Karen S. Wiesner: The Pick-up-the-Pace Ploy for Writers

 Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

The Pick-up-the-Pace Ploy for Writers

Based on COHESIVE STORY BUILDING (formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FICTION NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building}) 

While at one time in writing, it was popular to have long scenes. These days, shorter scenes are in fashion, and I feel there's good reason for that. If you want your book to be read swiftly, with pages flying, you can write one scene per chapter and keep those scenes short, with a single theme or purpose—this is an effective way to keep your readers from noticing they’re sitting in the real world with a book in their hands. In fact, your readers probably won’t even notice you're doing these things on a conscious level.

Short scenes accomplish several things:

Ø  In the most obvious sense, fairly short chapters allow the book to move along swiftly from one chapter to the next. Try reading a James Patterson thriller (and possibly his stories in other genres) if you want to see how this works in an almost shocking way. I won't deny that the brevity in these stories at times compromises dimensionality a little or a lot. However, if you want to see how pages can fly, you'll get that with his stories.

Ø  When chapters are short, there's generally a single focus. In other words, the scene has a singular purpose, a goal to achieve. The complication to the reader is minimal. He absorbs the premise easily and is ready to move on from that point when it's time. In the ideal that an author should continually be striving for, he'll get a hint of "future dimension" that will provide him with the eagerness to keep going.

Ø  Your reader is likely to read more in one sitting, since many will glance ahead to the next chapter when considering whether or not to stop reading for the time being. If the next chapter is short, he'll be much more inclined to read “just one more” chapter. Frequently, he won’t put the book down for several more short chapters.

Ø  Short scenes may produce more reviews that are likely to include comments like “page-turner,” “nail-bitter,” and “couldn’t put it down.” Who doesn't want that?

For example, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with the Pearl Earring has no specific chapters or scenes. However, the book is divided into four parts, each based on a year in the life of Griet, the main character. Each scene within those parts is very short—in most cases, no more than a page or two—and scenes are divided with a fancy curlicue rather than numbered sequentially. I read the book in one sitting, in less than seven hours. The short scenes flew, always leaving me panting for more from one to the next. The singular focus was within each of these unspecified scenes, along with a whisper of what was to.

The only book I've ever read that does the opposite of "short, focused scenes" and yet has the same effect is The Ruins by Scott Smith. There are absolutely no chapters and almost nothing to interrupt the flow. When a scene ends, he skips one line and moves directly into the next without actual chapter breaks or even asterisks to break things up. Somehow this makes for a book that I read from start to finish in a single sitting whenever I take it off my keeper shelf. I literally cannot put it down once I start it.

If you want to pick up the pace of your book, try this simple method.

Karen S. Wiesner is the author of Cohesive Story Building

Volume 2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection

http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html

Happy writing!

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Mysteries of Pacing Part 11- Pacing the Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 11

Pacing the Character Arc

Previous entries in this series are indexed here:
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Mysteries of Pacing Parts 9 and 10

9. Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-9-character.html

10. Show Don't Tell Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/08/mysteries-of-pacing-part-10-show-dont.html

...discussed showing rather than telling the Character Arc.

So if you can't "tell" the Character Arc Story, but story is all about the intangible, psychological, spiritual, morphing of a Character, how do you convey the Arc, or the Change in how the Character evaluates a situation and how the Character decides to act, and what actions she chooses?

For example: How do you depict the shift in a Character from Republican to Democrat?  From Warrior to Lover? From Poet to President?  How and why do people CHANGE?

Or do they change?

What is the experience of your reader?

To convince a reader that the Character you have designed for them to identify with has changed, that change has to seem plausible to the reader.

This is the "hole" in the comic book, or graphic novel, approach. To stay away from the "slow" parts, to keep the pacing fast enough for young (teen, or younger, even twenty-somethings) you have to skip the important small steps that make it plausible this Character would do That Action.

Adults, especially over 30, know how stubborn older people can be, how "set in their ways."

You, the writer, must understand how the elders in your story got so set in their ways.  The backstory is so important, but you can't "tell" that story, or well ... back up and start the series of novels at the events that shaped those elder's beliefs?

If you show-don't-tell the shaping of a stubborn elder starting with early teens, or maybe 20 something, and progressing through another twenty years, you will have a 20 book series.

We've been looking at a few of those, most recently C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/07/reviews-32-cj-cherryh-and-gini-koch-in.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/reviews-58-divergence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

Other mentions of C. J. Cherryh are Indexed here:

How do you change his mind on issues he's sure he understands?

We've talked a lot about C. J. Cherryh.  Here is an index of some posts mentioning her work.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/index-to-posts-mentioning-c-j-cherryh.html

And we've discussed several series of novels running 20 books or more, a phenomenon you would not find in Romance Genre prior to the admixture of Vampire, Paranormal, or Science Fiction genre forms with Romance.

In an old fashioned Romance Genre novel, the couple meets, tries to cope with their attraction, overcomes obstacles to getting together, gets together (sometimes to the Wedding Day, often just to "Will You Marry Me?") and that's the end of the story.

We are to assume they live into an HEA lifetime.  And we go on to pick up another Romance novel that starts the same, and ends the same.

The addition of the near-immortal Vampire character, or the problems of relationships with Ghosts, or mythical creatures from another dimension, Aliens from Outer Space, made the "ever after" more interesting, attractive, and problematic.

Readers wanted more, writers gave more, and we have serious like Gini Koch's ALIEN series.

Falling in love is an adventure in self-discovery -- the amazement that another person could have THIS affect on how you think, what you value, what you're willing to give up to get a life together.

The Second Time Around Romance often captures much of that advanced story arc where both Characters have a complex, rich, backstory -- with pain, with lessons learned, with consequences accepted (children) and avoided.

Romance has come of age, no longer about teen crushes and infatuations, but about real relationships and how another person reshapes you.

But still, you are you.

No matter how "old" you might be, how "elder" in a family or community, you are still you.

The readers of Romance are old enough to understand that, having seen children grow up.

A parent learns the traits of their children from earliest years, what their talents are, the proclivities, and personalities.  There is a sense of each child responding differently to the same home environment.

The Romance reader's perception of the real people around her is that people grow up from childhood by growing into their Personality - not by changing it.

Old advice to youngsters just entering a new situation is, "Be yourself."

That's harder than it sounds. Thousands of experiences shape the contents of that innate framework of Personality, and along through the decades of life, mistakes are corrected, bits discarded, other bits smoothing over the cracks where a heart was broken, and what emerges is an Elder who is as solid as he will ever become.

