What is “pace” at the sentence and paragraph level? It’s a measure of how many words you use to cover story events. Words take a moment to read, and that gives the reader a natural sense of passing time. The more verbose you are, the slower the story unfolds.

Prose pace can be much too slow or much too fast. But even a happy medium pace can get monotonous if it never changes. Adjusting the pace is an essential part of making the narration fit the story.