Swine flu, of course...

sorry!

ladybb ( wow tha's sounds like a rapper) is spot on the money.
I think it was Pinter who said , if you have a gun in the room in Act 1, someone had better use it by Act 2.
Actually I was thinking about this subject last night and decided that though the demands of pacing are harder in crime fiction, the reader is at least with you. So I was reading a chapter of a Mo Hayder book and the MC goes into a house and the only description Hayder gives is that it smells of disinfectant. Fabulous. First, the deliberate lack of a long description doesn't hold things up, two we assume that the lay out of the house etc is unimportant, but three, that one killer detail is great because as crime readers we think, uh oh, disinfectant, that't can't be good. Our imaginations have assisted pace...we're already three steps ahead.

Ultimately I think Jess is right and that pace is instinctive. But there are some things you can do.
1. Edit all description. I mean evrey last one. Now go back and only put back those that the story cannot do without ie it doesn't make sense without. Now make those details killer. And short.
2.Begin each scene on the nose. No setting it up. Start on an action or a piece of dialogue. Then pan out and explain if you need to.
3. Keep scenes short and ensure every one has its own story arc.
4. When you really wnat to rachet up the tension keep sentences short.
HB x

if you have a gun in the room in Act 1, someone had better use it by Act 2.

I'm currently reading Philip Reeves' Mortal Engines - which is excellent - and this is exactly what he does. One character stumbles upon something - MEDUSA - the ball is picked up and carried by another character in the next chapter, and it's also mentioned by a third character in the following chapter, etc - it's not brushed under the carpet, but neither is the reader given too much information which would spoil the hook.

Chekhov said it originally, I think. If there's a gun in Act 1 it had better go off by Act 3.

Helen, your notes are impeccable. That swift, spare style is strong and sells, I know. But there's other crime voices emerging at the moment - Sophie Hannah. Lucy Wadham, writers who linger, but don't wallow, on texture and detail. I love page turners, but they don't stay in my head after the final chapter is read. The books that do are richer on sensory detail. But it's a very fine line, I know.

Fascinating discussion for me, a cosy crime writer. Because I write nothing longer than 11000 words I cannot waste one of them, so would agree with what Helen has to say. Cherys, I'm with you on Sophie Hannah- have read all her crime but whenever I'd subbed a crime story where there is a lot of "thought" going on, it immediately comes back. The readers want a crime first and then someone to solve it, I'm told. They don't want the dilemmas of the one doing the solving, unless they can be nailed in a witty way, somehow connected with the main plot. It's a tricky one. I love the Casablanca thing, by the way and I have to say that since attending my Arvon scriptwriting course I always always think of scenes and ask myself what happens next. What physically happens I mean, not what happens in the MC's head so much or how she "feels".

If there's a gun in Act 1 it had better go off by Act 3.

I think the quid pro quo is true to: if you need a gun in Act 3, you'd better have written Act 1 so that even if we haven't actually seen the gun there, there's a definitely feeling that it's lurking in a drawer, somewhere. I'll never forget the truly dreadful block-buster thriller where we were suddenly told, a propos of nothing at all, 4/5ths of the way through, 'he had always had a phobia about being stabbed.' Guess what happened ten pages later? The writer hadn't even paid the reader the compliment of burying it in some kind of pop-psychology childhood reminiscence...

Does that make any sense? I think what I'm saying is that though you may need the backstory and setting-up (though I bet you don't need as much as you think you do, or the amount you need to write to get yourself into it, because one never does), at the beginning, it still needs to have that instability about it, that means that right from page one we're waiting for it to go wrong, even if we don't know when, or how.

A parallel example would be in the classic womens fic which starts with the perfect marriage/life, which comes undone in Ch 2, setting off a chain of events which results by Ch 27 in Our Heroine, via any amount of danger/pratfalls - pick your sub-genre - ending in the arms of Our Unlikely Hero... What many writers get wrong is that they don't seed the coming-undone in those first perfect chapter. Nor, in the nature of things, do we know the MC well enough to care much about them, so those chapters are just boring.

Emma

When I received the first lot of feedback on my novel from my agency I was asked to work on the pace. After scratching my head a lot I realised that, in order to pick it up a bit, a lot of the main character's introspection (reflective scenes) had to be cut or massively pruned. I'm not one for writing reams of descriptive text but perhaps you could chop some of that if pace seems to be suffering. Something else I did was to make sure each chapter ending had some kind of unanswered question/cliff hanger so the reader was forced to keep turning the pages.

Some of the best, most 'page-turny' novels I've read introduce some kind of mystery early on (the secret the MC is keeping, the un-named person someone keeps visiting, the issue from the past someone wants to keep hidden etc etc) and you keep reading because you what to know why/who or who.

The best advice I can give you is to read through your novel and if there are any bits where your attention start to waver or you get bored mark them with a big red squiggly line and then go back at the end of the book to see if they can be cut, made to be more interesting.

Hope this helps a bit.