Younger people who are still correcting their mistakes, trying to find their limits and define "self" see such mature people as stubborn, wrong, set in their ways. fossils no longer relevant to the changing world.

See? Writers know that Character is all in point of view.

The Villain is the Hero of his own Story.

So Character Arc is also in point of view more than in objective reality.

As you age, your point of view changes even though you are the same you.

So, if your Main Character is mature, that Character's "Arc" -- or change in response to the impact of Plot Events -- may be very small on an objective scale. December Romance.

But if your Main Character is a teen, the Character Arc may be gigantic.  Scared Straight.

The Character Arc of  a younger person can change the direction of their whole life, and move an entire civilization.

Think about Bill Gates leaving college to found Microsoft.

Now think about a man in his 70's deciding to run for President. How do you change his mind on issues he's sure he understands?

C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels trace an all-too-young and unsure of himself (but arrogant in his confidence in his linguistic skills) through the Character Arc (22 books and counting) of mastering the Art of Maturity.

Bren Cameron, by the novel DIVERGENCE,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/reviews-58-divergence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

...has learned how inaction can speak more loudly than action.  He has learned to choose when and how to act.  He shoots someone with a gun he's not supposed to have, and saves the day, unraveling a dark plot that could have damaged the economic footing of a civilization. His only other action in the entire book is to quietly write some notes to various dignitaries, and to go talk to people who distrust each other.  Mostly, he sits still and evaluates the various moving parts of the situation.

This makes for a novel replete with intricate exposition about the events of previous novels -- but all from Bren Cameron's now mature point of view.

The shift in how Bren interprets the events he lived through, and the things he finds out from others, shows without telling that this is the same Character from Book 1 (FOREIGNER), but now way out along a Character Arc we can now see without being told.

https://www.amazon.com/Foreigner-10th-Anniversary-Book-ebook/dp/B006JHXPDW/

So if you set out to show not tell a major change in a person's character, you will need more space than a few comic books offer.  A single novel won't do it, as each "novel" in a real person's life brings one unique point into view, resolves one issue.

To chronicle a real maturation, you need a long series of novels.

So study some of the long series we've discussed, and translate them into Romance.

Study the Netflix Original, Madame Secretary, which depicts a couple living the Happily Ever After portion of their lives, raising children, struggling to balance home, family, and work.

What lesson of Maturity makes your readers unbearably curious?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Verisimilitude VS Reality - Part 4 - Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System

Verisimilitude VS Reality

Part 4

Story Arc and the Fiction Delivery System 

Previous parts in the Verisimilitude VS Reality series are:

Part 1
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/01/verisimilitude-vs-reality.html

Part 2 Master Theme Structure, The Camera, Nesting Plots and Stories
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-2-master.html

Part 3 - The Game, The Stakes, The Template
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/09/verisimilitude-vs-reality-part-3-game.html

And now Verisimilitude used to create the dynamics of the Story Arc and what that has to do with what I term, The Fiction Delivery System (parallel to the Healthcare Delivery System).

Recently, I was a guest on a podcast by The Roddenberry Star Trek podcasts, titled The Trek Files.

Every episode features a Guest talking about one of the Archived documents in the Trek Files which they post a link to on their Facebook page so you can read, then listen to the Q&A.

https://www.facebook.com/TheTrekFiles/

You can subscribe on the Apple podcast store by searching for The Trek Files.  See Larry Nemecek's name and you know you're in the right place.

In the three short segments we recorded (audio-only), it was impossible to cover all the connecting links to how the impact of ST:ToS affected the way consumers find and obtain fictional entertainment they want.  Not just science fiction, or Romance, but all fiction and non-fiction distributed retail.

Eventually, ST:ToS eventually changed how "news" is distributed wholesale, as well -- "wholesale" being the News Services, AP, Reuters, etc. which used to be out of reach of the individual consumer, but now publish directly to individuals online.  When news wholesalers hit the individual retail consumer, they had to change the format and content of their reporting.

Same thing happened on various levels in the Fiction Publishing Industry -- and (with advent of Streaming) similar forces are disrupting video-format fiction distribution.

This disruption was one main topic I wanted to touch on during the podcast, but didn't have a chance to get it in.

Because of the change sparked by the original Star Trek and its fan-response, the current streaming TV offerings and self-published e-books, are substantially different from what they probably would have been had Star Trek not connected to Science Fiction fans.

It is difficult to see the connecting links, and we won't be able to reveal the chain of "because line" to this Event Sequence that has propagated through the decades.

Most readers of this will be able to figure it out, once convinced the links are there to find.  Researching the connections is like preparing to write a Regency Romance.

Many of the details would not interest casual listeners to The Trek Files podcast, but readers of this blog might find the view of Reality something they can use to build a Science Fiction Romance world.

As we've been discussing Verisimilitude in various series of posts because it is relevant to crafting a novel that draws readers into a world.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Now we return to Verisimilitude by looking at how our everyday world has changed from the impact of Star Trek in the 1960's.  Fictional worlds change, too.  Replicate that sense of "a changing world" for your Characters and the reader won't need expository lumps of explanation.

Worldbuilding, to have verisimilitude, has to be depicted as an Arc - like Story Arc and Character Arc and Plot Arc, the world behind the Characters you create has to change.

But change in a fictional world has to seem to be an "arc" to the reader.  The reader has to see (without being told) the connections of cause/effect between what the Protagonist does and what goes on because of her actions.

In real life, we rarely have enough information to discern those connections. Life often seems random and meaningless.  It may seem that way to your Protagonist, too, but the reader has to be able to understand what the Protagonist can't (yet), and then watch the Protagonist gain an understanding, even if it is a misunderstanding.

How your fictional world changes, and how that change also changes your Characters -- and how your Characters change their world -- depends on your Theme.

Romance has the master theme of Love Conquers All.  Science Fiction generally has a master theme of Science Conquers All.  Put them together, you've got a winner!

To have Verisimilitude, a novel has to show, not tell, how the World responds to the Characters, and how the Characters respond to their world.

Our world really does interact with us, but mostly we just don't see it.  "She's her own worst enemy," is a widely used theme.  Everyone knows someone like that.  It is especially  noticeable to those who are their own worst enemy.

