Episode: 2789
Title: HPR2789: Pacing In Storytelling
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2789/hpr2789.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:51:01

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This is HPR Episode 2007-189 entitled, Pacing in Storytelling, and in part on the series,
Random Elements on Storytelling.
It is hosted by Lost in Bronx, and in about 17 minutes long, and Karima Cleanflag.
The summary is, Lost in Bronx takes a stab at explaining why the pace of your story matters.
Today's show is licensed under a CC hero license.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Hello, this is Lost in Bronx, and you'll have to forgive the sound quality. I'm in the car right now.
Today, I would like to talk about pacing in storytelling.
Now, when you talk about pacing, what do you mean?
Especially in something like an elaborate tale, maybe a long novel.
How do you interpret what pacing is?
Well, you can break it down into, oh, each chapter should be so many words, or you should have
an action sequence every so often, or you should have X amount of dialogue versus X amount of
exposition. You could go that route and kind of get in the ballpark, but in reality, it's a
feel thing. Very often, a person will not know why a story isn't working for them.
Even though, at least in theory, it's got everything they love in it.
All of it is supposed to work, and yet for some reason it doesn't come together.
That can, of course, be from a number of reasons, but one of those reasons that can kill a story
is pacing. Pacing is timing. Timing is often the word used for a very particular type of story telling
called comedy, stand-up comedy jokes, telling a joke. You can have the best joke in the world,
and if you tell it badly, and that is specifically, you could be reading it.
You could be reading the exact same joke that one of the best comedians in the world told,
and became very famous from, and yet not do very well with it, or perhaps the joke doesn't work
at all, and that's all down to pacing, but timing. It is vital, and it's absolutely vital in
something like that, but it's absolutely vital in larger form storytelling. The thing about
comedy and telling jokes is that it's instantaneous. You get instant feedback from a live audience,
whether or not your joke worked. You also get instant feedback regarding things like pacing,
because you might know the joke is funny. Perhaps you even hurt someone else to tell it,
and you stole it, yet it doesn't work for you, and that's because your timing is off. Your pacing
is off. Now expand that out to a larger story or story style, and you have the same issue.
You can have, say, a film, and it seems to start well enough, but somewhere in the middle,
it seems to die. It seems to get tired of boring or slow down, at least, and then pick up again
at the end. That's a very, very common problem with modern filmmaking. They've got it down to
such a formula that if you deviate from that formula, things seem like they're wrong. Pacing in a
longer story is absolutely vital. However, you don't necessarily judge it the way that you would
a joke. It isn't bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap with the bap bap being the payoff, the big, big thing
at the end. There are some movies that are like that. There are some books that are like that,
especially certain styles of writing. We're like the Mickey Spillane. You could say it was almost
like that. The pacing on that was breakneck, and it always had a big, big thing at the very end,
a twister payoff of some sort. There are thrillers that are written like that. Mostly thrillers are
written like that. Not all action stories are written like that, and not all mysteries, not all horror,
not certainly not all romance, but humor stories sometimes are humorous, but not often,
actually not often. Those are usually they have their humor sprinkled throughout the entire tale,
but thrillers that are meant to entertain you, something like a spy story, or even a mystery,
or just some sort of tale where there's a great deal of suspense. Very often they'll have a quick
pacing, then a big payoff at the very end. That big payoff, and I've talked about the payoff
in a story before, but that big payoff directly relates to pacing, but the pacing isn't the same
for every kind of tale. Now obviously an interior drama, a human drama story, that's going to have
a very different pacing than say an action tale, or a superhero story, or a horror story. All of
these are all going to be quite different from each other pacing wise, but pacing is not only
different from genre to genre, from medium to medium, but it's also different from storyteller to
storyteller. There are storytellers, there are writers who write very similar styles of genre,
who are writing perhaps we'll say science fiction, and perhaps we'll say time travel science fiction,
perhaps they have a series of time travel science fiction stories, but they're not the same.
