How to Pace Short Stories

Pacing is one of the most important aspects of telling an engaging story! It refers to how fast or slow the flow of reading is and has the power to either draw your reader in or bore them tremendously. Pacing is based on the balance between dialogue, description, action, and general length of a scene. When telling short stories, it is infinitely important to consider how to properly pace your story in order to keep it concise, intriguing, and entertaining.

TIP #1: DIALOGUE

A common element of short stories is dialogue. Dialogue often takes less concentration to read and often makes a scene feel faster and more exciting. Almost every kind of story features some usage of dialogue and you should definitely consider adding dialogue into your own! Dialogue is super important due to its ability to move the story forward, give the reader a window into the characters’ minds, and build emotion and dynamic between characters. Additionally, dialogue can often tell the reader about the characters’ tone and personality as well as build a sense of place and atmosphere within your story.

While it is crucial to stress the importance of dialogue, ill usage can be almost as detrimental as excluding it entirely! It is important to create an even balance of dialogue and detail as well as keep in mind these key strategies:

Avoid overload of small talk/short phrases or long explanations/details. While small talk is a common part of everyday life and may give a sense of familiarity to people and relationships, overusing small talk in a short story will draw out scenes excessively and bore the reader! Little quips between characters can be a fun way to build up a specific dynamic but when overdone this creates a slower and less engaging pace for readers. While small exchanges can be exceedingly unuseful, using dialogue to create long explanations or craft drawn-out details is typically not the ideal decision for short story writing. In most natural conversations, explanations and long monologues are not very common and it is important to reflect that in writing! This does not mean small talk and extensive conversations pass as red flags in short story writing, but try to avoid overusing either!

Give unique styles of speaking to individual characters. As discussed above, dialogue is one of the most efficient and exciting ways to tell the reader about your characters’ personalities and minds! In order to best communicate each character’s essence, you should think of unique aspects of their speaking. Here are some great examples of specific things to consider when crafting dialogue for unique characters:

• Are they more inclined to speak formally or informally? In which settings?

• Are they more inclined to speak in long exchanges or use short phrases?

• What niche phrases/words would they say often?

• What rhythm of speaking do they adopt? You can often express this using discourse markers and punctuation!

TIP #2: PLANNING

Properly plan your short story before you write it! A lot of us tend to write spontaneously, which is fine: but creating a detailed chronological plan for your story helps you to divide its components properly! Having the exposition, climax and resolution mapped out ensures that the sections don’t drag on for too long nor end too quickly. When it comes to setting the scene for a division, it’s possible for it to swallow up most of the story and disrupt the flow.

So, how do you plan a short story? Everyone will have different preferred methods - but the easiest first-step is a summary of your story! Jotting down the puzzle pieces of your story, whether it be confirmed or random ideas!

A general blurb and a setting are the first things you likely have in mind for your story. Narrowing down your genres based on this is the next step. Then you can begin to write out your characters, even if it’s just names or roles first! Based on these, you can turn your blurb into a real plot with a decided ending!

Don’t add a setting too vast to fit into a short story, nor too many themes you can’t keep up with. Often, less is more.

Once you’ve finished your final draft of your plan, you can start splitting up the components of your plot and understanding your pace. Your plot should be divided into: an exposition (rising action), climax (tension), unveiling (falling action) and your conclusion (ending). I recommend visualizing this by jotting down each section and filling it in with what you definitely know belongs in each division. Then you can add transitional arrows where you can add information that helps you slide into the next part of the story. Don’t forget to re-read your work! Transitioning from one part of the story to another can start a lot earlier on than you think.

The number of words in a short story can vary in the hundreds to thousands, the best way to just get straight into writing is to set a goal number of words to reach and depending on whether you reach it or not you can expand or decrease it. Let’s say our goal is 2000 words. We can put 500 words each for the rising action, climax and falling action. You then have 250 words each for the exposition and conclusion, which allows readers to jump straight into your story, still with a proper setting, and have an ending that doesn’t drag! And this is completely adjustable depending on how much each division entails, but a general ratio should exist to allow equal pacing! Remember, depending on your story you might want to make your climax faster for something action-based, equal pacing does not mean every component is the exact same length!

Then, it’s time to get to writing! Don’t stress about following your plan exactly, it’s a guideline, and if you make changes you can edit your plan which could spark ideas for different changes!

TIP #3: DESCRIPTION/detail

Earlier, we talked about dialogue which can help speed up the pace of your short story. However, do you ever feel like your short story feels too fast or too short? A great way to slow down the pace and create a more satisfying short story is through the use of description and detail. Utilizing adequate usage of these techniques helps build a more realistic setting and atmosphere that a reader can connect to. Oftentimes, leaving subtle hints towards bigger themes is a responsibility of details/descriptions. Vivid narration can be enticing, but too much description and detail is bound to result in a longer story which engages the reader less. A key way to view adequate levels of description/detail is considering sentence length (Tip #4!).

TIP #4: sentence length

Do you feel like once you start with a sentence you just can’t stop? Sentence length is especially important in short stories where your space to work is tight! Don’t worry, there are a bunch of ways to shorten your average sentence length without sacrificing detail. A key point to remember is that literature is widely based on not just the writer’s imagination, but the reader’s. You don’t need to go overboard on imagery as long as you give a good foundation for readers to build on!

For example:

• It was a beautiful, snow-covered Winter night in Winterland neighborhood.

• It was a beautiful Winter night, the moon shone down on each snowflake as they floated uniformly onto the snow-covered roofs of Winterland neighborhood.

Though the second sentence is more detailed, the first sentence provides adequate information for the readers to picture in their heads! Don’t waste your word-count on minute details readers can enjoy the story without, when you do utilize longer sentences use that space for detail in pivotal moments within the story. Using dialogue (Tip #1!) is also a great way to present information without long sentences and also with character engagement.

TIP #5: Characters

Characters are one of the most vital aspects of crafting a story as well as the most crucial method of creating connection between a reader and the story. One of the most effective ways to engage a reader is to create a point of relatability or empathy with one of your characters. When a reader feels any sort of emotion towards a character, they’re likely to want to keep reading in order to discover what happens to the character! But how exactly do you craft relatable/engaging characters? Consider the following:

• What everyday actions might your character partake in? (E.g. walking their dog, completing assignments/work, calling their friends, etc.) These actions can create familiarity between a reader and the character.

• What relatable problems/flaws might your character have? (E.g. sleeping in past their alarm, being antisocial, not getting along well with classmates/colleagues/family, etc.) These create room for sympathy and empathy!

• What development will the character undergo within your story? This question is much more specific to each unique short story, however consider if there are any lessons a character learns in the end or any moral imparted on them. This will help make your character multidimensional and feel more realistic!

While characters need to be detailed and developed over time, remember the value of conciseness within short story writing! Oftentimes, the best way to approach characters in short stories is to use the philosophy “show not tell” to build off of actions which can imply certain character traits! Don’t over-explain your characters’ different narratives, but make sure to give it some thought!

Summary

• Use dialogue to accelerate the pace of your story and build character personality

• Visualize your planning and follow a rule of (setting), rising action → climax → falling action, (conclusion)

• Use description to slow down the pace of your story and build atmosphere

• Don’t put too many details, let readers utilize their imaginations

• Utilize characters to create personal connection with the reader

That’s all for this week’s tips! Let us know if you thought these were helpful, or if you have anything else to add to this! Good luck on all of your short stories.

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These are original writing tips, collaboratively written by Anya and Nat.