The Tennis Match paradigm mentioned in Part 3 of this series, indicates how the fictional world integrates the real world's dynamics into the craft techniques.  The reader watches as the ball is volleyed back and forth between two Players or Viewpoint Characters.

"The Ball" represents "the initiative" -- or the action that advances the plot, the decision that alters the direction of events.  In the real world, no one person makes all the decisions. Everyone makes some decisions, even if to implement someone else's decisions. But some decisions change the world in a more obvious fashion once implemented.

You find the BEGINNING of your novel by finding the point in the Protagonist's life where she is making such a decision, or implementing it. The HEA ending happens when the results of implementing that decision (I'll marry you) are fully manifest.  In real life, most of us only get one such decision point to live through - survive it, (possibly a 10 year period), and it is smooth sailing ever after, either "up" or "down" or "level" in life.

Some decisions never get implemented.  The Character making such decisions is NOT the "Main Character" - not the character whose story you are telling.  You can't start Chapter One with that Character.  Such a Character re-acts instead of acting.

In our everyday world, we had one Situation before Star Trek: The Original Series, and another very different world that emerged during the 3-5 years after cancellation.

Pre-ST: nothing any viewer of any TV Series, no matter how erudite, vocal, or geekishly dedicated, could say anything in a letter (on paper) to the production's owners that would influence any decision the owners imposed on the Producer (whom they hired to package the show).  Fan opinion didn't matter.

Post-ST: Fan suggestions to enlarge content, add deeper texture, feature certain Characters, and fix plot-holes influenced the decisions of Producers staking their careers on multi-million dollar projects.

They learned (possibly from my book, Star Trek Lives!)

that being wildly enthusiastic, determined, and opinionated about a piece of fiction didn't imply inherent stupidity.

As a result, not only did Trek films incorporate items found in fanfic, but the commercials aired during ST (and other TV shows, too) became less condescending.

Producers and Traditional Publishing Editors learned to pay attention to what the end-user of their products (viewers, readers, audience) had to say about the product.

I call this change the establishing of a "feedback loop" -- it is the essence of good conversation, of increasing efficiency by successive approximations, of functioning in a chaotic reality.  Feedback, like "road feel" while driving a car, lets decisions target problems before they become problems.

We still have a real world where the business model of TV and even paper publishing requires the end-user to be "the product" not "the customer."

In TV that runs on advertising, it's obvious. In Streaming that runs on fees of subscribers, it isn't quite so obvious because you think you're paying for what you watch.  In fact, others are paying for what you watch, because these video stories are so expensive to make.  Thus what others prefer is what you have to choose from.  The mass-audience is the product -- those willing to chip in.

In book publishing, the publisher's actual customer is the distributor. That was a warehouse and trucking operation which would accept a certain number of copies of some but not all the titles a publisher put out in a month.  Then came book-chain stores which dominated, and developed their own distribution -- direct purchase from publisher.

The publishers started using computers to track sales of given titles, and editors had to guess (stab in the dark) why one title sold and another didn't.

In both TV and books, as well as in theater released movies, there was no direct feedback line from the end-user to the original commercializing producer to indicate WHY viewers or readers like this or that item.

Star Trek changed that because Gene Roddenberry took the Star Trek pilot to the Worldcon in Chicago and dropped it into the dry-tinder of Science Fiction fandom.  Typically, cons were not attended by "the general public" (as later Trek cons were).  Everyone there knew everyone else, if not directly then by a friend of a friend.  It was a tight-knit community.  Among them were connections to thousands and thousands of equally erudite, skilled, enthusiastic fans who couldn't make it that year.

Fans knew how to communicate and organize, but never before had anything much to say about a TV Series.

Before it's first air date, Star Trek was eagerly anticipated by many thousands, assiduously sharpening their critical faculties ready to tear the thing apart.  Turned out, being a TV show, it wasn't hard to rip the science to shreds, but it was FUN.

Star Trek was the first real science fiction on TV.  

Paramount, the owner-producer of the show, thought the letters (on paper) they were getting were the usual "fan" letters, from people who couldn't tell fiction from reality and didn't understand actors aren't the characters they play.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth, but it took years for the massive, experienced, production company nestled among yes-men of Hollywood to figure out that THESE people weren't the sort lost in a fantasy world, but rather science students, managers, professionals or professionals-to-be.  THESE people were out to make the world shown on STAR TREK into a reality.

And they did.

Students at two Universities connected two of the giant computers used in those days (with less computing power than your phone has today) to play a Star Trek game they invented.

In Europe, the idea of connecting universities and their libraries caught fire, and a way to access all that information became necessary.  Thus "the browser" was invented to read all the disparate sorts of code in use and present words you could read.

A kid dropped out of college and founded Microsoft.

There were many other such companies and computers designed around different architecture.  Microsoft and computers designed for Windows (descended from Microsoft's OS, which became Presentation Manager, which became Windows), plus Apple are all that's significantly left standing.

Unix, the university system, and its descendent Linux, now dominated by Red-hot Linux, are on the giant computer side.

A new architect, (client-server) has taken over and produced "The Cloud" while commercial applications of all this are erupting in every direction.

They wanted to play a game based on a TV show (one too few people watched).  Why should Hollywood or Manhattan Publishing giants listen to fans?

They learned.  They now listen - don't always do wise things, but they notice.

There is the beginning of the feedback loop necessary to get a society to function as a civilization.

That loop took shape decades before Star Trek -- in Science Fiction Fandom where all the writers were just fans who happened to write, and would sell to magazines and book publishers - then paperback mass market publishers.

One whole publishing house, DAW, was founded by Donald Wollheim to publish ONLY science fiction.  It still exists as an imprint under the leadership of his daughter.

Star Trek blew the lid on Science Fiction -- popularized it -- leading many into professional science fields who might not have been interested without that rocket fuel for the imagination.

We had N.A.S.A. and now we have SpaceX making orbital shuttles a commercial venture.  And there are others, and they have vision -- colonies in space, on the Moon, on Mars.  Self driving cars are the precursor to self-driving space ships.

All because of some people who were believed to be the sort who can't tell the difference between Fantasy and Reality.

Doesn't that describe the opinion some hold about Romance fans?

Give your novel's world an Arc like our real world's Arc and inspire your readers to make it so.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg

Mysteries of Pacing Part 10 - Show Don't Tell Character Arc

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 10

Show Don't Tell Character Arc 

Previous parts of Mysteries of Pacing are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Note in that index post, at the top there are links to 3 of my Reviews of Series I've been following on this blog.  Assuming you have at least looked over the cover blurbs and first and last chapters of some of the novels in each Series, think now about the Main Character in each series.

