards, nursing wounds and getting into tense standoffs with enemies.

Hey friends. I’ve been thinking a lot about pacing lately, as I’m in the process of editing a few of my own stories, which tend to be too slow in the beginning and too fast in the end. Fortunately I have a ton of experience speeding up or slowing down pacing when I edit my clients’ manuscripts, and I wrote up a whole section about it in my book The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

One important thing to keep in mind about pacing is that there’s no one “right” pace—each story and genre need something different. A crime thriller will usually have faster pacing than a character-driven literary novel; language-focused writers will usually create slower-paced stories than plot-focused writers. So when you’re revising your pacing, It’s about finding the right pace for your story.

At the same time, remember that stories generally build in tension, continually ramping up the conflict until it crests at the climax and falls at the resolution. While you’ll want some ebbs and flows in tension so the reader doesn’t get completely exhausted, the story shouldn’t feel resolved for too long without introducing another problem or further complicating the conflict.

A story’s pace is controlled by a number of factors but luckily, there are pretty much only two problems you can have with your pacing. A story can be too slow (which usually feels boring), too fast (which can produce a lot of anxiety), or a combination—too slow in some parts, too fast in others.

In either case, you’ll need to learn how to put the brakes on or apply the gas as needed to moderate your pacing.

Speeding Up Slow Pacing

If we feel the pacing is too slow, it’s usually either because a scene is too long, too wordy, or not enough is happening. The result is a sense that the story is dragging, and a lot of yawning on the part of the reader. When the pace feels slow, we will naturally start to skim or read ahead to find out “what happens.”

Let’s look at how to address each of the three main causes of slow pacing.

Too long. Sometimes the pace feels slow because your scene is simply too long. To remedy that, you might need to start the scene later, end it earlier, or cut slow transitions where not much is happening. Shorter sentences and more frequent paragraph or scene breaks can also help to break up a lengthy scene and make it feel like it’s moving faster.

Too wordy. The more words you use, the slower the pace. Long passages of description, excessive dialogue or inner monologue, info dumps, repetition, and filler words are often to blame. If you simply can’t bring yourself to cut excess words, you can also try breaking up long sentences or paragraphs to give the illusion of a quicker pace.

Nothing is happening. A lack of goals, conflict, or stakes can lead to the feeling that “nothing is happening” in a story. Has your character slipped into the bathtub to ruminate at length on an issue that she’s already mulled over a thousand times before? Have you used five pages to detail a long, boring traveling sequence that should’ve been summarized in a few sentences of transition? If your scene has scant conflict, and no change by the end of the scene, it may need to be rewritten or cut in order to improve your pacing.

Slowing Down Fast Pacing

On the other hand, if a story’s pace is too fast, an excess of action and dialogue are usually to blame, as well as short, choppy sentences, and a ceaseless maelstrom of conflict. In that case, you have the opposite problem: Your scenes are either too short, too shallow, or too much is happening.

Too short. Short sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters pick up the pace of a story, but can leave readers exhausted when overused. Mix it up, using longer sentences or paragraphs slow the pacing where needed. You can also lengthen action- and dialogue heavy scenes by adding brief spurts of description, inner monologue, or narrative summary.

Too shallow. An action-paced scene often skims over the deeper, more nuanced aspects of the story like theme, emotional depth, and character development. If your too-fast pace is the fault of a flat character, take a moment to let readers know what’s driving her with a few sentences of interiority or narrative summary. The more readers feel like they’re inside your protagonist’s mind and heart, the deeper and slower your scene will feel. Description can also help give depth to a shallow scene—all that action and dialogue isn’t taking place in a vacuum, and writing it that way can shift your story into turbo speed in no time at all.

Too much happening. If your protagonist is fighting off a centaur in a crowded marketplace, resolving a longstanding resentment with her brother who works at the tomato stand, looking for a choice hiding place for a trunk of buried treasure, wooing the delivery boy, and realizing the true nature of love and war all in the same scene, you might need to dial it back to control your pacing. Decide which storyline is the most important to highlight, and push all the others into the background or save them for another scene.

No breathers. If the protagonist never gets a chance to catch her breath, readers won’t either. Look for places where she can pause and reflect, like right after a problem is resolved or a new one is discovered, when new information is revealed, or as your character undergoes an important internal change in her motivation or perspective.