How to Achieve Good Story Pacing

Pacing! It's hard! So how do you achieve good story pacing? First, I cover what pacing is (it is many things!), then I talk about 3-act structure, story curves and some tips & tricks!

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[EmilyBourne]

“Enter late and leave early” that is so helpful.
Oh my god my middles are always a mess. This video was so helpful, will be rewatching and rewatching this.

[julesb.]

The story curve has a name!! With some slight alterations, it's called Freytag's Pyramid! Just in case any of y'all are studying English.

[Just__Jamiegk]

As a non-native English speaker who prefers to write in English I often feel like throwing myself into a horrible situation for my stories. But I would like to say that your videos have helped me so much to take a more critical look at my writing. I was able to realize why my story didn't work and after years of not looking at it, I started a full rewrite. And I am already feel so much better. Not only this video but all your videos have been so full of helpful information I can't wait to watch more! Thank you for sharing your craft!

[kittysrock]

I’m binging all these before I start writing

[irinaphoenix]

Someone explained pacing to me as the number of questions your story raises vs the number of questions that are answered, and that really helped me understand.

[elfstonesify]

If you don't have one already I'd love a video on trilogies and how we plot our MC character arcs across all 3 and also in each individual book. Or any advice about how to go about a trilogy. Thanks!!

[amandaodom]

Felt “fine” about my opening set up and inciting incident.... But while I was watching this, an idea came to me... one that would improve my story tremendously!
Fantastic! Right?
Wrong!!!
Now I have to rework the first 30k words in my book. So thank you Alexa Donne for completely messing up my writing groove 😂❤️

[TheAngelOfDeath]

For me, good story pacing is what you achieve when you keep your story concise and to the point. It's one of those techniques you really cannot 'unlock' until you do something else first. Stories with things like info dumping, or too many in-between scenes that doesn't move the story forward are slow story culprits, meaning you don't want to take two or three pages on covering a breakfast scene or a shopping scene just for the heck of it. It must be relevant to the story. I don't care if a story is 50.000 or 500.000 words in length if the story pace is balanced.

[kz]

Just found your videos. Love them. I have SEVEN books that I dread editing and all of this has been incredibly helpful. Now I dread editing them... uh... differently. But I feel like I have a game plan, and for that, I can only thank you.

[beautifulandmotivated]

According to “the write practice, ” Stephen King said your story should be 25% beginning, 50% middle, and 25% end, and you can determine this structure by looking at word count.

[bytheBrooke]

This is such a hard topic to cover and you did it beautifully! Your story curve talk was solid! Also, love the cherry shirt :)

[thecaptain]

I rarely read, so I've probably read five novels in my life, and none of them had an identifiable plot structure. And I loved it. I hate predictable structure. I'm very good at picking out patterns and structures and predicting outcomes, and if I saw that in a book I would probably put it down.

[vinceknox]

I had momentarily forgotten how writers used the word “pants-er” and when you said you were one, I was like “she pulls people’s pants down?!” Oops.

[veros]

I LOVE how you connect the technical/academic techniques to larger, squishier concepts. It is super helpful to see the way the planks and nails build the house! Thanks so much for the GREAT content :)

[darknightofthesoul]

Alexa, for starting off seeming to be unsure of how to present story pacing to us, I must tell you that you did a smashing job of it! I especially appreciated your use of the bell curve - that brought it into focus. You are...amazing!

[ninaspages]

Hello Alexa. I am so thankful I found you're channel here on Youtube. I am actually writing my own story and I was kinda stuck and felt like giving up but when I saw your video on harsh writing advice, I was instantly cheered up by all the things you said because it is true. And now I am trying to revise my story with your advice in mind. Thank you. Your videos are really helpful.

[xphoenixrising]

So you are the first person I’ve run into that was able to explain the bell curve to me. THANK YOU. I was struggling to apply my novel to it, since it doesn’t follow a hero’s journey, and you helped me immediately put my story into context. Do you have a video that goes into each of those stages? I thought you did but my mobile app is failing me! Great video!!!

[lcchoreography]

Word count stresses me out! My writer friends are always talking word count, whereas I just write, only to then get sucked into their word count obsession. I then spend entirely too much time thinking about my count being too low at that part in the story, agonizing over revealing too much too soon. Pacing kills me.

[TheCosplayInsanity]

What if a character has to travel a long distance (and time (I tend to let logistics influence my story)) to get to the next main plot event? Shift the attention to another POV or weave in a sub-plot that relates to the main plot and have minor events for the subplot when they reach different towns and cities?

[chibaemi]

One day I'll post a link of my book here. I was about to give up on my first book then I found your harsh advise for newbie writers. I'll write that damn book now, since my health is getting better. I thank you in advance. Your videos will be my guide now. God bless you!