If you don't like the Series I've highlighted, pick some others you do like.  The point here is to follow a single Character through years, and even decades, of life's vicissitudes and rewards.

I'm also assuming, if you've had the ambition to write novels for a while, you've also delved into a large number of biographies, both of famous people and of less well known who have lived through major world events (such as the World Wars, famine in Africa, adventures with the Peace Corps, etc.).

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Many people have lived interesting lives without making Headlines you can rip a story, plot, or setting out of.

Given that breadth of reading experience, and the ambition to write something as gripping and fascinating (maybe even instructive) as those books you love, consider the story you want to tell.

Now reconsider whether any of the books you have read actually TELL you a story.

If you're using the examples I've highlighted in Reviews, the answer is, "No, they don't tell the story."

The deepest, most gripping, thrilling, and informative books (novels and non-fictiion) SHOW you the story in such a way that you remember it as telling you the story.

The serious clue to what is happening when you remember a good book comes to you when you meet the author of that book and get into a conversation, not so much about the book but about life in general.

You come to realize one of the oldest bromides in the writing profession -- "The book the reader reads is not the book the writer wrote."

And the reason for that difference is the element in worldbuilding we've discussed at such length, Verisimilitude.

Making your world, your characters, your story into something resembling the reader's internal world (derived from but not identical to the real world around her) gives the illusion of verisimilitude because we all believe our own internal world is real, or very close to reality.

Verisimilitude is not about reality, but about resembling reality closely enough to "suspend disbelief" long enough to explore the validity of one's beliefs, to see reality from a perspective unavailable without suspension of disbelief.

One of the writer's tools for creating Verisimilitude in a Character, especially a Main Character, or Viewpoint Character whose story you reveal in the plot of his life-experiences, is Dialogue.

Characterization of a Viewpoint Character, one whose silent thoughts and reasoning, emotional reactions and subsequent evaluations, are revealed to the reader, requires that the Character's dialogue, words spoken aloud, be reflective of that Character's Arc.

As we discussed in Part 9, Character Arc is a vector quantity, having both magnitude and direction.  That makes it complicated, but extraordinarily simple to portray.

Here is a blog describing (as most writing tutorials do) what the ultimate goal of your crafting of a story should be -- but devoid (as most writing tutorials are) of exactly how to take your inner vision and make it into words other people will enjoy.  Nevertheless, if you're confused about what the goal is, read this

https://socreate.it/en/blogs/socreate-blog/posts/how-to-write-character-arcs/


Here are a few posts exploring creation of Verisimilitude:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-1.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-every-novel-needs-love-story-part-2.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/06/depiction-part-14-depicting-cultural.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/10/alien-sexuality-part-3-corporate-greed_25.html

And here's the index post for the series on Dialogue which now has 15 entries.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/dialogue-parts-1-4-listed.html

Dialogue is not real-speech-transcribed.  Characters don't speak like real people.  Dialogue is an art form designed to move the plot while incidentally leading the reader (or viewer) to create their own Character from the words spoken.

Dialogue is "Di" -- that is, two-fold, an interchange between at least two.  One might be an Alien, a Computer, a Pet animal, a working animal (the Cowboy's horse), and the speaking Character may infer or imagine the responses to suit himself.

Robert Heinlein famously characterized Mike, the Artificial Intelligence awakened on Earth's Moon whose job was to run the infrastructure of the habitation there.

Dialogue, likewise, must not be Exposition.  Exposition is the writer filling the reader in on "need to know" matters the Characters already know.

Beginning writers often use the line "As you know, ..." and proceed to insert Exposition into the spoken words of the Character.  This never works well because it stops the forward momentum (Pacing) of the plot developments.

In a Mystery, for example, you can show-don't-tell a Character lying by using Dialogue to relate an Event the Narrative went through step by step.  Describing that Event to another Character, but leaving out or inserting information can move the plot forward.

There are many other exceptions, but wherever you find yourself using Dialogue to explain something to the Reader, re-write it into plain Exposition. Then you can mine the Expository Lump for salient bits, sprinkle them elsewhere in Dialogue, and delete the fabricated lump.

Description, Dialogue, Exposition, Narrative, are the basic tools of the story teller.  Each has a purpose, and when used for that purpose, each one can be crafted into a method of advancing the plot.

The plot is the sequence of Events that happen TO the Main Character, impacting the Character's character, thus propelling the Main Character along an Arc.  Some Events hit hard and speed the Character to new Realizations that change the Character's decisions, thus affecting the plot-arc.  Some Events change the DIRECTION the Main Character is going in Life.

This year, 2020, we are striving to "get back to normal."  This concept "get back to normal" is an attempt to retain the DIRECTION our lives were going in while compensating for the speed-bump of quarantine which slowed down, delayed, and frustrated us.  Our life-Arc changed speed and now we struggle to keep direction.

Think about the world around you and find the "Arc" to understand how to craft a novel using Character Arc.

For a Character to "Arc" - the Character's life (inner and outer life) has to be in flux.  Finding where your Character's "novel" happens along that Character's life-path is one of the hardest techniques to learn. Romance is easy in that the novel happens between first meeting and happily-ever-after. Science Fiction is much harder, but generally the novel happens from before-the-Protagonist-knows to after-the-Protagonist-finds-out.  Science is the never-ending quest to figure the universe out.

Usually, we start a novel where two forces that will Conflict first meet, intersect, become aware of each other, or just plain collide.  Each of those forces are represented by a Character, and that Character (two Lovers-to-be or Hero and Villain) will CHANGE under the impact of the meeting.

Yes, both Hero and Villain, or both Lovers, have to change.

Romance is, as I've noted many times, something that happens in Reality under the impact of a Neptune Transit to the Lover's Natal Chart.  Neptune's effect is to blur, dissolve, erode, or confuse, mislead.

Neptune is also called Wisdom.  Neptune is about a method of cognition which is not logical, a data channel which streams information into the deepest part of the Psyche.

Neptune, Romance, doesn't usually cause Change or Arc in your character or life-direction.  It is other things going on while Neptune prevails that cause serious change of direction.

If such other direction-changing forces are acting on a Character, Neptune will move through and ease, smooth, lubricate the path of Change.

Romance makes falling in Love easy.  Without Neptune, falling in love can be a disaster because people resist the kind of change it takes to blend an innermost soul with another.

