From Edie: Zena Dell Lowe helps writers learn how to improve your novel’s pacing, create stronger story momentum, avoid slow scenes, and keep readers engaged and turning pages until the end.
How to Improve Your Novel’s Pacing and Keep Readers Turning Pages
by Zena Dell Lowe @ZenaDellLowe
Writing a novel is like running a marathon. It’s not just about starting strong. You have to maintain momentum all the way to the finish line. That can be difficult when you’re trying to sustain a 70,000–85,000 word story. It’s easy to get bogged down in the middle. Characters start drifting. The story seems to lose the energy it had at the beginning.
So how do you keep your story moving? The first thing to understand is that good pacing does not necessarily mean a story moves quickly. It means the story continually moves forward.
Keep Your Main Character Active
The best way to create forward momentum is to give your main character a clear, tangible goal and keep them actively pursuing it.
One of the most common writing mistakes I see is when characters stop driving the action and start reacting to whatever happens around them. Instead of forcing things to happen, things start happening to them. Often, they begin sitting around thinking about their circumstances rather than doing something to change them.
Internal conflict is important, of course. Characters need time to process what’s happened and wrestle with their choices. But if your character spends too much time contemplating without actually doing anything, the pacing will stall. A good rule of thumb is if your character thinks about doing something for more than a couple of pages, have them take action instead.
Force Them to Make Hard Choices
Ultimately, a story unfolds according to the choices characters make under pressure in pursuit of a specific goal.Those choices cause pain, suffering, hardship, and turmoil. They naturally create conflict. But it can’t be manufactured conflict. It can’t feel arbitrary or random. The best conflict arises naturally because of the choices the character makes.
Maybe your protagonist needs information, and the only person who has it lives in a sketchy part of town. Someone has explicitly warned them not to go there. They don’t know if the source will even be willing to talk. Going there means putting themselves at risk. But they go anyway. Why? Because getting that information is the next logical step toward achieving their goal.
Raise the Stakes
That one choice generates the next scene, and the next, and so on and so forth. Which means we better care about what’s really at stake. One of the most important questions you need to be able to answer as a writer is: What does my character want? The next question is: Why?
Too often, characters pursue goals that don’t matter to anyone but themselves. This lowers the stakes. That’s why character goals need to be clear and not nebulous. Something like, She wants to heal from her past is simply not important enough to sustain the story. That may be what the character needs, but it’s not a sufficient want.
A want should be something objective and tangible that transcends beyond the character’s own self-interest. Stop the terrorists from blowing up the Empire State Building. Win over the girl of my dreams. Bring the family together for Thanksgiving so past hurts and breaches can finally be faced. Even stories that are ultimately about healing from past trauma need tangible external goals through which those internal issues can be addressed.
Notice also that a protagonist can absolutely pursue something that appears intensely personal: get the girl, win the race, reconcile with his father, become a great musician, get home, prove his innocence. On the surface, some of those goals may benefit primarily—or even exclusively—the protagonist. But the stories that make those goals feel important usually connect them to something larger than personal gratification.
So in addition to giving them a tangible objective, it also needs to matter to more than just the main character. That doesn't mean every goal has to involve saving the world. Your protagonist may simply want to win the girl of his dreams. But if the only reason we care is because he wants her, the stakes will feel pretty thin. But if his desire is rooted in genuine love—I love this woman. I recognize something precious in her. I want to build a life with her and spend my life loving her well—now the goal participates in something larger than the protagonist’s own appetite.
And this is where a seemingly personal goal becomes bigger than the character himself. Because deep down, we believe that two people who are meant to be together MUST end up together, and when they do, it makes the world itself a better place.
Give Them Mini-Goals
Once you know your character’s larger goal, break it down into smaller objectives. The best stories don’t simply present one big problem at the beginning and solve it at the end. There are mini-goals that must be pursued along the way in order for the larger objective to be achieved.
Start with the small, logical first step—which requires a choice. That choice creates consequences, which lead to another problem, which requires another choice. Each step leads to the next, and then the next, bringing the character closer to—or sometimes seemingly farther away from—the ultimate goal. That chain of cause and effect is what creates momentum.
Master Scene Structure
Ironically, one of the biggest mistakes writers make when trying to improve their pacing is that they start rushing their scenes. They’re afraid that if they spend too much time in a scene, they’ll bore the reader. So they skip over information, hurry through emotional beats, or race toward whatever they think is “the good stuff.” But rushing and pacing are not the same thing.
Every scene should have its own beginning, middle, and end. In that sense, a scene is a miniature version of the larger story. Great writers approach each scene as if it needs to take the reader on its own dramatic journey.
At the beginning of a scene, take the time to establish what’s happening. Where are we? Who is there? How long has it been since we last saw these characters? What is their emotional state? What do they want right now? What is at stake?
Most of the time, when a scene isn’t working, it’s not because the writer has included too much. It’s because they’ve rushed past vital information in an effort to get somewhere else. My advice is to milk every scene for everything it’s worth. Let the scene breathe. Let the conflict develop. Let the characters make discoveries and experience the consequences of their choices.
Make Sure the Scene Goes Somewhere.
