I am still writing my novel and have submitted a couple of chapters to the Intensive Critique group who are very helpful and inspiring.

I have been thinking about the balance between content and pace. Some people like you to get straight to the action whereas others like a bit more description surrounding the plot structure.

I tend to be more of a descriptive writer but it is relevant to the story, as the reader will see at the end.

Do you think the reading public want more of the fast-pace novels or do you think there is still a market for the more complex novels with more depth? I wonder how much of the 'I want it now' culture is influencing what people buy in the bookshops?

As I see it, writing is an extension of your personality and whilst you can fiddle around with the elements of plot, description, character etc, fundamentally, you write as you write. You need to find the way you write best, and then do that well (to paraphrase Jon Snow on careers). I personally think it would be a mistake to do any differently.

For instance, I'm not the world's most sensitive person. If friends ask my advice, chances are I'll make suggestions about what they can do, rather than being much of a shoulder to cry on, much as I try.

So it would be a bit silly for me to try to write a touching coming-of-age drama about someone coming to terms with loss, no matter how strong the potential market. It would be like me writing a travelogue about a country I'd never visited.

So I stick to very much action-based, plot-based stories in which the characters are often too busy doing stuff for too much introspection. Which is what I feel I do best. I have to trust that if I like that kind of stuff, someone else will, and be prepared to buy it.

So for you, if slow, descriptive prose is your style, do that, and do it well. Never did Ishiguro any harm!

You are far better to trying to sell something that your heart is in than 'faking' it for a theoretically better market. After all, the 'better' markets tend to be the most over-crowded ones, with the greatest amount of competition.

I do agree that it's always going to work better to play to your strengths, rather than trying to write in a way which really, fundamentally, doesn't come naturally.

Having said that, I think that it's not really sensible to assume that richly evocative writing can't be pacey, and that there's no room in pacey writing for description and evocation. The trick is to get more richness and intensity into a tighter compass.

I must go to bed, but I've thought at more length about this on my blog:

An anatomy of a short passage which some would describe as "descriptive", but which actually has as much narrative drive as you could ask for, in describing a bombing raid...

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2012/08/an-education-in-writing.html

How to make your Telling (i.e. informing - covering the ground) still Showy (i.e. evoking - descriptive without slowing things up):

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2011/10/are-you-showing-too-much.html

How to pack a greater emotional punch in without changing an essentially understated voice:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/09/jerusha-cowless-agony-aunt-understated-and-gentle-just-is-my-voice.html

I think it partly depends on what kind of book it is. A punchy thriller will probably be faster paced with less depth than a more literary or emotional novel. Different readers look for different things.

The best outcome, of course, is to have both!

Mongoose,
on second thoughts, what Emma said!

I agree with Freebird - it depends a lot on the genre. Literary fiction can be very lush and slow-paced, and so can some women's fiction, for example - whereas a thriller needs pace and narrative tension/drive above all. Though I also completely take Emma's point about the potential falseness of the pace/description dichotomy.

R x

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I'd also say that 'getting straight to the action' as you put it, may not be the most effective way of creating excitement - even if we accept the premise that today's reader expects instant excitement! Dropping in the hints and clues more slowly may not be 'pace' but it can sure help create dramatic tension.

Do you think the reading public want more of the fast-pace novels?

A good proportion of them might but the advice about doing what you do best has a lot going for it and isn't necessarily at odds with the market-place. In a country like the UK with 63 million inhabitants, the reading public is going to contain many very substantial minority blocks with requirements totally different from the majority's, so it's dangerous to conclude what people in general want. I'd say go with what you want to do. Writing to order is not great, but trying to do so to satisfy the requirements of an entity whose requirements are not truly identifiable is likely to be even more frustrating.

I'd also say that 'getting straight to the action' as you put it, may not be the most effective way of creating excitement - even if we accept the premise that today's reader expects instant excitement!

Absolutely agree, Rosy. John Le Carre demonstrated how thrilling stories can be dealt with at a leisurely pace (thereby actually increasing the suspense) as did Graham Greene with The Quiet American. It's the suspense that's key, and it doesn't need to be about particularly tangible action. As an example of the opposite of 'action', E F Benson succeeded in creating considerable suspense about the outcome of such ephemera as the competing 'one-upmanship' social events in Riseholme and Tilling in his Lucia series in which a measured pace and trivialities were the order of the day.

It's right that the hints can create the suspense and even prolepsis that tells us more or less overtly what is going to happen can create suspense by making us desperate to know how it is going to be made to come about.

It's right that the hints can create the suspense

Although you do have to be careful with this, because you know what you're hinting at, but the reader doesn't. And why should they bother to hold them in their head and keep reading to find out, unless what you do tell them is really tasty.

I see so much students' work which is "creating tension" by, say, kicking off a story by describing how someone taking out a bag fearfully, looking into it, taking out a bunch of keys, and then throwing it away. The idea is that we'll wonder about the fear, the keys, the not-wanting of the bag. But it doesn't make me want to read on. My readerly experience tells me that the keys are probably important, but they don't hook me.

Far better, I think, to think of it as Cherys suggests: offering sweets - a trail of little tempting morsels - to lead us through the forest.

And, as I would suggest, to think in terms of starting immediately with instability. The obvious way is to have a murdered body on page one, or some other kind of action - because as soon as things happen, change is happening. Action begets action:.

If the novel doesn't start with action then you have to build that tasty instability into the quieter opening. You've got to make that bag itself intriguing, and the keys, and make sure we already know enough about the character that throwing the bag away is out-of-character and therefore significant. That she's Jewish, sya, and the keys have a swastika on them... There's an instability, right on that first page.

Two posts on beginnings:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/06/wake-up-and-rewrite.html

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/04/why-should-i-bother.html

I am a more descriptive writer but you know from the first line on the first page that there will be a body. I have written it that way so that the reader knows up front there will be a body soon and I like the idea of the reader meeting the characters in the first couple of chapters and wondering which one will shortly end up dead.

There are little 'hooks' placed in the chapters that are relevant when they are all put together at the end but they aren't completely random - they do blend in with the plot.

I feel more comfortable having read the advice to write to my strengths rather than weaknesses so thanks for the help! I want to feel that at the end of the novel that I am pleased with what I've created and I won't be pleased if I try and write it any other style than the one that comes naturally.

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*write it in any other style

My advice, incidentally, comes from a very painful time when I was broke and tried to write romantic short fiction because that was the 'thing' at the time.

I was completely awful at it, basically because I really wanted to punch my heroine in the mouth for being such a wimp, and the object of her affection wasn't much better. I ended up totally losing it, and writing a stream-of-consciousness fantasy in which I murdered them both in cold blood just because I could. Made me feel better. Needless to say, I never submitted to anyone, except possibly the shredder.

I used to complain "I can't write character". Then I realised it was because my characters were always utterly nauseating and/or boring. Once I allowed myself to write about people I actually enjoyed writing about, I was fine.

lol, Ada!