pacing – K. A. Excell

July 29, 2022

Beats Part I: How to Structure a Beat

Stories are made up of character’s reactions to the outside world. They learn something new, they process that information, they react, and you’re off to the races! But writing that moment, that emotional transition where the character is processing new information, can be difficult. Quite often, they can be skipped over or stunted...

July 29, 2022

Beats Part II: When and How to Use Beats

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but you don't always have to explicitly write out some of these beats. In fact, sometimes minimizing those moments can really help the pacing of your story! It really depends on the purpose of the beat you’re exploring. If the transition is...

August 13, 2022

Beats Part III: Structuring Beats for Non-POV Characters

Previously in this series, we’ve already covered how to structure a beat, and how those beats impact tension, pacing, and processing time for the reader. Since then, it’s been pointed out that my previous posts on beats only covered beats as experienced by the POV character. Well, this post is for all those poor non-POV characters I’ve accidentally excluded up until now. ..

August 15, 2022

Question of the Day: Bait and Switch

Today's question goes like this. Throughout my whole story, my main character (MC) is headed toward one goal. Then, when they reach that goal, they "switch". to something else which has really been their goal all along...

August 18, 2022

Info Dumps: what they are, how they work, and how to avoid them

If you’ve ever had your novel (especially genre fiction) critiqued by someone else, you’ve probably found that giant highlight which covers two-to-three paragraphs and is attached to a comment which only says “info dump”. The process of giving your readers all the information they need without “info dumping” is a hard one, but it doesn’t have to be. In this post, I’ll break down exactly what turns a paragraph of information into an “info dump”, how to avoid those things, and how to better dispense information throughout your novel.

August 25, 2022

Moderation: How Much is Too Much?

Five tips to help you control narrative distance, whether you're writing in third person omniscient or third person limited.

August 31, 2022

3 Tools to Control Pacing

Pacing is the rate at which your reader progresses through the story. If the pacing is so fast you have a hard time following what's going on, you start to get confused. When the pacing is slow, you ware waiting for the writer to get to the point. We don't read books just to wait around while the writer gives us pages and pages of scenery. We want action. We want change. We want plot.