By the end of any scene, something should have changed. The character may have information they didn’t have at the beginning. They may have gained or lost something. A relationship may have shifted. Their emotional state may have changed. They may have made a decision that commits them to a new course of action. Regardless of what it is, something should be different.
That’s one of the best tests for whether a scene actually needs to be there. If nothing has changed—if the scene hasn’t moved the character or the story from one state to another—you probably don’t need that scene.
Vary the Kind of Conflict
Another way to maintain momentum is to vary the kinds of scenes you’re writing. Some scenes will naturally be action-packed. Others will be relationally focused. Some may be quieter and more self-reflective as the character processes what has happened and tries to determine what to do next.
All of these scenes contain conflict. But the type of conflict differs. We can make use of that.
Physical conflict might include chases, fights, escapes, or external danger. Emotional or relational conflict might involve arguments, betrayals, secrets, jealousy, or barriers to connection. Internal conflict can involve self-doubt, ethical dilemmas, competing desires, or unresolved trauma. Situational conflict can arise from bad timing, misunderstandings, unexpected obstacles, or circumstances that interfere with the character’s plans.
The point is, conflict doesn’t always mean a physical fight or even an argument. Varying the kind of conflict can keep your story dynamic and prevent it from becoming monotonous.
Give Readers a Reason to Turn the Page
This brings us to one of the most common pieces of advice writers hear: end chapters on cliffhangers. It’s clichéd because it works. And yet, it’s surprising how often cliffhangers feel manufactured, as though the writer finished the chapter and then tried to tack something suspenseful onto the last paragraph.
The best cliffhangers arise naturally out of the story. Sometimes that means ending at the highest point of a dramatic sequence. Sometimes it means revealing an unexpected piece of information. Sometimes it simply means introducing a new question immediately before the chapter ends.
Readers often stop at chapter breaks. If you end on an unresolved moment, a surprising revelation, or a new question, you create just enough intrigue to make them think, Okay, one more chapter. It doesn’t even have to be dramatic. Instead of writing, “They arrived at the house,” you could end with, “The front door was already open.” That tiny shift may create enough intrigue to compel the reader to keep reading.
Control Pacing at the Sentence Level
Pacing isn’t only controlled by plot and scene structure. You can also manipulate it at the sentence level. Longer, more introspective passages naturally slow things down. Shorter, punchier sentences can create tension, speed, and excitement.
For example, “She ran through the dark alley, her heart hammering in her chest as she heard the footsteps growing closer behind her, her mind racing to find a way out,” conveys the danger, but the sentence itself is long and somewhat cumbersome. If you tighten it to, “She ran. Footsteps echoed behind her. Closer. No way out,” suddenly we experience the moment differently. It’s the same basic action, but the second version feels much more urgent.
Obviously, you don’t want to write your entire novel in truncated sentences. That may not suit your voice or the style of your story at all. But I guarantee there are places where you can use fewer words to convey the same idea—and doing so will strengthen the writing.
Powerful word choices help as well. She dawdled is stronger and more efficient than she walked slowly. Look for strong verbs, eliminate unnecessary qualifiers, and use sentence length intentionally to control how quickly the reader experiences a moment.
Use Time Pressure—When It Belongs There
Another classic technique for increasing pacing is to introduce a deadline. I almost hate saying this because I’ve seen it used so poorly. Don’t arbitrarily manufacture a time constraint because somebody told you your story needs a ticking clock. If the deadline feels artificial—or worse, if it distracts from the real relational or emotional conflict of the scene—it may do more harm than good. But when a time constraint arises naturally from the story, it creates immediate urgency.
If the hero has all the time they need to accomplish the goal, there’s very little pressure. But if a bomb is going to explode in two hours, the wedding takes place in three days, or the trial starts tomorrow morning, suddenly every decision carries more weight. And forcing characters to act before they feel ready is one of the easiest ways to generate conflict.
Build Toward the Climax
Nothing kills a story faster than a disappointing climax.
The climax is the moment when everything finally comes to a head. Your character is forced to confront the villain, their greatest fear, their own limitations—or perhaps all three—once and for all. Everything rides on this moment. If they succeed, they win everything. If they fail, they lose everything. Every great climax is a moment of life or death, even if nobody dies.
This is where the stakes should be at their highest. And one of the best ways to accomplish that is to force your character to make their most difficult choice. Spider-Man must choose between saving the woman he loves and saving a group of children on a schoolbus. Of course, he’ll try to save both. But how? That question is where the real satisfaction lies.
Because while readers may know (or hope) that the protagonist will save they day, they shouldn’t know exactly howthey’re going to do it. The best resolutions feel both surprising and inevitable. We didn’t see it coming. But the moment it happens, we realize it couldn’t have happened any other way. That’s what makes a climax satisfying.
And that’s ultimately what good pacing has been doing all along: carrying us from one meaningful choice to another, with each decision creating new consequences, new obstacles, and new questions, until everything converges in one final, unavoidable moment.
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To find out more about Zena or her current courses and projects, check out her websites at WWW.MISSIONRANCHFILMS.COM and WWW.THESTORYTELLERSMISSION.COM
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