When a beta reader tells you your story is uneven, she means you have a pace problem.

Writing a good story, any story, is traversing a mountain range. When you’re going up a mountain, pace is slow; when you’re going down the mountain pace is fast.

Beginnings either start in the foothills for a slow build or drop down a cliff for the explosive start. Once your character has reached the inciting incident, the point of no turning back, then you should be immediately plunging down a small mountain. The beginning is over, it’s time to start the middle.

In the middle, each mountain is higher, but plot can slow down. Think of each mountain as being jagged with little peaks and valleys the higher you go.  Once you’re at the top of the last mountain, you plunge down, slipping into the end without even being aware of it.

At the end, even if you pause, you have so much kinetic energy it doesn’t feel like you’ve stopped. Once you’ve reached the conclusion, you’re again in the foothills for a quick wrap up.

How do you control pace?

• Action – Action should be described in short sentences and short paragraphs with crunchy words.
• Conflict – Not all conflict is action, yet even if it’s not, it’s fast, short sentences, short paragraphs.
• Structure – You don’t always want short paragraphs and sentences. Sometimes you set up the fall with longer sentences, longer paragraphs, followed by a choppy sentence in a one-sentence paragraph.
• Words – An intelligent person uses multi-syllabic words, but the tenser things get, the shorter his words get. The unintelligent use 10-cent words and devolve to grunts.
• Dialog – Punchy dialog, fast interplay, spare description, interrupting one another all increases the pace.
• Emotion – Sliding up through the emotional register, bundling up their feelings, tension speeds things up.

But you don’t want your reader exhausted, so sometimes you have to pull back on the pace.

• Setting Description – Slow the pace by showing the setting.
• Pondering – Your characters need to think and preserve their energy. They do this in several ways, but pondering, introspection, thinking slows things down.
• Crisis of Faith – If your character is forced into participating, they may not be fully committed. Losing confidence can slow things down.

If you need to, chart the rise and fall of the scenes and chapters of the book. Where do things slow down and where do they speed up? Does the pace ratchet up? Does it vary?

Can you name some fast-paced books and slow-paced books?

Act 3, the Ending, ties everything up, answers the dramatic question, and vanquishes the opposition.

Cue the trumpets, lower the spotlight, this is the stage of the final battle. The kind of battle is up to your genre and subject matter. It could be a fight, it could be a realization that leads to quiet action, it could be a negotiation, it’s entirely up to you.

Endings can be:

• Positive – your hero gets what she wants and it’s good.
• Bittersweet – your hero gets what she wants, but it isn’t what she expected.
• Negative – your hero doesn’t get what she wants and it’s bad.
• Nega-sweet – your hero doesn’t get what she wants and it’s good.
• Whimper – things unfold, it is what it is, and nobody’s happy.
• Armageddon – everybody dies.

All roads lead here. Themes are tied up, motivations are aligned or eliminated, the character arc completes, red herrings are revealed to be false, the real endgame is revealed. There’s a lot to do and you can’t let the wires show through. Nothing should be forced, everything should be a surprise, but still logical.

Not every string has to be tied up and resolved; it may be implied that it’s going to happen later or that it becomes inconsequential, and the character’s growth means it no longer matters.

Ultimately, an ending has to be satisfying. You’ve built up expectations and promises throughout the story. In the Wizard of Oz, Act Three happens once the witch is dead, and the Wizard’s requirements are met. They think they’ve won. Dorothy will be able to go home. But the Wizard isn’t a wizard (reversal), BUT he has a balloon (redemption), BUT he can’t fly the thing (dashed hope), and finally, Glinda reveals she has the power all along (resolution), BUT now she has to say goodbye. The act ends when Dorothy wakes up and discovers it was all a dream (the ONLY time “it was just a dream” works!). She resolves the family relationships, discovers everyone loves her, and… draw the curtain.

A lot happened right there! Dorothy’s battle with the witch in Act Two was loud and showy. The Final Battle was surprisingly laid back. It was high hopes dashed by a fraud, hopes revived by the same fraud, and all hope is lost… before Glinda reveals the power of the shoes (something all women know). It was an emotional roller-coaster, but not a physical melee.