If a Main Character, Protagonist, Hero, is to undergo such a profound change of innermost character, how can a writer Depict that change without inserting long, boring, exposition lifted from Psychology Textbooks?

Here is the index to Depiction:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/04/index-to-depiction-series-by-jacqueline.html

Dialogue is one of the most powerful tools for depicting a Character, with one caveat -- avoid trying to spell out an accent or dialect.

You can use spelled accents the first few times a Main Character encounters the Character who talks funny, but let the Main Character's "ear" become gradually accustomed to the dialect, and fade in a correct spelling, leaving only the rhythm and vocabulary of the accent.

And you can use that same technique with choice of vocabulary. You've seen it done (not really well) on Star Trek where Spock uses "big words" (even small ones may be obscure).  His dialogue is not laced with scientific jargon, but with precise English dictionary words where colloquialisms serve native speakers well.

In lieu of spelling out accented speech, a dialect or non-native-speaker, try altering choice of vocabulary, or phrasing.

Note how many older people use slang, old sayings, cliche or pop culture references from their teens and twenties, decades previous.  Note how today's young people have a whole new vocabulary, and new celebrities and movies to quote.

As an aspiring writer, you probably love words, and have a junk-pile of trivia in mind of words nobody uses much.

Find the etymology of words, old and new (easy using Google and Urban Dictionaries etc), and you will find the backstory of your Main Character depicted in the vocabulary of their youth.

Start the story with the Main Character's dialogue redolent of that epoch, and let the impact of a younger person's speech infect the older, let them discuss current events using non-current vocabulary.

Trying to explain the usage, connotation and denotation of unfamiliar words can be a Lover's Pillowtalk Device.

Love is about communication.  Use vocabulary to depict Character, and Character Arc as one absorbs the speech idiosyncrasies of another.

For example, one protagonist may start out hiding from emotional confrontations by sprinkling speech with "bromides."

Even if you know what a bromide is, and often use them yourself, Google "the bromide."  Check some of the "dictionaries" that come up and compare the entries -- they aren't all the same, and make wonderful ongoing conversational tag-games for Characters engaged in something more important.

A "bromide" can be identified as "...a comment that is intended to calm someone down when they are angry, but that has been expressed so often that it has become boring and meaningless."  This evolved from the wide usage of bromide compounds as sedatives.

The evolution of language describes a Culture Arc, which can be one of the Mysteries of Pacing, as one Character acclimates to an Alien culture.

See https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/bromide  - and note the tabs at the top of the page that separate slanted definitions.

Over the course of your Series of Novels, let the Characters absorb each others speech patterns, whether it surfaces as on-the-nose discussion of words, usage and meaning, or as is more congruent with verisimilitude, just unconsciously imitate each other.

That's how we learn language, imitating.

Try doing a scene where a younger Character learns some word-usage, or a "bromide" saying, from an old TV series (like Perry Mason in B&W), from an older Character who uses such a phrase naturally.

The reader may absorb lessons in appreciating language and its accurate usage, while the Characters you are depicting learn how much they mean to each other.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 9 - Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 9

Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible

Previous entries in this series are indexed at:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

People make mistakes.

So, therefore, a Character in a story who makes a mistake (thus advancing the plot, NOT delaying it), is entirely plausible, sometimes lovable, easily identified with, and a true candidate for Husband of the Year -- eventually -- when that mistake arises from a foible.

See the entry on What Does She See In Him
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-does-she-see-in-him.html

It is the core of the HEA plausibility study we've been doing. How does one human assess another's Character?  How inflexible is that human in changing the criteria by which Character is to be assessed?  How important is Character in a Romance?  Does a Romance need two sterling Characters to progress to an HEA?

Does Happily Ever After ending plausibility depend entirely on two Characters having internal strength of character?

What is character, exactly? What constitutes "strength" in Character?  Can one strong Character be the Soul Mate of another Strong Character, or does a Strong Character require a Weak Character Mate?

All these questions have one valid answer.

"Probably."

Somewhere, some-when, on some fantasy timeline, each of those questions has a yes, and each has a no, and where there is a sliding scale (how important?) every single value on that whole scale, plus-to-minus, works perfectly in some alternate universe.

Your job as a writer is to take your reader on a journey across the border between here and now and there and then, and insert your reader into the head of a native of that otherwhere.

At the end of the story, the reader should return to reality with a new METHOD of assessing data about the nature and value of a person, maybe about what constitutes person-hood.

To be the tour-guide into that otherwhere, the writer has to create that otherwhere, and all its non-human Characters, if not from scratch, from a template.

The best template to use to create a fictional World is one of the many your target readership already knows.

See the following Index lists for posts on these intertwined and related topics on Worldbuilding, Theme, and integrating theme and setting ( where setting = world).

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/08/index-to-posts-about-using-real-world.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2014/07/index-to-theme-character-integration.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2015/12/index-to-theme-plot-character.html

Actually, "Setting" is a tiny slice of a "World" - but to write science fiction, the writer needs a sketch of the whole world around the Characters.

To end up with a Science Fiction Romance novel, you start by envisioning (not necessarily building in detail) the World the Characters must cope with.

The one decisive element the writer needs to know to avoid endless rewriting is what-and-where the imaginary world diverges from the reader's reality (or the reader's notion of reality).

What your reader KNOWS is key to targeting a readership.  Publishing mostly regards assumptions about the reader's pre-existing knowledge base as the key to deciding the label to put on the book, Children's, Juvenile, Adult, Cozy, Chicklit, etc.

Readerships are regarded as divided by age, and thus "life-experience" -- and aspirations.  "When I grow up, I want to be  ... " or, "I want my newborn grandson to grow up to be ..."

What the reader will learn from the book depends on how old that reader is, or alternatively what their live-experience is.  For example, the children growing up in a war-torn region of the globe will be fully Adult at maybe 10 or 12, maybe having shot and killed an attacker, or an enemy who isn't attacking (yet).

Maybe that child learns hate, and grows up to un-learn it, as so very many things learned in childhood are discarded in the twenties.

Alternatively, the majority of Romance readers probably are growing up in sheltered homes, being pushed through schooling they don't want (yet), and having their lives planned by their grandparents.

These readerships have overlap points, but Publishers still prefer to divide humanity by age.

