I had a couple of ideas rattling around in my head after reading 156 Pitch Wars submissions and requesting 16 partials and 5 full manuscripts. I didn’t read all those pages, but I read enough to see some patterns.

I turned to the internet to see which topic held the most interest, and the vote was pretty clear: With 133 votes cast, people were 82% in favor of diagnosing pacing issues. So here we are.

I think pace is one of those things that most writers–even most readers–know when they see it. You read something and you think: “This is a little slow.” And if you’re beta reading, that’s a good comment. Tell the author that it reads slow to you, and let them figure out what they want to do with that.

But what do you do when you receive that comment as an author? You believe the beta reader…maybe you’ve even had multiple readers tell you the same thing. But how do you fix it? Is there a simple answer that applies every time? (Spoiler: No)

This is the point where I tell you that all writing advice is subjective. I’m going to provide some thoughts and some tools that can make for a better book. The list is not all inclusive, and with everything I say, there’s going to be an example of someone who did it differently and succeeded. So take what you want from it and discard the rest. If it doesn’t help you, I’ll give you a full refund on what you paid me to write this.

So the big question: How do you tell *why* it’s slow?

The answer is simple. The scene lacks tension. That’s it. Done. That’s why the scene is slow. Scenes with tension make the reader want to turn the page. Scenes that lack tension don’t. That’s it.

So that reframes the key question. When we’re trying to figure out why a scene reads slow, what we really have to look for is why it lacks tension.

There are myriad reasons and combinations of reasons why something might lack tension, but I’m going to focus on three big ones that I see the most from developing writers:

1. Nothing is happening
2. There’s too much emotional distance from the POV character
3. The stakes aren’t clear enough

(Note: #3 overlaps with one or both of the other two a lot of the time)

Let’s break them down one at a time:

1. Nothing is happening.

When you’re trying to diagnose why something is slow, start here. What’s happening in the scene? Be very self-critical about it. If your answer is something like ‘I’m showing the scenery and the environment where the character has to function’ then stop. You’ve figured out why it’s slow. If you say ‘I’m providing critical back story so that the reader can better understand the character’s motivations.’ Stop. You’ve figured out why it reads slow.

Because those things aren’t happening. Setting and exposition/backstory are static. They exist, but they’re not moving.

In practice, you can often find these potential problems in your writing as multiple paragraphs of description, or multiple paragraphs of exposition back story. Never say never in writing…but these two things are rarely good. Both description and backstory are usually best when woven into the moving story.

Think about it in terms of real life. You show up in a new location in the middle of a task…what’s important to you? The location or the task? Sure, maybe you’re on vacation, and the point is to see the place. But nobody wants to read about your vacation, so let’s discount that. It’s the task. Now…while you’re doing the task, you’re going to see things at the location. You’ll pass by things that draw your attention for a moment, and then you’ll move on, because you’ve got a task. You’re focused on the task, and the scenery is around you as you do it. Try to write it the same way.

The same goes for exposition. How often in your life, while you’re doing something, do you stop for five minutes to think about all the events that led you to that point? It’s pretty rare, right? So don’t stop your character for five minutes of back story. Feed the reader little bits–only as much as needed for the reader to understand the story at that moment. Take those three paragraphs (or, God forbid, 3 pages) of exposition and dole them out one sentence at a time over two or three chapters.

Those are two of the most common reasons why nothing is happening in a scene. The third is going to seem obvious: Nothing is happening. Yeah, I just said that nothing is happening because nothing is happening. But hey…it happens. More specifically, nothing is happening that affects the POV character. You can write a whole pile of action, but if it doesn’t impact the POV character, it’s going to come off flat and slow.

In practice, this often looks like the uninvolved POV character acting as a reporter for someone else’s action. This mistake comes up a lot in multi-POV books, and is often an indication that the scene is told from the wrong POV. Remember, it’s the POV character’s story. So if they aren’t part of the story, nothing is happening from their perspective. And their perspective is the reader’s perspective. This overlaps neatly with the next topic, but before I move to that, let’s talk about

How to fix it:

There are three general ways to fix it when nothing (or not enough) is happening.

a. Cut words. This is pretty obvious…if it’s slow, make it shorter. The same amount of stuff happening in fewer words will feel faster.

b. Add action. Give us the same description or back story, but weave it with the character doing something.

c. Add stakes. Make it matter more. I’ll go over this in #3, below.

2. There’s too much emotional distance from the POV character

Bottom line: If the reader doesn’t care about your POV character, they don’t care about your story.