Here’s what an ending should NOT be: “To be continued in the next stunning novel…”

If your book is part of a series, let the reader know up front. The surprise that the story isn’t going to resolve in this book is a betrayal to the reader. You want to tease the reader, excite, surprise, and allow the story to betray the reader, but YOU should never betray the reader.

If your story is part of a series, it still needs its own stand-alone dramatic question and resolution. Leave the reader hanging at your own peril!

This is the end of the April Blog Challenge, but not the end of the Prevailing Thoughts blog! While frequency will not be daily, I’ll aim for posting at least once a week. Question for you: Do you want to see writing tips for plays, teleplays, and screenplays as well as novel and non-fiction posts?

Act Two – the Middle of the Beginning, Middle, and End – is a Poker game…where the cards are razor sharp, on fire, and your hero is wearing kerosene gloves.

It’s a poker game because your hero has a questionable grasp of his own cards, isn’t sure of the rules of the game, and has no idea what anyone else is holding.

Now that we’ve gotten to know the hero in Act One, your job as writer is to break the hero down, beat him up, insult his mama, and make him rue taking the first step of the journey.

With your eye on the dramatic question, you the writer need to construct an obstacle course that pushes, pulls, subverts, and stretches your hero. In the process, the hero picks up what’s eventually going to be needed (physical items, character traits, knowledge, faith, what have you), while divesting herself of wrong beliefs, weaknesses, etc., shaping the hero into exactly what is needed to win in Act Three. The hero’s relationships will be tested, trust will be lost or gained.

Yet you also have to set up red herrings… other ways for the story to end.

All of this sounds extreme, right? I must be talking about thrillers and adventures.

Except I’m not. This is true for all stories. The stakes may be higher or lower, depending on the story, and the trials your hero goes through maybe be more funny than scary, less or more dire.

In my book, Do Angels Still Fall?, Bungy is picked on, disciplined by his parents, afraid his brother will die, afraid he won’t ever have friends, and experiences a major loss. For Bungy, these are stratospheric stakes, but to us they may feel more pedestrian… and yet because our hero experiences them as huge, the reader will as well.

Here in the middle, your characters’ wants/motivations collide, align, re-align, and refine.

The middle is the bulk of the story, there are few hard and fast rules for it other than shaking up your hero and setting up Act Three. There is great freedom, but it should always relate to your dramatic question, or the spine of your story. Luke Skywalker doesn’t get a haircut or learn graphic design because that doesn’t tie into “Will Luke become a Jedi?”

If I had to make up a rule, have at least three increasingly difficult problems (betrayal, reversal, crisis of faith).

Further, think in terms of equipping your hero with the tools and will to win, without the hero necessarily knowing that’s what’s happening.

The rising crescendo culminates in the final battle. Act Two ends when the hero commits to the final battle.

We’ll look at Act Three, the Ending, tomorrow.

I love writing the beginning of a novel. I must, I have half a dozen in my “to write” folder that are still waiting for a middle and end to be written.

The beginning, or Act One, of a book is where the magic kicks off. You’re creating new characters, their world, their hopes and desires (aka, their motivations), your planting seeds of what is to come. The dramatic question is set up and asked, and you’re teeing up the football that is the inciting incident.

There’s a lot going on here!

Let’s define some terms here:

• Worldbuilding – This isn’t just for Science Fiction. Your setting may be in the here and now, but your main character’s world needs to be established. What’s our hero’s normal? In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s world is a working farm, where she isn’t raised by her parents but her Aunt and Uncle. It’s the past, Kansas, and she feels in the way. She’s a burden on her Aunt and Uncle, she gets in the way of the farmhands, and a nasty neighbor has it out for her. Her best friend is a dog.
• Character Building. We meet and get to know Dorothy, a young reckless teen, but scratch the surface and her insecurities come boilingng out. In the movie, we meet the farmhands and their chief character trait, who become the main players in the story (albeit in different forms).
• Character Arc: Your hero is flawed, and in the course of the story, your character will be changed by the circumstances encountered.
• Dramatic Question: This typically encompasses the hero’s character arc. Will Dorothy find her way home? Will Luke become a Jedi? These aren’t difficult questions, but the dramatic question becomes the spine of your story. Things that don’t relate to the question can be trimmed away.
• Inciting Incident: That’s the no-going-back point. It is NOT when Dorothy runs away, it is when she opens the door on Oz.

