Tag Archives: Brenda Murphy Writing While Distracted

Novel Pacing the Key to Engaging Readers

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Pacing what do we mean when we talk about pacing in an novel? Pacing is how the reader perceives the speed of the story so when we talk about pacing we’re talking about the readers experience and how they feel reading through the novel. Whether they feel breathless, whether they’re comfy and cozy, whether they’re titillated and excited or if they are bored because you’re pacing is off. Pacing that is off will yank a reader out of their experience and has led more than one reader to finish a novel.

Writers who excel at pacing often get reviews from readers who say “I couldn’t’t put this book down.” “I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.” “I stayed up all night reading this book because I wanted to know how it was going to turn out.”  “This book is like a warm hug I didn’t want to end.” “It was wonderful to settle down into the story and feel the world disappear around me.”

            That’s what excellent pacing can do for your novel. The primary tools for pacing your novel are sentence length, scene length, chapter length, word choice, and fiction length. No matter if you are writing flash fiction or a 900-page novel, what the point is the length of your work affects how your readers experiences it and what expectations they bring to the story. If you are writing genre fiction this is particularly important.

People who read thrillers want to be thrilled. They don’t want to be mired down in the middle of the book wondering why their thriller isn’t thrilling them. Thriller readers want the story to have rapid pacing that drags them along, ready or not. If you write cozy mysteries, you’re going pace your story differently because cozy story readers want to experience the story like a warm comforter on a winter night. They want to wrap themselves in the narrative trusting the auth rot tell them the story at a pace that is comfortable for the reader. They are reading cozy stories whether it’s cozy fantasy or cozy mystery because they want to be tucked into that world and enjoy their reading experience at a leisurely pace.

            Romance readers, depending on the reader want different paced story. Some want a slow burn, others want a story want to get the naughty exciting bits right away. Some want the pacing of a romantic thriller, and others want a cozy romance. Science fiction and fantasy readers tend to enjoy long stories that are well paced with wonderful world building where the exciting bits the stuff that makes you turn the page.

            This is where knowing who you’re writing your story for comes into play. Knowing what story you want to tell is really going to help you with your pacing.  

When trying sort the pacing of your novel use your past reading experiences. Think of those books that kept you up all night long no matter what your obligations were the next day. And those books you slugged reading through because it was required reading for a class, other times because you were into torturing yourselves finishing a book you weren’t enjoying. As I’ve gotten older I do that way less often. If I am not feeling a story, I’ll just stop. I may go back to the book later because I might be the frame of mind to finish it. Which is something to remember. You don’t know what frame of mind or expectations your reader is bringing to their reading experience. You can’t control or anticipate their attitude but you can do is provide your reader with well written, well-paced story.

For me choice word choice is one of those things so many new writers overlook. The words you choose affect your reader as much as anything in your book. When I refer to word choice when I say asphalt versus black top, they’re basically the same word if I say parking lot, that’s a slower word choice. Parking lots can be made of just about anything, packed dirt, asphalt, grass, pavers, brick, loose stones, concrete, it slows the reader down as they sort through the various kinds of parking lots to come up with one that fits their idea of the story, which takes time.

The length of words how snappy they sound affects pacing. Languid is one of my favorite words, because you feel it you say it. Languid is sensual word and that conveys and taking your time to do something at a leisurely pace. If you write that your character strode down the street you story moves at a different pace than it does if you write your character strolling down the street.  Both of those words feel different to your reader and influence how the story moves along.

No less important is sentence length. Long drawn-out sentences make your reader slow down because they have to concentrate to focus on what you’re working to convey in that sentence. Complicated sentences require more focus than short snappy sentences. Short direct sentences allow your reader to move quickly through the paragraph and on to the next thing.

