Pacing through Paragraphs

Imagine standing in a forest. This photo is from our family trip to see the California redwoods. Magnificent doesn't even describe them. Each is so different. They are naturally unique.

A writer's job is to bring out that kind of uniqueness in her or his own work. This comes from several arenas: content, meaning, voice, and pacing being a few.

Judith Hendin, PhD, author of the excellent book The Self behind the Symptom: Accessing the Healing Gold of Shadow Voices, asked me to help her with the editing of her latest revision. I'm a big fan of Judith's work, and her writing, so I was glad for the chance. I first looked at her material in terms of content, meaning, voice, and pacing. Judith's content is strong--she knows her material and she communicates her points very well. In earlier drafts, we worked together to add meaning to some of the examples she uses. It wasn't hard to adjust or add a sentence here and there to make the example more universal for the reader. Voice is already present; she uses interesting words and ideas and makes them her own.

Our last and biggest challenge was pacing. I suggested many pacing changes on her final draft last month, and when I returned it to her, she emailed me with a very good question. "I have just finished incorporating your edits," she wrote. "They were wonderful, so clear and helpful. I greatly appreciate that you read the entire manuscript. Can I ask you one question? In a number of places, you suggested making a new paragraph. I love the effect. Can you articulate how I can think about that in future writing? You know me, I love to learn."

I asked her if I could use her excellent question as a launch for this week's writing exercise, and she graciously agreed. I hope you'll check out Judith's new book at her website.

Paragraphs--How They Create Pacing
When I first started working professionally as an editor, I had good instincts about pacing. From being a passionate reader and a fairly experienced writer, I knew intuitively when a page bogged down from too-slow flow, when it moved too fast for a reader to keep up. I saw a few ways to correct the pace mechanically. Here are some easy ones:

1. Change sentence lengths. When you want a tenser, faster pace, use short sentences.
2. Change word choice. Use short words to get faster pace, longer words to slow things down.
3. Add in more description when you want the reader to linger or absorb more emotion.
4. Use dialogue to speed things up.
5. Use dialogue to reveal character and heighten emotional tension between people.

After a few years of working intensively with these basic pacing tools, I began to notice paragraphs.

A really good editor is the best training a writer can have, in my experience. For eighteen years, I worked with a team of really good editors at a small press in the Midwest. One of them was savvy about paragraphs and began training the rest of us. Here's what I learned.

Most writers are ridiculously unconscious about paragraph length. We find a rhythm, a pulse that feels good, and we repeat it. Over and over. For instance, five line paragraphs. In many manuscripts, page after page of five-line (or four- or three-line) paragraphs are unconsciously churned out from a writer's mind.

Result? Sleepy pace. No matter what excitement is happening, the same old stuff creates a sleepy rhythm. Imagine a symphony orchestra playing the same phrase for three hours. You get the feeling of drone? The visual rhythm of white space and text on a page imprints on a reader's mind and creates a strong effect that can overshadow the actual meaning of the writing.

Remedy? Vary your paragraph length. Break 'em up. A lot!

Breaking Up with Meaning
How do you to start breaking up your sleepy rhythms?

First, print out a chapter of your work. Lay the pages on the table. Squint at them. Study the patterns of white space and text. Do you see any similar sections? Now, be ruthless. Go in and change them, make them long here, short here. Five lines here, two here, seven there.

But break up your paragraphs consciously, designing it for the effect you want from your words. Short paragraphs, such as one liners, will have the effect of a tiny stop sign in the middle of your page. The reader will take notice. So choose well.

Let's take this quote from writer John Fowles, mess up the paragraphs a bit, and see what difference it makes in the writing.

Original

You have to distinguish two kinds of writing: most important is first-draft writing, which to an extraordinary degree is an intuitive thing—you never quite know when you sit down whether it’s going to come or not, and you get all kinds of good ideas from nowhere. They just come between one line and the next.

Changed for Different Effect

You have to distinguish two kinds of writing: most important is first-draft writing, which to an extraordinary degree is an intuitive thing—you never quite know when you sit down whether it’s going to come or not, and you get all kinds of good ideas from nowhere.

They just come between one line and the next.

Doesn't make it better, perhaps. Who am I to argue with John Fowles's placement of his paragraphs? But it changes the effect. The singled-out sentence, the new paragraph, becomes more emphatic. The reader pauses longer on this one, digests it differently.

This Week's Writing Exercise
Try two things this week, using two pages of your own writing.

1. Print out the pages and use the squint test--see where you've fallen into unconscious rhythms in your writing.

2. Mess up a few paragraphs. See what effect you get, what different pacing happens, what tension and interest heightens.