See these posts on Targeting a Readership:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/index-to-targeting-readership-series-by.html

So your job as a Science Fiction Romance Writer is to be the tour guide to a gaggle of tourists of mixed backgrounds all arriving in your world with different expectations.

As in the film AVATAR,
https://www.amazon.com/Avatar-Sam-Worthington/dp/B00AVF8USS/
you have to give each of the tourists in your gaggle a persona, an avatar, inside which they can safely tour your world, and still bond with and empathize with the issues at hand.

The cultural rejection of the HEA as inevitable, or even possible, may reside in the scarcity of Avatars tailored for the segment of the readership that flat disbelieves.

Your job is to usher them into a world where things are different than their current reality, where the singular difference makes the HEA possible, or even very likely.

For the firmly convinced anti-HEA (maybe amenable to the HFNow ending), the transition in belief system is truly gigantic.

It is existential.

It is a transition that threatens the very foundations of conceptual reality.  Change in such fundamental beliefs can feel like being suddenly plunged into a nightmare.

In other words, for some people a realistic Romance Novel is actually Horror Genre.

To ease such a reader into your World, you need a Character to be their Avatar.

To deliver a satisfying good read, you need that Avatar to Arc from where the Reader is in their life at that time, to where the Reader can envision a world where SOMETHING is different than in her real world, and that difference makes the HEA either possible or inevitable.

The place in "life" and the parameter of reality blocking the reader's life progress, are items you glean from your view of the world (yes, rip this from the current headlines).

To build your fictional world, a simplified, stripped down, version of Reality, you target a problem in real Reality, and figure what about that target has to change (and into what it must change) to cause the HEA to be the normal life-arc of the characters in your world.

To make rabbit stew, first catch your rabbit.

In this case the rabbit is the problem making people frustrated or miserable, or maybe excited and ready to leap into adventure, never mind the danger.  The stew is your theme.

Identify the problem, hypothesize a solution, run an experiment.

The essence of science fiction is encapsulated in three question formats:  "What if ...?" " "If only ..." and "If this goes  on ..."

Focus on that, and you find it applies perfectly to Romance.  These are not two separate genres, as publishers still believe, and when you use both in a single novel or series, you aren't "mixing" genres, but rather revealing the hard-core practical reality at the center of your World.

The mystery of pacing is likewise revealed by what you choose as your hard-core, practical, inescapable attribute of reality that is so very different from what your reader thinks reality revolves around.

Consider, maybe our individual (and collective) "view of reality" is somewhat like a Galaxy -- with a black hole in the center, and our beliefs like a spiral scattering of stars being pulled down that drain just like water sucked down a drain by gravity.

It's the inexorable gravity of the black hole that gives spiral galaxies their shape.

Study your black hole.  Study your reader's black hole.  Measure the distance between them, and consider if one passes through the other at an angle, what "beliefs" (e.g. stars) will be changed in orbit, or possibly gather substance or planets?

The belief system of a person can be reshaped by an encounter with a black hole from another system of belief.

One won't be turned into the other, but there will be a morphing into something else.

Nothing remains unaffected by such major encounters.

Reading a novel can be a view through a telescope, or a close encounter, or an interpenetration.

The interpenetration happens when the Main Character of the story is an amenable Avatar for the reader who then experiences not just the story, but the arc of the Character.

The reader's real, personal, character will arc in response just as two galaxies passing through each other leave change in both.

The pacing the writer needs to pull off this non-destructive but morphing encounter depends on the initial distance between the core beliefs of the reader and the core beliefs of the Avatar, the main character to whom the plot happens.

A core belief is like that black hole that shapes the position and vector of each of the suns in the galaxy spiral.  A core belief shapes and determines the direction of change of all the other beliefs.  Beliefs are not static, and they have gravity of their own, and pull planetary beliefs into orbit, all forever moving through reality, each shaping space around it.

Dynamic motion.

Beliefs are not static things.  They arc.  They arc around a central gravity-point like that black hole, and they become organized through life into recognizable shapes.

An interpenetration with another character can add, subtract, and re-organize the substance of the beliefs, or rip them away sending them off into the deep.  Romance can do that to a Character - just reshape reality.

In dramatic writing, "pacing" is the rate of change of Situation.  It can also be the rate of change of the Character's understanding of what the Situation really is.

In other words, pacing can be increased or slowed by the rate at which a Character learns either information or a method of interpreting information.  Having to pause to re-interpret everything that's happened so far can slow pacing.

Pacing is a vector.  It has both direction and speed.

Once you've lured or seduced your reader into occupying the Avatar character, you can manipulate the Avatar's understanding of your World.

The best way to captivate and show-don't-tell is to start your Avatar out at a point where his/her beliefs match orbit with your reader.  Then send a challenge of current beliefs flying at your Avatar knocking him out of orbit.

Like billiards.  

It is what happens when two Soul Mates meet.  The core beliefs of each, the black hole at the center of Soul, is knocked, deformed, and rung like a bell.

The Love At First Sight Romance is a direct collision of the black holes at the centers of your pair of Characters.  It sets the whole galaxy of belief system of each of them ringing like a bell.

Each of the Characters must arc, or change their beliefs to accommodate the new gravity pattern around their central, core belief.

In a Romance, the core beliefs either don't have very far to go, or if they have far to go, they change in very tiny increments, very slowly, which takes an entire Series of novels, a long series, 20 books or more sometimes.

Pacing, in drama, is a vector quantity.  It has speed and direction.

If you have to change your Character's direction in life, by a lot, do it slowly.

Science Fiction Romance is one genre that, in a Series, allows your plot to be fast-paced while your story (Romance) is slow-paced enough to have verisimilitude.

Using the definition of Plot as the sequence of events caused by the Main Character's initial action, each event causing the next, you can start the series where the Main Character, the Avatar, makes a mistake.

However, it can't be just a random mistake.  The Avatar's action has to be an illustration of an innate foible, a character flaw, that throughout the coming series of novels, will be hammered to destruction, the source revealed, and the remedy encountered, resisted, then accepted.

The HEA, in real life, is usually the result of such a developmental arc, where events cause self-examination and reassessment, gradually (over years) revealing and eliminating a foible.

Some foibles are not worth the effort to eliminate -- they just make the person individualistic, one of a kind, charming, interesting or just a character.

Other foibles can cripple a person's life, preventing career advancement, diverting energy to unproductive channels, and just being mistakes to regret.

The foible is the key ingredient in a Character formulation, in Characterization, that allows that Character to be the Main Character and the reader's Avatar.