 If you’re writing a fight scene, skip the paragraph length sentences. If you’re writing an argument or break up or any other intense negative emotion you want to lean into snappy sentences for the dialogue. If you are explaining details of a crime, that might be the time for long sentences. The length of sentences affects the readers experience of the characters experiences. For example a scene that involves grief. Do you want your characters and the reader wallowing in grief? Write long detailed sentences about the characters loss, the drive out to the graveyard and the burial. Do your characters want to ignore or skip over their grief, do they just want to put it behind them? Write short sentences and paragraphs, showing how they are avoiding their grief, These are the details that often escape new writers, but pacing is one of those things that will bring people back to your books, if they like how they felt while they were reading. If they enjoyed the sensation of being so swept away in your story they couldn’t’t wait to get back to your book or they couldn’t wait to find out what happened nest. If they couldn’t’t stand leaving the world and the characters they immediately read you book again or slow their reading down because they couldn’t wait for it to be over.

 Many cozy readers love to return to their favorites work because they enjoy the safe cozy feeling of knowing what to expect.

The next tool in your pacing took kit is scene length. Short scenes versus long scenes versus medium scenes. A scene can be as long as a paragraph or longer. It can be two pages three pages, or five pages. It depends on what’s going on in the scene and how you want your readers to experience the scene.

Is it a pivotal scene? The big reveal?  Is it something you want them to remember or understand? The thing to remember with scene length is that not all the things you want to your reader to know need to go into one scene. Many new writers and particularly neurodivergent writers, fall into the category of writers who know volumes about their subject.

They’ve done hours of research and they’re carrying it all around in their head and they want to share that knowledge with you. Or they have written pages long back story for each of their characters and they want you know what they know about them.  Sharing details and information is for many neurospicy folks a love language. We want you to know all the things that we know because we think is so cool we want everyone to know it. All of that information is rambling around in our head. Neurodivergent folks are prone to info dumping, all at once all the things that we know often overwhelming our family, friends and random strangers and if we are writers, our readers.

 While may want your reader to know all the cool things you found while researching your novel, or the amazing backstories of your charters, dumping all of the information out in one scene or chapter is not the way to do it. It is the number one thing I see new writers do that trashes their pacing and negatively affects their narrative They have great stories to tell, they’ve done amazing research, and really created wonderful characters and they want you to know it, so they spill it all out in blocks of text that don’t have anything to do with the stories plot or character development.

It is fine to share your research and character backstory with your readers, but you want to use the sprinkle method. That’s where you sprinkle your research throughout the book for your readers to absorb it in small bits. It’s overwhelming to absorb any large volume of information all at once but trickle it out over your narrative, in little bits backstory, and pieces of observations and research, that you’ve done also respects your readers time and focus.

We talked about length of scene now let’s talk about the length of your fiction. Flash fiction absolutely astounds me. It is amazing, the emotions that can be generate in so few words. The same can be said for short stories as well. I love a good short story.  I like a good novella. I love shorter novels and I love longer novels when I’m in the mood. I’ve read several fantasy works that the books top out right around 700 pages and I enjoyed all 700 pages because the writer was so good at pacing and I was sucked in and couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen on the adventure.  

Maintaining pacing over a long novel no different than maintaining pacing for flash fiction. Every word choice, sentence length, scene length and other choices count. Every scene counts and that’s really what I’m trying to get you to understand, of all the choices you make when writing, your pacing choices matter most.

I want you to embrace that idea when are revising your novel, because revisions are where you fix the pacing.  I am a firm believer in a fast rough first draft and believe that is the only way many writers are going to get their book written. They have to just write it. Get it out of their heads and then fix any problems.

 I fix pacing at the same time I’m fixing structure as the two are very intertwined. I image structure as the trellis that pacing grows on, as your story progresses. I’ll link my podcast about structure in the show notes. I’ll also add a link for a free pdf of thirty pacing tools and how to use them as well as a link for the book Make a Scene by Jordan Rosenfeld. It explains offers a wonderful explanation how structure and pacing work together in scenes and your novel scenes. Novels are made up of scenes and writers need to understand how they work together to move your reader through your story.  

