Rapid Story Development #1: Commercial Pace in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction: Rapid Story Development, #1
By Jeff Lyons
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About this ebook
Narrative pace can make or break the reading experience, but few people describe what real pace is or how you can achieve it. Most just discuss writing, style, and sentence structure, but pacing in any story is so much more than that. This e-book gives a clear explanation of pacing and then shows you how to achieve a solid commercial pace for any story, thus assuring reader engagement and more book sales—engaged readers buy more books.
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Rapid Story Development #1 - Jeff Lyons
RAPID STORY DEVELOPMENT #1
COMMERCIAL PACE IN FICTION AND CREATIVE NONFICTION
JEFF LYONS
Storygeeks PressRapid Story Development: Commercial Pace in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Lyons
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
ISBN: 978-0-9970663-6-4 (e-book)
Cover art by Jeff Lyons
Interior design by Jeff Lyons
Web: www.jefflyonsbooks.com
Give feedback on the book at:
feedback@storygeekspress.com
2nd Edition
Printed in the U.S.A
DEDICATION
This is for loyal readers past, present, and future.
Because without you, what’s the point?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the following individuals for their support, help, encouragement, patience, infinite patience, faith, trust, belief, handouts, generosity, and small petty crimes undertaken to promote the success of this book.
• Charlene DeLong and David Allan—thank you for being trusted beta readers, editors, and telling me the truth.
ALSO BY JEFF LYONS
FICTION
Jack Be Dead: Revelation (bk #1)
13 Minutes
Terminus Station
The Abbess (coming)
NONFICTION
Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Use Story and Premise Development for Writing Success
Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller (coming)
Rapid Story Development: The Storyteller’s Toolbox Volume 1
RAPID STORY DEVELOPMENT SERIES
#1: Commercial Pace in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
#2: Bust the Top Ten Creative Writing Myths to Become a Better Writer
#3: Ten Questions Every Writer Needs to Ask Before They Hire a Consultant
#4: Teams and Ensembles: How to Write Stories with Large Casts
#5: The Moral Premise–How to Build a Bulletproof Narrative Engine for Any Story
#6: Seven Steps to Busting Writer’s Block Forever
CONTENTS
What Is Pace and Why Should I Care?
The Structure of Pace
Where Pacing Goes Right: Commercial Pace
Where Pacing Goes Wrong: Slow Pacing
How to Speed up Slow Pacing
Where Pacing Goes Wrong: Fast Pacing
How to Slow Down Fast Pacing
A Pacing Diagnostic
Narrative Drive
Conclusion
Appendix 1
Also by Jeff Lyons
About the Author
Author Offer—Anatomy of a Premise Line
WHAT IS PACE AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?
Pacing refers to the speed of the read and how effectively the text pulls readers into the matter of the book without jolting them with fits and starts or boring them with lengthy, drawn-out exposition. Next to a weak story premise, bad pacing is one of the top-five killers (bad title, weak premise, bad pacing, split stories, episodic writing) of most books. Every book has a pace, just as every book has a voice or a tone. But bad pacing can do more to put off readers than any other single problem.
A reader knows by the end of the first chapter how frenetic or tedious the read is going to be, and if they don’t have the patience to hang in there, they will bail before chapter three. If the pace is too slow, it will drag on the reader, sucking their energy and testing their patience. If the pace is too fast, it will rattle their nerves and distract them with twitchy scenes and shallow writing, often leaving readers annoyed and exasperated. But if the pace is right for the story, what I call commercial pace, then the reader is at one with the story and with the writing. They are a partner with the writer, not a tag-along running as fast as they can to keep up or dragging behind like dead weight.