Look up foible (Google it) and study the word and its ever changing meaning.  Identify your own foibles, which you still have and which you've vanquished.  Think about how the vanquished ones were knocked out of you.

Identify that pattern of foible-remediation in other people you know, and then maybe on Facebook Friends postings.

Find some headlines about people undergoing remediation of their foibles.

Find the foible pattern common to humanity, and build your Aliens around a different pattern.

The Aliens will be more plausible if they have foibles, but a different pattern of them, and a different mechanism of remediation.

Your Alien will be more lovable with a recognizable foible.

Really study the word foible.  It is the black hole at the center of the Character Arc spiral.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 8 - Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 8

Pacing and the HEA

Mysteries of Pacing series is indexed here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/index-to-mysteries-of-pacing.html

Anyone who has had sex, (good, bad or indifferent) understands pacing.  Pacing is the difference between good, bad and indifferent - and mind-glowingly awesome.

It is all about "the next thing" being revealed (mysteriously is best) at just the right point.

The problem with most couples is that one is ready when the other is not.

This is exactly the problem between writer and reader.

Sex is a "story," a sequence of RE-actions to stimuli, which form the "plot."  Each contact is a plot-point, and in optimized sequence, the points line up to create a momentum of re-actions, leading to a climax.

The climax of a novel is called a climax for a reason.

The culmination of good or indifferent sex is called a climax for the same reason.  (bad sex usually means no climax for at least one participant).

Both good fiction and good sex are all about energy transfer, or energy transformation, possibly by "induction."

So great mind-blowing body-ripping sex climaxes in a sequenced, and orchestrated (actually structured) way, just the way a good novel has to lead TO a moment where climax happens.

The HEA is what happens after the climax.

Slideplayer.com

Climax is the erupting and dissipation of a pure energy.

In Relationships, that "energy" is the momentum that keeps "life" moving.  We build a life, we have a work-life, and a home-life, and a social-life, maybe a sports-life, a hobby-life, we build these lives from the teen years onwards.

We pour energy into each of these structured lives we possess, and each of our lives has a "vector" (a direction and a magnitude) which when blended with all the other components, produces our "life" as the result.

Change any component, and life changes (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot).

A Climax is the point where the energy driving life in one direction suddenly reduces in magnitude, allowing the DIRECTION to change.

Life has momentum.  Humans have emotional inertia.  We don't so much resist change as simply ride our life-vector.

Life's momentum has a magnitude. Every single little thing you do as a teen, or college student, or twenty-something, is additive -- it gets your life moving, and once life is moving  fast, you don't have much choice of direction.

This is why the classic story of an addict's life usually includes hitting bottom.  There is a turning point where the person's life "hits" an obstacle and all no longer has direction or movement.  When everything stops, the person has a choice of direction.  While moving down into the abyss, there is no choice of direction because many small choices have built momentum to a magnitude that can't be overcome.

Likewise in sex, the "don't stop now" point is so crucial in generating Relationship Building pillow talk after climax, a good night's sleep, and productive planning over breakfast.

Pacing a novel is all about direction and magnitude. The direction the reader is looking for is progress toward the Climax (the new choices point).  The magnitude the reader is looking for is the clue to how intense, how satisfying, the Climax will be when that point is "hit."  How HARD will the characters be hit when they reach that final moment?

How hard the characters are hit is proportionate to how big a change they have to make in their life-direction, their life-vector.

If you're telling the story of addiction, Book One ends with the climax of hitting rock bottom, of realization, of knowing, and of being able to choose a new direction.

Whether the reader sees that this Character will succeed where most addicts fail depends on the writer's showing not telling the Character's character, the strength that can be summoned.  Often that depends on the Character's ability to visualize the ultimate goal.

The sequels in that series would then detail the step-wise climb in a new direction, the moments of temptation, the mistakes and backsliding and how that's handled, and ultimately achieving the goal.  Each of these points would come to a Climax where the Character must choose a slightly new direction, course correction on the way to triumph.

Like sex, life is all about energy.

Humans may find we have that in common with other, non-human, people we meet out among the stars.  It may be all we do have in common, and it might be enough to establish Relationships.

Here are some graphic illustrations of the structural lessons of literary climax applicable to stage, screen, and page.

Each genre has one or two favorites (which shift with generational fashion).  Your favorite will change with decades and decades of aging.

Action-Adventure Science Fiction favors this one.

 https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm

You'll find many Romances structured this way:

The Shape of Story – Eleganthack

eleganthack.com

The wriggly line on the upsweep represent the ever-increasingly-intense sex scenes (graphic does not mean intense).

Both the Plot and the Story have diagrams like this.  The diagrams use up and down to symbolize potential energy increase and decrease -- sex is like climbing a mountain then leaping off to soar through space.

Seeing the similarities among different energy patterns is what artists do.

Showing that similarity to people who can't see it is what writers do.

Leave your reader with a wiser understanding of how energy patterns interact, plot and story, and how certain patterns of interacting patterns are in fact the HEA. 

The HEA is not a condition of zero energy, not "hitting rock bottom" or "crashing into the glass ceiling" of energy processes.

Happiness might be defined as collimated energy, harmonious energy transmission rather than turbulent and thus wasteful energy transmission.  Timing, pacing, is crucial to that harmony.

https://www.slideshare.net/guest6bbfe8d/elements-of-plot

The moments just after climax, the deep sigh, the loosening of tension, the relaxing into sleep, are "falling action."  Master rising and falling action by reading carefully and noting how famous novels use this technique.


Do this Google Search -- define climax in plot -- for more graphic illustrations and websites to explore them all.  Particularly note the diagrams by https://learn.lexiconic.net/elementsoffiction.htm

Take your favorite novels and graph them onto these patterns, to see which pattern you love the most, which you think in the most, and which your real life follows the closest.  Try writing in those patterns.

Just as there is no one right way to have sex, there is no one "right" way to structure a plot's climaxes.  The current best seller or blockbuster film becomes defined as "right" because it makes the most money for the publisher/producer (many times not for the writer).

Learn the common origins of all these graphs and why they apply, why they are useful.  Finding, or inventing, the best fit for the POINT your novel makes is the goal.  Getting the thematic match between the climax pacing of your story and the climax pacing of your plot is an art to be mastered.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Index to Mysteries of Pacing

Index

to

Mysteries of Pacing

Posts by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In the Reviews series of posts, we have looked at whole Series, long series of books, 15-20+ novels, and how the envelope plot structure allows a series to build out that long.