The final thing I want you to consider is how important your pacing is so that readers finish your book.  Nothing will make a reader give up on story faster than wonky pacing. Even if you start out strong with great first couple of chapters, if pacing falls apart in the middle, readers will stop reading.  Cut the scenes that don’t do anything.  Insert scenes or revise scenes that don’t move the story along. Make sure every scene is doing its job, to move plot along or show character development. If your mind is wandering reading through your manuscript, you’ve got a problem and you need to fix it. You fix it by going back and looking at your word choices, your sentence length, your scene length, and your chapter length. Read through your narrative, are you telling an interesting story that’s going to encourage your readers to turn the page? Have you told an entire story in each chapter and not left them wondering what happens next?

Each scene should end on an event that makes you want to read more. Make something happen particularly at the end of a scene or paragraph that makes the reader go “wow, I wonder what’s going to happen next?” That’s the experience you want your readers to have, that’s what keeps readers coming back to read your next book and the book after that. Mastering pacing can be challenging but it part of the craft of novel writing and can be learned. Keep at it. Use these tools to keep your readers turning pages and until next time keep writing.

Don’t forget your free pdf on novel pacing here: https://BookHip.com/RXVGPCX

If you have not check out my podcast you can find it on most podcast listening platforms, or check it out here on Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-fwtcv-1661a39

Begin at the Beginning or Not

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Begin at the Beginning or Not, Part One
This is the time of year when everyone starts looking back at the year and wondering if they have accomplished their goals. For years as the year came to a close, I would struggle to remember what I had accomplished. I let myself wallow in negativity and focused on what I had not done, goals missed, and resolutions abandoned. In the end, I would be down on myself and frustrated. One way I have learned to overcome this is to look at my consistency versus my output.
Consistency means sticking to a schedule, whatever that looks like for you. It does not mean, as some author coaches insist, writing every day, writing at the same time every day, or even a specific word count, although those things can work for some folks.
My life and brain are chaotic on the best days. When working full time, after a twelve-hour shift, I would be so tired and brain-dead after work that I only wrote on weekends. When my children were small, I wrote when they were napping unless I also fell asleep, then I wrote late at night or whenever I could squeeze in the time.
If you listen to some folks who pontificate about how to be a writer, they will spew all kinds of rules and imply that there is only one way to succeed.
Here is the number one secret: there are no rules other than getting the words out of your head and onto the page, be it electronic or paper. It does not matter how you accomplish it.
So what does begin at the beginning or not, mean? It means that to start planning for your writing this next year, look back at your consistency and start there. Make your plan to get words onto the page based on achievable consistency and a measure that works for you.
I work to word counts per week, Monday through Friday, because I need to see my progress, and moving the green line in Scrivener motivates me. I don’t write on the weekends because I tried the everyday thing, which led to severe burnout.
Some writers base their work plan on minutes spent writing, for example, fifteen minutes a day, three hours every weekend, or thirty minutes during their lunch break.
The hard part of all of this is that what works for one year, half a year, or three months may not work the entire year. So taking a page from the book The Twelve Week year (https://www.amazon.com/12-Week-Year-Others-Months/dp/1118509234), make a writing plan for the next twelve weeks.
At the end of that time, evaluate how it went. Ask yourself: Did you get words on the page? Were you happy with your productivity? Did you have fun with it, or was it a chore? What could you do to make it work? Or did it work for a bit, and then something changed that didn’t work?
If it didn’t work for you, make a new plan for the next twelve weeks. It doesn’t matter if you follow a famous writer’s schedule or anyone’s advice (including mine, as your mileage may vary). Do what works.
Begin at the Beginning or Not, Part Two:
In the next twelve weeks, set yourself up to succeed. Start slow. If you had never done more than jog to the car when it was raining, you would not start running by entering a marathon. Every year writers set themselves up to fail by choosing some arbitrary number of words to write each day because a multi-published author said that is how to do it.
Unless you know you can consistently produce a specific word count in an hour, or can work continuously for several hours, do not expect that you will magically be able to do that come January 2023.
Start with baby steps because even the shortest step forward will still move you toward your objective. Writing a book is not a race, do not compare yourself to other writers, especially if it is your first or second book. Learning what works for you is part of the craft.
Your homework is to make a plan. Notice I did not say to make a resolution. Numerous studies show New Year Resolutions do not work, so skip that part.
What does work is a plan.
For example:
I will write for an hour every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Or,
I will write for thirty minutes every Monday through Friday.
Or,
I will write five hundred words every day
Or,
I will write five thousand words each week,Monday through Friday (this is my plan because it has worked for me for the past twelve weeks.)
These are all examples of plans. Figure out your plan. Write it down, and put it where you can see it. If you keep a bullet journal or planner, enter your planned writing sessions as a date with yourself. Do whatever you need to help yourself get where you want to go and above all do what is right/works for you.
As part of setting yourself up to succeed, check in with yourself about why it might be hard to get yourself to produce words. Are there internal blocks you are dealing with? Such as grief, distraction, imposter syndrome, fear of failure, fear of success? Don’t know what to write? Don’t know how to start?
Or are there external blocks that are interfering with your writing? Such as no desk, crappy chair, lack of privacy, physical discomfort when writing, or no pc/laptop/tablet?Kids/dogs/cats/partners or other household members not respecting your writing time?
There is a page in the Silencing the Voices Freeing the Writer Within workbook that has a page entitled “What is Stopping You” and two columns labeled Internal and External blocks. Take some time to list those and then pick one to work on to remove it from blocking your writing. If you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, you can find the workbook here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4b1my1xmkd
As this blog series moves forward, I will address some solutions for the above-listed blocks. This is the final post for 2022. I will return in January with the next post in the series, Outlines, Trellises, and Discovery Drafts. I wish each of you a joyous New Year, and I will see you on the flip side.