We need to know what the POV character thinks about things. How it affects them. Back to the previous situation, where the POV character is acting as a reporter for the actions of others…that’s fine, as long as you tie it back to the POV character and what it means to them. And hey…you already do that on social media, right? We take what’s going on in the world and make it about us. (Wait…is that just me?) So do that for your character.

For example: A story from the POV of a kid. His two best friends get in a fight and he sees it. That’s significant, right? By all definitions, something is happening in that scene. Important action. But only if you write it right. If the scene is the kid reporting on what happened–telling only what he sees, describing the blows, the physical impacts, what happens to the other guys–then nothing happened. Because it’s the kid’s story, and nothing happened to him. It happened to them.

Now of course something happened to the kid. He just witnessed his best friends getting into a fight. But how it affects him…that has to be on the page, or it doesn’t happen. And that’s what’s important. How does it affect *his* relationships with those two friends? Does he have to choose sides? Does he regret not being brave enough to break it up? What is the thing happening in the scene, from the perspective of the kid? Even if he doesn’t know it at the time, which…he’s a kid…maybe he doesn’t realize how it affects him. It still needs to come across to the reader that something happened. That the kid changed. We need to be emotionally tied to the kid and what is happening to *him*.

What does this look like in practice?

This often manifests itself in two common ways–and they’re tricky to spot from a pace perspective, because often times they give the illusion of reading quick. Because there can be a lot happening.

a. A string of action involving non POV characters without introspection by the POV character. If the POV character is watching but not commenting internally and making judgements as to how it affects her, you may have too much emotional distance.

b. A string of dialogue that runs for a page or more (or even less, in some cases) without pause for interior thought. This one is my own personal demon, as any of my beta readers could tell you. Dialogue is great. It’s a way to show and not tell, and it reads fast. But we have to know what the POV character thinks about the dialogue to know why it’s important, or it doesn’t matter. The POV character’s perspective colors the conversation for the reader.

Take a simple one line example: “Hey, nice dress.” What did the POV character mean by that? Did they really just mean nice dress with nothing behind it? Was there motivation behind the comment? Was the POV character secretly pissed that she had planned to wear that dress the next day and now can’t? The context is what makes it interesting. Without the context, it’s a wasted line, and wasted lines make for slow scenes.

How to fix it:

A good way to diagnose if something is happening is this: Take the entire scene. Look at where the POV character entered the scene, and look at them when they exit. What has changed for them? That change is the measure of what happened in that scene. If there’s no change, the scene is suspect. Better yet–have someone else look at the scene and do the same drill. Because sometimes, when you read your own stuff, you know too much. Things have changed for the character, but only in your head. Not on the page. A beta reader will only see what’s on the page.

Make sure there’s change, and make sure it’s on the page. It can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be a critical piece of information that they need to move forward. But the more change you have, the more tension you’re likely to have in the scene.

3. The stakes aren’t clear enough.

This one is pretty simple. If the character fails at whatever they’re doing in the scene, what happens? Does the reader know that? If there are no stakes

We open our book with a character who is late, rushing to work. Rush rush rush. In theory, something is happening. But…do we care? They’re late. So what? It’s a job, so as readers, we can kind of relate. We know that being late is generally bad.

Now add a bomb to the scene. If they’re late, a bomb will go off and destroy everything. Because bombs make every scene better. Now, all of a sudden, being late means something. Added tension. Boom. No pun intended. Okay, a little intended.

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself “yeah, that’s easy for him. He can add bombs. He writes military SF. I can’t put bombs in. I write romance.” First off…you could put in a bomb. Just sayin. Might be cool. But seriously…the bomb is a metaphor. It can be anything that destroys stuff for the POV character. It can be big, or it can be small, as long as it matters to the character. If it matters to them, it will matter to the reader. It can be a donut. If I don’t get there on time, someone will take the last Boston Cream. And it has been a week, and I WANT that effing donut.

I could write about this all night, but at some point it gets ironic to have this many words about how to make your writing move faster.

Before I let you go, because it’s Pitch Wars season, let me put you at ease. Maybe you read this and thought to yourself, wait…I did some of this stuff. Which in writer brain terms becomes “OMG! I DID THIS! I’M DOOMED! Nobody will ever choose me, and they’re going to throw me out of the writer club and everything sucks and I suck and I hate my life.”

Step away from the ledge. Listen to Uncle Mike. If we didn’t choose a book that had some pacing issues, guess what? We wouldn’t have any books. Most of the books that get chosen for Pitch Wars will have some of these problems. The one I’m looking at right now as my leading candidate certainly does.

So you might wonder…why would we choose it if it has these problems? Because we can identify them, and the writer can fix them. And guess what? So can you.