There are many methods to start the first page. Your best bet is to start with Action, something that typifies the hero’s normal. In my book Me and the Maniac in Outer Space, Hud is contemplating the hell that is middle school in the boy’s locker room, where he is frequently assaulted by the school bully. That beating is interrupted by his best friend the Maniac.

My novel Do Angels Still Fall? began in France during the plague as the angel Donel conducted his charge to the afterlife who asked the title question, something the angel had never considered before. This established Donel’s world of flesh, spirit, and time displacement, and ushered him to this new normal of mentoring a child of today.

Another tried and true method is to drop right into the midst of Act Two action, then either jumping back to Act One (as in cold openings of TV shows… 3 day earlier…) or using flashbacks to bring us up to speed.

Framing devices are also possible, in which the “frame” is someone else telling the story, or the hero’s older self looking back.

The key is to start as late in the story as you can without losing critical detail.

From there, creatively establish whatever else is required of world, relations, motivations, and drive to that inciting incident that disrupts the old normal and forces the hero to move forward to the new normal.

Then it’s. On to Act Two. Tomorrow…

Dialog is the bane of some writers, and some don’t know it. Nothing brings down a novel faster than poor dialog.

An important word to know is verisimilitude. It means the appearance of being real or true.

Because story is a crafted structure, your people can’t speak “like real people do.” Their dialog should be crafted to be concise, paced, differentiated, and sharp, yet appear like people really speak.

When coaches say you need to develop an ear for dialog, what you’re listening for is meter, accent, regionalism, and word choice. The fact is that real people speak badly, almost as if we’re making it up as we go along (because we are). We speak with fluff, fail to drive to a point, interrupt ourselves and each other, get distracted, and pause, stumble, or misspeak a lot. Listeners often don’t even hear the misspeaks as they listen for meaning (only us weirdos listen to each word).

Things to do and avoid:

• Get rid of small talk. Enter scenes after small talk is over, or just skip over it. This is especially true with telephone calls. Get straight to the point.
• Be strategic. Use dialog sparingly, only when it’s needed. Ask yourself if there’s a better way to convey the points. If not, dialog is fine.
• Properly tag dialog. We have to know who’s speaking. Not every line needs to be attributed, but we know who it is. “said” is your go-to tag. Use word choice to convey how a line is said, not tags. “He grated” “she quavered” “he grunted” “she bleated” comes after the line (or should, it feels stilted at the beginning of the line), so the reader either has to re-read the line or think about it. We don’t think about “she said” because no image comes to mind. It just tags the speaker, which is the goal.
• If swearing is necessary, include it rarely: “But people talk that way.” Um, I don’t. My friends don’t. Your character may, but if it’s done so much that it becomes invisible, then you don’t need it. Use it for impact. Part of the reason not to is because the reader puts emphasis on it when the character probably wouldn’t. It screws up the meter of the dialog, putting a stress where it doesn’t belong.
• Get to the point. Dialog should have a purpose; get to it.
• Watch your word choice. Word choice is powerful. It indicates your character’s intelligence, their region, their creativity, and their strata of society. Word choice differentiates your characters and brings humor or terror to a conversation. How well does your character use language? How bad? A character who butchers English tells us a lot about himself.
• Dialog tag placement. “Harry, what do you think?” vs. “What do you think, Harry?” have different meaning. If a name is used at the beginning, the speaker wants a response; it’s an invitation. If it’s used at the end, it shuts down the named person; it’s a threat.
• Not everyone is clever. I love wordplay. Quick wit is in every novel I write, but not everyone is created equal when it comes to wit and being clever. Unless you’re writing a humor novel, but even then, you need your straight people, or it comes off as a sit-com.
• Everyone has a cadence. We each have a personal rhythm. Find your character’s cadence. Do they like long sentences? Short sentences? Incomplete sentences? Long or short words?
• Don’t get carried away! Dialog can be fun, but a novel isn’t a screenplay. Long runs of dialog are hard to follow and draining. The rule is: Is it necessary? Is there a better way?

Edit your dialog ruthlessly! After a while of this, you’ll become a master of dialog and it will flow from your fingers!