 

Eight Tools to help you write your Book

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One of the most searched questions per the website Answer the Public is ‘How to write a book?’

I was one of those searchers for years. And while I could find checklists and articles that broke down writing a book into small tasks. I often ran into trouble implementing a checklist because I didn’t have the tools to assist with tasks such as creating character sheets, organizing my research notes, and tracking my word counts. Let alone wrapping my brain around all the little things that go into crafting a manuscript.

 A task list without explanation or mentioning tools to help you accomplish the task is not particularly helpful. The two truths about writing a book are these: You have to actually have to write or dictate the words, and there is no one way to write a book. A large part of the difficulty of writing your first book is learning what works for you and continuing to tweak your methods until you arrive at your formula/checklist for creating a book. 

Just as artists copy the work of master artists when learning their craft, copying other people’s methods will allow you to find what works best for you. The most exciting thing about trying different approaches is if it doesn’t work for you, you are free to try another method. Keep what you need/works for you and let the rest of it go.

If I were to go back to when I first started writing a book, what tools would I have wanted to know about? I am a natural short story writer, it was and still is my favorite form of writing, and it took a lot of study to figure out how to expand my stories into novel-length fiction.

This first post of my revamped blog is my list of tools/apps that have helped me organize my thoughts and write.

 My biggest issue with how to write a novel is its inherently linear nature of outlines and many folks’ insistence that you need one to write a book. Newsflash: Many famous and well-respected writers do not use outlines. My brain does not work that way. My thoughts spiderweb out from a book idea. Scenes come to me out of order, characters I never planned show up halfway through a book, my characters go off script, and my short story becomes a novella, becomes a novel. How to wrangle all of those changes/possibilities/issues? Before we move through this series and get to the actual “how to write a book” part, here is a list of tools that have been helpful with the nuts and bolts of writing. Some of these tools are free, and some are paid. Most have a free trial that you can use to take advantage of to see if it will work for you. I advise always trying to free a long while before you spend cash for a program. {*Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links and I receive a small commission if you purchase through them. It does not increase your cost but helps defray blog expenses.}