I'm currently critiquing a novel where the author needs to step up the pace significantly. The trouble is that the book falls between two stools: there's a chatty voice that rambles on telling you all kinds of funny things about the characters and their daily lives. But it also has a classic mystery plot. So while you're expecting the next thing in the plot to happen, the voice is chatting on about all kinds of irrelevancies, which the author never returns to, and which drag the pace down. The other problem is the author uses stalling techniques ratehr than suspense techniques: for example (I'm making this example up but it is comparable to what really happens) the main character gets handed a parcel in odd circumstances, and we really want to know what's in the parcel. Instead of opening it, she sits down, watches a bit of telly, stares out the window, chats to her friends, wondering what's inside it... pages and pages later she finally gets round to opening it. That's a pace killer. Suspense is different, suspense would be that she gets given the parcel, but things relevant and necessary to the plot stop her opening it.
Something else that kills pace is repetition. Sometimes people make a good point and then they make it again, and again. I had an example of this pointed out to me in my own writing by my writing group yesterday evening. If you've said something once and well, stop.

I recommend 'Save the Cat!' by Blake Snyder. It contains a breakdown of a typical screenplay, giving the exact amount of pages for each section. It also explains why sections come where they do, how it all builds to the climax, etc. I used it to plot a YA novel, and although the final story went in a different direction, it really helped having such a filmic structure in mind. I've recommended it to some of the writers I work with and they've all found it very helpful.

Terry

I would recommend Dwight Swain (I usually do...). Especially what he says about scene and sequel. For me, I think understanding this properly was the turning point in my writing.

Here's a link.

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

and a link to the book itself if you want to buy it

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Techniques-Selling-Writer-Dwight-Swain/dp/0806111917

But there's other crime voices emerging at the moment - Sophie Hannah. Lucy Wadham, writers who linger, but don't wallow, on texture and detail. I love page turners, but they don't stay in my head after the final chapter is read. The books that do are richer on sensory detail. But it's a very fine line, I know.

Oh yes - and this is what I am attempting to do. Take the very best of crime and thriller fiction - the well paced stories, the intricate plotting, the way it grabs the reader and really forces them along the rails of the story until the end - and combine it with the best of lit-fic - the attention to character - the attention to the tiny details as well as the bigger picture - the ambiguous or multi-faceted treatment of themes and the challenging of readers' assumptions. That's my ambition. And I haven't done it yet, and probably never will, but if I can master pace and plot and use it like a literary novelist, I'll be almost there...

J

Jenn,

Oh yes - and this is what I am attempting to do. Take the very best of crime and thriller fiction - the well paced stories, the intricate plotting, the way it grabs the reader and really forces them along the rails of the story until the end - and combine it with the best of lit-fic - the attention to character - the attention to the tiny details as well as the bigger picture - the ambiguous or multi-faceted treatment of themes and the challenging of readers' assumptions. That's my ambition. And I haven't done it yet, and probably never will, but if I can master pace and plot and use it like a literary novelist, I'll be almost there...

What a brilliant statement of intent--real balls (sorry) on the table stuff! A terrific aim to set yourself, but then why not? I found this just so inspiring to read. I also love the fact you see it as a life-long task. Which has got to be more fun than just finding a niche and endlessly ploughing it. I'm trying to do something similar with Urban Fantasy at the moment; trouble is, I'm running out of life to do it in!

Terry

Ladybb - I think Child 44 is a perfect example of what you describe and also Girl With the Dragon Tatoo.
In my mind why they worked so very well is that first and formost they were crime novels, utterly thrilling. The writers used structutre and pace with a masterful touch. Then there was the layering, the themes, the wonderful settings. But the later never got in the way of the former and that is their genius.

HB x

LadyB - that's exactly what I'm aiming for too. The richness and lasting impact of lit fic within a crime novel. I long to read such books and love those that achieve this: Crow Road; Snow Falling on Cedars. But there aren't enough of them. Just read two Sophie Hannahs which were fascinating - but for me definitely fell more clearly within the brilliantly schemed thriller category than lit fic.

Helen - that's so well put. That's the way round to have it: thrilling plot first, symbolic and sensory detail adding layers not padding it out.

Sheila - thanks for Dwight Swain link. I've read some of his ideas second hand via the brilliantly batty Randy Ingermanson (Snowflake novel structure) and I agree they're strong. Will look at those once the kids are in bed.

Terry - I don't know Save the Cat - will check it out. Thanks for that prompt.

This is all good stuff.

Sheila - thanks for that link.
I really enjoyed it.
And I can see exactly what he means. I can also see that a lot of crime writers do exactly what he says, though I suspect subconciously. The feeling, reaction, dialogue thing rang very true. Though I had always thought of it as just my style, I nearly always preface speech, rather than use tags. And this fits neatly into his suggestion. I also make sure every scene is a scene with it's own arc. Again I don't do this deliberately, to be honest when I wrote DG I hadn't heard of a story arc, or a denoument etc, but I do it because I see the book in a visual way, rather than feel it. People often say my books should be meade into telly programmes - I suspect they're picking up on this.
HB x