The Idiot's Guide to Writing

Lesson 11: Scene Pacing + Prose in General

Scene pacing is how your story distributes information to a reader on the word-for-word scale, which isn't easy because everyone absorbs information differently. Every scene's prose must be designed to convey information in a certain way—for tone, context, and most importantly—clarity. Honestly, it's no wonder people suck at this.

Like with story pacing, I can diagnose certain common problems but I can't speak for every single problem. Ultimately, adjusting your own pacing is a test of being analytical and aware of your own prose, and finding your own solutions. Editors and beta readers can tell you what sucks and needs help, but you're the one who's writing the thing. This is something that only you can fix.

At the bare minimum, your prose has to clearly explain what's going on. Forget any pretty words or description—none of that will matter at first if your readers are getting lost in the sauce. The biggest psychological problem with writing scene pacing is that the writer already sees the scene in their head. You don't need anything visually established, but everyone else does. This is how you get scenes that are missing their focus from the beginning and leave readers confused. 

To start, you need a sort of establishing shot for every new location—a few lines or a paragraph that tells the reader where they are and what's going on. Remember that the more detail you give to any particular object will draw the reader's focus onto it. If there's a table in the room and the characters are supposed to interact with it, talk about the table. If it's only set dressing, then don't talk any more about the table. The useful details are the most important, indulge those. 

The amount and the kind of detail can also help foreshadow elements of the scene and give subtext. In his short story The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe spends the first page or so talking about how happy the setting is, and then suddenly spends an enormous paragraph grumbling about a spooky grandfather clock. There's nothing particularly interesting about this clock other than that it makes the guests uneasy—to be honest, it could've been entirely removed from the story and no one would've cared. But! He still uses that stupid clock as a symbol to stress the dark tone despite the revelry, and he can only do that by being upfront about the thing. 

Now that you've established the scene, you have to start writing the damn thing. If you want engaging prose, you have to avoid being monotonous. A lot of authors (myself included) get caught in loops of matter-of-factly and uninteresting lines. You might not notice it at first, but if there isn't enough description, internal/external character monologue, action, etc., the prose becomes really tedious because there's not enough going on. You have to be consciously aware of this while writing—your scene is alive. Vary the subject of the prose, vary sentence structure. Show us the interesting subtleties. 

However, there is a limit to how much extraneous detail you can reasonably have. While too much detail is better than having too little, there is a point at which it's too much. If you're trying to figure out which details are worth keeping and which are not, ask yourself this: is this necessary? Does this add anything worthwhile to the scene? Is it forgettable? If you have a good answer to this question for every line you write, that's great. You won't risk risk losing anyone in extraneous crap. 

This also applies to filter words, which are words that don't add anything to the description and just get in the way of it, putting a 'filter' between the audience and the story. "Felt" is a common one—"I felt her skin brush mine" versus "Her skin brushed mine", for example. Cut these out whenever possible. 

These tips alone are enough to make your prose much clearer, though it won't make for good or interesting prose. I'd call this the bare minimum. If you want more interesting scene pacing, you'll have to get into your own style, tone, mood, and word choices. There should be some appeal about your writing that makes it more worthwhile than the next shmuck over. Whether it's the interesting character voice and internal monologue, soaring description and word choice, edge-of-the-seat pacing: find your appeal to your writing, and take advantage of it. Write to elevate that appeal.

And, as a personal rule of thumb: if you're bored writing something, it's probably pretty boring to read. This is different from having writer's block, though I do recommend finding something else to write if you're getting burned out anyways. In whatever case, if what you're writing just isn't fun...don't write that. Try the scene from a new angle. If you're more engaged in what you're writing, the quality of your work will benefit.

Once again—not a comprehensive guide to every single problem. If I did that, we'd be here for days and I don't have time to write all of that. However, this advice I've given here is what improved my own prose and remedies a lot of problems I see elsewhere. Just be able to step back and see the big picture when you write.