They're very very different, even if the details of the tale might be similar on the surface of it,
the pacing of the tale on its own can differentiate one story from another, one author from another,
one series from another. The pacing on these things can be deadly, the pacing on these things can
be break neck, the pacing on these things can be like a wave, it goes up and it goes down, it goes
up and it goes down, but it depends on the tale. Now how do you know when you have good pacing or
bad pacing, how do you achieve that? Well very often it doesn't come with your first pass, it comes
with your later passes, it comes with your editing. Now that's true with film and television,
it's also true with just writing. You start off by putting down your vision of your tale,
get it all out there, and then from there you refine, but it is in the refinement where your story
really comes to life, it's not in the genesis of concept. I think that's a big mistake people make,
they say oh what a great idea, great ideas are a time it doesn't, they're easy, ideas aren't
free, they're in the air, you can just reach up and grab one, they're not hard, they don't even
need to be original, they could be completely hackneyed and old, and you can still get a great story
out of them. So ideas are not the key, the key is in your pacing, the key is how you are telling
your story, yes you want great characters, yes you want great situations, yes perhaps a twist at
the end, the big payoff if that's what you're going for. Yes all those things can really matter,
but if you have all of those things in line, you've got all that stuff going for you, but if
you're timing is off, if you're pacing is off, you don't have a tale that anyone is going to
want to read, they're not going to want to hear about it, they're not going to want to see it on
the screen, you're pacing really rules your story, you can have very lackluster qualities on
every other front, but if you're pacing is just right, your story will be entertaining,
perhaps it won't be as good as it could have been, but it will entertain, people will care about
your story if your pacing is right. Now again, how do you find that? Well the search is a slow one
or it can be, you refine, you refine, you refine, and then you look at your sequence because
in a situation of refinement, you aren't looking at the entire story and trying to get pacing
correctly, you're looking at pieces of the story to make sure, A, those segments have good timing,
and B, the timing of those segments fit with the timing and the pacing of the entire tale,
if you don't have those things together, happening at the same time, you've got a problem,
that's why your movie has gotten slow in the middle, because while the individual scenes
in the middle of your tale might be fine, they're not following the pacing of the entire story,
are you building up to a big ending? Well if you are, the pacing is pretty obvious, you've got to
relatively slow and then begin to build, the key to this is in the building, in that sort of story,
in that sort of tale, you cannot start off at the very beginning going break neck, if you do that,
you've got nowhere to go, your story just continues to rock it along at an incredible speed,
but with crappy pace, because if you don't let your readers, your viewers, your audience,
if you don't let them accelerate with the story, their emotions, their enjoyment,
their attention that they're paying to the tale, if they don't accelerate slowly,
and then go quickly, and then build up and build up and build up until your big payoff,
then you will have lost them, because if you start off super strong with action right at the very
beginning, and you maintain that pace throughout the tale, everything is relative, you do that,
and it won't seem so fast by the end, because the end is as fast as the beginning,
you will have lost your audience, first off, some people will find it exhausting, they'll feel like
the thing is just going way way too fast, others will become ignored and they will not find the
ending all that exciting, with that kind of tale, you start slow and go fast, move your way up,
it's a curve, but that's only one type of pacing, and it's for a very specific effect,
other types of pacing, especially mystery tales, who done it, those have very very intricate
pacing qualities, especially the more clues you're throwing out, the more intricate and twisted
your plot is, the more tension and time time is pacing, the more time you have to spend on those
clues, on revealing those clues, on your detective figuring out what's happening in this story,
figuring out where the mystery lies, what the motives are, what all the clues are, these things
can be slowed, now perhaps you have some action sequences in there as well to punch it up,
well if you don't integrate them into the story, they're going to be obviously in there simply
to punch everything up, that's ham-handed and not very well done, it can work, you can get by with it,
but it won't be as good as it would have been if you had integrated it into your pacing,
throughout this series that I've been talking about stories, that's a recurring theme that I talk
about, integration, to see your story as a whole piece, not as individual scenes, as I've stated,
in the past, that's a problem with much modern storytelling, we tend to see it as modular,
you see it as modular, and you have a tale that is a bunch of pieces, if you're lucky,
it's like a puzzle, you put it together and it'll fit, but a lot of times you'll end up with
