Pacing

The kind that keeps a novel going and keeps a reader reading, not what a writer does while fretting about how said novel is doing.

Is pacing in books becoming more frenetic? More like, well, as I’ve read discussions on it, more like sound-bites. But for Reading! Yeah, that’s just wrong, on so many levels. Isn’t it?

But the fact of book publishing seems to be for short quick snippets or whip-its of chapters [No, we are not reverting back to penguin porn! That was already covered in previous post quite sufficiently. ;-D ]

Most people seem to think that Hemmingway etc.. would never be published now. And even recently it was heard, at the JRW Conference I think, that even Michener didn’t think he would have been published in his ‘present’ day, and was glad his career had started in a much earlier time.

Do you think we’ll ever go back to that? To the leisurely pace that meanders or slowly leads you to the end?

Or are we destined for the quick breathless pace of a thriller, no matter what type of book we are writing?

I have mentioned the words/story/what-ever-it-was I threw together last year for an ‘unofficial’ nano. It taught me a Lot about pacing. And how to manipulate it. Which was Really terrific. But it seemed to come naturally with that particular story line. Not so easy to work it in ones I’m working on now.

What do you think? Are you good at pacing? What makes you good at it? And is it easy for you in Everything you write? Or is it easier in some than others?