on Live Write Thrive:

Strong pacing is critical in a fictional story, but it’s one of the hardest elements to understand and master. That’s because there isn’t one “right” way to pace a story, nor is there one definable factor that creates tension (which directly impacts pacing).

And although pacing needs to vary depending on the purpose of a scene, the story still needs to be taut, keeping readers turning pages even in the “slow sections.”

No matter what genre you write in, it will serve you well to learn how to improve pacing. This happens on a macro level—in the way you build a plot and develop characters, as well as in the order of scenes and the way those scenes play out. And pacing can be fine-tuned at the micro level—on a sentence level, down in the verbs and the punctuation.

One thing readers will attest to, though: if a story’s pacing drags for too long, they’ll stop reading.

Continue reading HERE