Here are three of the Reviews posts on entire Series of Novels to study for Series Pacing:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-53-fenmere-job-by-marshall-ryan.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/06/reviews-54-resurgence-by-c-j-cherryh.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/reviews-55-walking-shadows-by-faye.html

Here is a list of Posts on the Mysteries of Pacing.

1. Siri Reads Text Aloud -- the concept of creating read aloud ready prose.
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

2. Romance at the Speed of Thought
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

3. Punctuated by Plot Twists
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

4. Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

5. How Fast Can A Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html

6. How to Change a Character's Mind
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

7. Art of Persuasion
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/mysteries-of-pacing-part-7-art-of.html

8. Pacing and the HEA
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-8-pacing-and.html


9. Character Arc Pacing Using The Foible
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/07/mysteries-of-pacing-part-9-character.html

10. Show Don't Tell Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/08/mysteries-of-pacing-part-10-show-dont.html

11. Pacing the Character Arc
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2020/12/mysteries-of-pacing-part-11-pacing.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Mysteries of Pacing Part 7 - Art of Persuasion

Mysteries of Pacing

Part 7

Art of Persuasion

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Previous entries in the Mysteries of Pacing series:

Part 1
 https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/09/mysteries-of-pacing-part-1-siri-reads.html

Part 2
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-2-romance-at.html

Part 3 - where we discussed the TV Series Outlander
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-3-punctuated.html

Part 4 Story Pacing
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-4-story-pacing.html

Part 5 How Fast Can A Character Arc?
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-5-how-fast-can.html

Part 6 - How to Change a Character's Mind
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/10/mysteries-of-pacing-part-6-how-to.html

As previously noted in this series, each genre has its own preferred pacing. When an editor calls for "fast pacing" it is relative to the genre in question, not an absolute measure.

We have previously defined "action" as "rate of change of situation."

Pacing is more than action.  Pacing is more than "what happens next," or how few words come between what is happening now and what happens next.  What "happens" is plot.  Pacing includes the plot's links to the story.

We use the term "story" for the Character's internal conflict progressing to a resolution, and the word "plot" for the Events the Character's actions and decisions cause to hurtle toward a resolution of the external conflict.

Terminology varies across texts on writing craft, but all writers and editors (even marketers) search for and identify these two elements, plot and story, in any piece of fiction.

Pacing Mysteries lie in the interlinkages between plot and story, in what the Character wants but doesn't have, what the Character does to topple the dominoes of his life and start the plot rolling, and what the Character learns from the events caused by that toppling.

This interlinkage effect is why there is so much confusion about Plot and Story, and why they are used interchangeably as if they refer to the same thing.  The truth is, they are the same thing -- a LIFE in FLUX.

Both plot and story are integral parts of your THEME, and the world you build to showcase your story is constructed on your THEME.  Theme is what you want to say about the form, shape, and dynamic change, of the relationship between Plot and Story.

How a Soul interacts with Reality, and what to do to cause which result, and why even bother trying, are the warp and woof, the very substance of the relationship between Plot and Story.

The Plot is "the story of this life."  The meaning of this Character's life is the story, and that story fuels the plot (because people do things to make their life go as they prefer).

Take for example, finding your Soul Mate.  How do you do that?  How do you choose what to do to make that discovery happen?

What actions lead to finding your Soul Mate reveals something so fundamental about the structure of the universe that science hasn't dug down to it yet.

A Soul is a spiritual concept, and so far science can't even determine if such a thing exists, never mind what it is and how it interacts with reality.

From time immemorial humans have KNOWN all about Soul and the Meaning of Life.

Science investigates these questions, refutes Ancient Wisdom for decades, and eventually comes around to confirming at least the general idea if not the details.

Right now, science is in hot pursuit of how the brain works.  We looked at a scientific study of the brain which reveals little or no difference in the areas of the brain activated during sexual arousal in men and women.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/worldbuilding-from-reality-part-10-does.html

But people, being people (your main audience) already know, without doubt, that men and women respond differently to different cues in flirting, foreplay, and hot flying.

There are many other things people know, without doubt, that science disagrees with.  Yet at the same time, Ancient Wisdom and some classic writings, agree with your audience's position on the matter.

One stable opinion that lasts generation after generation, derived from personal observation, is how very stubborn people are about their opinions and ideas.

People do change their minds -- people can be persuaded.  A whole math based science has arisen around methods of changing the behavior of large groups of people.  It's called Public Relations (PR) and we've discussed it under many topics here.  It is how we change minds about who to vote for, or what breakfast is most healthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations

Everyone knows it's expensive to launch a product (or book) because of how long it takes and how many times a person has to see a message from apparently different sources before it will be accepted as true.

Novel readers work the same way. They will accept that a Character has plausible reason to change behavior or opinion (the great pivot to "I love you!") if there are enough iterations of the message that finally "gets through" during the novel.

There is an ancient science called Rhetoric that was developed to persuade people on a logical level.  But you can't reach the "Happily Ever After" ending and make readers believe it is possible if a Character is convinced they have found their Soul Mate only on a logical level.

On the other hand, without a logical level, there is no conviction either.

You need both the emotional and logical levels in the Main Character to finally come match each other, to say the same thing to the Soul.  That moment, when mind and emotion come to the same conclusion for the first time, is the resolution of the Internal Conflict, and thus the end of the Story.  The Plot should end on the same page.

Here is an article indicating how observation of human behavior has fairly well penetrated the fog and revealed exactly how life works.

https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-art-of-persuasion-hasnt-changed-in-2000-years

Your readers know all this, whether they've read this article or not, so use that knowledge to convince them your Characters are real people -- because your Characters succumb to persuasion just like real people do.

Reviews of a novel will complain of cardboard characters or thin plotting - but the actual problem from the writer's point of view is that the story is not related to the plot in a form, method, or manner that the reader can recognize as real.  Pacing is all about revealing, explaining and arguing for your worldbuilding element that delineates the relationship between people and their lives.  "What does she see in him?"  "What does he see in her?"  "What did she do to deserve this?"  "What did he do to deserve meeting her?"

The answers to those questions have to be derived consistently, precisely, and absolutely from the Theme in order to convince readers to suspend disbelief and enter your fantasy world, take a spin in your flying saucer.

And don't forget con-artists do this all the time, artfully.  A con artist Character makes a great foil for a Hero.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com