  1. Pomodoro App( https://apps.apple.com/us/app/be-focused-focus-timer/id973130201) to keep your butt in the chair and working for set periods. The key to getting any writing done is to keep your butt in the chair and do the work. That can seem daunting some days. A Pomodoro timer keeps you on track with short bursts of work followed by rest periods. Here is a link to a lengthy explanation of why it works. (https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/pomodoro-technique )
  2.  Mind Node Mind Mapping App (https://www.mindnode.com) This app lets you work outwards from your central idea and link them together. I use it mostly for nonfiction articles and blog posts, but I know folks who also use it for fiction. If you are a non-linear thinker, it is magic to be able to add ideas as they come to you and then link them together. Here is a longer explanation of Mind Mapping (https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/sites/default/files/docs/learningguide-mindmapping.pdf )
  3. Scrivner (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview) this the word processing tool that made a massive difference in my productivity and the ability to keep track of all the things that go into writing a book in one place. No more crashing my computer because I had too many windows open or losing my place while I cut and pasted trying to rearrange my manuscript and, at last, a way to keep track of word counts so I could stay on target to have completed a manuscript. Literature and Latte offers an actual thirty-day trial period, so you really try it out to see if it will work for you. The trial period allows you thirty days of use, not just the calendar period. It does have a learning curve which is where the following recommendation comes in to play.
  4. To go along with trying Scrivner, check out this free Learn Scrivner Fast webinar with Joseph Micheal. Learn Scrivner Fast was one of the best investments in my writing career. It is a tool that lets you create the way you think, loose enough that you can bend them to your will. It is flexible enough to capture your thoughts on the fly, hold your research notes, and yet organized enough to keep you on track so you can finish your project. My book production doubled after using Scrivner because I spent way less time trying to organize myself to write. I could open my document, secure in the knowledge that everything I needed to write my book, such as character worksheets, setting worksheets, images, notes, and visual organizers, was there waiting for me to start creating. Disclaimer here: There is a learning curve; it is not intuitive and does not work for everyone. But for me, with my distraction and organization issues, it is perfect. I suggest you download the free Scrivner trial and follow along during Joseph’s free webinar. You will learn enough to use Scrivner and will be able to try it out to see if it will work for you. The next free webinar is December 15th at 4 pm EST, and you can sign up here: (https://murphy.krtra.com/t/p5c2PVxq3tYf) If the time does not work for you, if you register, there will be a replay link sent out to you. 
  5. Grammarly (https://app.grammarly.com/apps) If you are writing short fiction or articles within the 100 to the 5000-word range, Grammarly is a game-changer for editing your work. It has a more straightforward interface than ProWriting Aid, and I like that simplicity. There are free and paid versions. I advise always trying to free a long while before you spend cash for a program. 
  6. A pack of index cards. A simple but effective way to organize your thoughts when you need to step away from screens. Why not a notebook? Because you can rearrange your thoughts easily. Don’t get me wrong, I love notebooks and keep my half-ass version of a bullet journal in one, but as I said, when ideas for a story hit, they come willy-nilly. Index cards are a cheap way to sort things. One rule for using Index cards is to write one thought/idea/scene per card, or sorting them later will be frustrating. 
  7. Pinterest Account (https://www.pinterest.com) Need to find images to represent your characters? Need to research a setting or occupation? As a visual search engine, Pinterest is a writer’s goldmine. It’s free and a great place to keep mood boards and images for your work. When I’m brainstorming a book, that is one of the first places to search if I need photos of characters/places/weapons/furniture/houses/etc. I drag the images to Scrivner later so that when I’m writing, they are at hand, and I don’t use up my writing time researching. Your boards can be made private, and I recommend doing that when working on a book for several reasons. 
  8. Timer: I mentioned the Pomodoro app above, but this timer is my favorite because it frees me from screens. I can lock my phone away and work without the distraction of it. This one is fun and easy to use. Just turn it to the length of time you need. Hexagon Rotating Productivity Timer with Clock, Pomodoro Timer with 5,15, 30, 45, 60 Minute Presets, Timer for ADHD Kids and Adults (Orange) by Znewtech ( https://www.amazon.com/Hexagon-Rotating-Minute-Preset-Countdown/dp/B07L2QN8MY

Long post but one that I hope helps you on your way to finding tools to corral your thoughts, get organized and get to writing. I’m looking forward to the next post in the series: Begin at the Beginning, or Not.