pieces missing and you'll have holes, you don't want that, pacing is one of these pieces,
this is not a thing that you can just take for granted, and if you chop up your story or you write
a modular tale that's got a bunch of scenes that can be swapped around, you will have a challenge
getting your pacing right, because you didn't see this entire story as a whole piece,
I know this flies in the face of a lot of modern advice that's out there, but trust me,
your pacing is not something that's going to come from a modular sense,
if it is, if your pacing comes from that, where you move this scene to there and that scene to
there, because it wasn't working, but now they're working, you're lucky, you're lucky you pulled
that off, it didn't work out because you planned it, this part of the thing ought to be planned,
you're not just picking up pieces and seeing where they fit, that absolutely is hit or miss,
and you don't want hit or miss, you want to hit more than you miss, and the way that happens is
by structuring your story from the start, by taking your tale, the idea, the concept of your story,
whether it's in your head, whether it's on an outline on paper, whatever, taking that structure
of your tale and deciding what sort of story you're trying to tell, by knowing the kind of story
you're trying to tell right at the beginning, you can set your pacing, you can decide how your
scenes fit together with each other, how they're structured on their own, sometimes the way to fix
deadly pacing is by chopping things out, that is true, that is true, sometimes you can fix your
pacing by moving scenes around, all of these things are true, and there are some well-established
storytellers that do it that way, however I think all of them would agree that if you get it
right the first time that's probably the best way to go, and it's not by chance that it happens
the first time, if they see it that way then they don't really know what they're doing, they're just
hoping that they can pull something together from a mess, then it's your editing that's doing it,
now yes, okay editing, drafting, second drafts, I did say that that's where all of this comes together,
you're still writing in your second draft, that's not the same as chop and swap, that's not what
that's all about, your story will come together either on your outline or in your head, if you know
where you're headed, and you keep that in mind every single time you sit down to write, the pacing
of your tale will come out as you get excited with what you're writing about, as your scenes start
to come together and as you start to see the story as a whole come together, hard work is where
you're going to consistently get stories that have the right pacing that have, scenes that work
on their own, pacing of the scene, and scenes that work together to create the pacing that you're
after for your tale, maybe you want a romance, a classic romance, now very often those things start
with your characters who meet, they don't like each other for whatever reason, and they
bicker and argue and you see of course that there's romantic sparks there and that they will end
up together, we know this, we understand it, it's part of your pacing, not just part of your plot,
part of your pacing, you've got to hit those moments, you've got to get those beats or you haven't
created the tale you're after, I'm not going to place a judgment value on that sort of storytelling,
you can say again the technique, we don't need any more of those, who likes that sort of thing,
well actually a lot of people like that sort of thing, and they like it because it's emotionally
satisfying, it's giving them characters they want, it's giving them scenarios they want,
situations they want, and it's got the pacing that doesn't slow it all down, your story,
that story is not getting lost, it's not driving so slowly that people get bored or racing
along so quickly that no one can follow what's happening, I've been talking around the subject
of pacing, it's a difficult one to describe, how do you get the pacing, how do you tell,
as I say it's largely an emotional determination, does it feel slow, does it feel fast,
is this bit exciting, if it's exciting why, you ask yourself these questions, is it exciting
because this thing really rockets along, it really moves, we're hitting our action moments,
an action again doesn't necessarily mean a high-speed chase on the road, it could very well mean
an emotional moment between a bunch of characters that are talking, having a conversation about
their wives and how they feel, is your action moving things along, or is it too fast, or is it too
slower, doesn't it seem like action at all, all of these can be associated with pacing, it's important,
I believe, I believe, it's important to understand the type of tale you're trying to tell,
and how you're going to get there, you do that, you think about that and you will have your pacing
down, anyway this was some very choppy rambly talk about a very difficult subject, one that many
established riders never quite grasp, I struggle with it myself, if you have any opinions about
this episode or any other, please leave them in the comments on Hacker Public Radio, or better yet
please, please consider creating your own episode of Hacker Public Radio, it's not hard and you
have interests, you have opinions and we want to hear about them, this has been Lost in Bronx,
thank you for listening, take care.
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