S2 Ep.10 Pacing in Story

Pacing in Story - Transcript

[JAMIE] How would you feel about me doing a supercut of every time you go ahblablablabla. [both laugh] Because already this season I have cut out so many of those that I'm like, man, I should put all these together into this super cut of Karli going ahblablablabla. [laughs]

[KARLI] That is quality Patreon content. People would pay for that, I know it.

[JAMIE] I feel like we should make it into a ringtone. [Karli gasps] I should make it my ringtone for you. [Karli laughs] And so every time you call me, all I hear is you going ahblablablabla. [laughs]

[KARLI] The only problem with that is then you would be more sick of me than you already are. And I feel I'm right at that limit already, and I don't really want to tempt fate. I like the thing that we got going on here. And I don't really want to just do anything to jinx it. So let's, let's not.

[JAMIE] Is there a special—is there a special setting on my phone that like, when that, when that happens, it will just like automatically send you to my voice mail?

[LAUGHTER]

[KARLI] Karli goes automatically to voicemail. So do I need to make that for a point of reference now?

[JAMIE] No.

[KARLI] Or was you mimicking me enough for people to guess what was going on?

[JAMIE] I—I'm gonna bet that you're going to do it naturally at some point during this episode.

[KARLI] [laughing] Oh no!

[JAMIE] And I'll just leave it in this time.

[KARLI] Probably. Probably. Would not surprise me if I do.

[JAMIE] Quality.

[BOTH] Quality content.

[LAUGHTER]

[INTRODUCTION MUSIC PLAYS]

[JAMIE] Welcome to The Act Break, where we're talking about all things story.

[KARLI] Take a break from your creative endeavors and hang out with us.

[JAMIE] Have a little simulated human interaction.

[KARLI] Because internet friends totally count.

[INTRO MUSIC FADES]

[JAMIE] Welcome to the podcast, where despite the outcome, we are really trying to give you our best [both laugh] in mostly accurate advice.

[KARLI] [laughing] How’s that going so far? I'm asking our listeners. How are you feeling at this stage, folks?

[JAMIE] How do you feel about what's happened to you, you know? I'm Jamie.

[KARLI] I'm Karli.

[JAMIE] And we both write stuff. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] And even more, we talk about stories. And there's a good chance that that's why you're here.

[KARLI] Potentially. And we're just going to launch right into the talking about the stories today.

[JAMIE] Today we're talking about pacing in stories, which is funny because we're always trying to figure out the pacing of this podcast. [laughs]

[KARLI] Listen, nobody ever said we had to be experts in order to teach other people things that we know about things that we're not good at.

[JAMIE] Those who can't do, teach.

[KARLI] [laughing] Exactly.

[JAMIE] So we'll be talking about pacing, which is the cadence at which a story moves forward. Naturally, this is closely related to structure which we will touch on but we're not really going to like linger on because that's a whole—that's its own—

[KARLI] That's a can of worms we can't get into in our thirty minutes-ish or less.

[JAMIE] Yeah, and then we're also going to like briefly touch on information and its use in scenes for pacing. There will probably be spoilers in some of those spoilers might include the book of Boba Fett, The Wheel of Time, Breaking Bad. Is there any other one that we wrote down?

[KARLI] I don't even think we really spoiled those ones. But if you're nitpicky about your spoilers, there are spoilers for those things. But if you're not nitpicky, they're really not spoilers. So yeah, proceed at your own, at your own risk.

[JAMIE] Ye've been warned! [Karli laughs] This is an exciting, exciting episode, because I feel like so far this season, one that will hopefully be more helpful. [chukles]

[KARLI] How dare you. All of our podcast episodes are helpful.

[JAMIE] Yes, they are. Let's talk about what pacing is and why it is important.

[KARLI] Great. I think pacing is—I really liked how you said the cadence. I was thinking it's the speed of the experience. In my interpretation, whether it's a reader or viewer, the speed by which you experience the events in the story that you are consuming.

[JAMIE] It's the thing that keeps the readers from getting bored and moving on. It's the things that move the story forward and set the tone for the story as well as the climax.

[KARLI] Mm. Yeah, for sure.

[JAMIE] Because it's something that does increase towards the end of your book when the most exciting things happen. There will be a natural increase in that.

[KARLI] Yeah, yeah. So I mean, obviously like you said, it will naturally increase towards your climax but it doesn't mean that it is going to be at that pace throughout. I mean, that would be breakneck speed. So when we're talking about pacing, we're not talking about fast pacing, necessarily. Pacing, adjusts, it ebbs and flows, depending on what you're trying to do.

[JAMIE] Yes, there is no one, quote unquote, right pace. It can be a fast pace or a slow pace or medium. Or it can, like you said ebb and flow. But I would say that it should be fairly consistent throughout. Because if it's too slow in the beginning, and then fast on the back, half, people might never make it to a certain point. Or if it's breakneck speeds, and then you hit a lull that might be when your reader puts it down. So I feel like there's a balance that each, each book has to strike.

[KARLI] Yeah, definitely. Which I think is what ends up being the challenge with figuring out how to pace your story is, you know, how, [chuckles] how do we do that, ya know?

[JAMIE] Yeah, no matter if you like a nonstop thrill ride, type of story, or a slow, meandering, world building; either way, things need to be happening in your story. There needs to be plot, and events, or realizations that are happening throughout at a certain amount of intervals that matches your pace that keep the reader moving onward.

[KARLI] Yeah, absolutely. And figuring out pacing, I think, is one of the most crucial aspects of storytelling. Because you notice it even in conversations, when the conversation dies out, all of a sudden, your pacing has dropped off. And then you struggling to pick up the threads and find something interesting to talk about. And we don't ever want that to happen in our stories. Fortunately for us, we get to go back and edit them so that we can remove those bits. So why is it important? Obviously, it's, [laughing] it’s so that your reader won't put your book down. That's why it's important. Like, it's literally, it is the make or break in so many stories that I read, whether or not I keep going.

[JAMIE] Yeah, I think it's really hard to talk about pacing without like, also touching on structure.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] How do I explain what my brain is thinking? I feel like everybody can relate to that. Like, if you look at the three act structure that is like the bare bones cheat sheet, to pacing. Because they're like plot points like inciting incident, call to action, rising action, obstacle, midpoint, etc. Those things are part of structure and plot, but also pacing, and then all of the detailed information that are specific to our stories, the little character developments and realizations that go in between those marks, are pacing. And you have to be giving people new information.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] At a rate that keeps them flipping them pages.

[KARLI] That's almost exactly what I—

[JAMIE] Because there's, there's just the way—pacing, pacing works.

[KARLI] Yeah. Well, and as a disclaimer, I mean, we talk a lot about the three act structure, because that's what we know and tend to use the most. But there are other structures out there that I mean, if you like different structures, then you know, we're not saying that that's, that's not valid, because it is, it's just we're talking about it in the context, because this is what we know about. So take any structure you like to work with. And the things that are happening within that format, is your pacing, how quickly you go from event to event or how slowly you take things in between that is pacing.

[JAMIE] I use the three act structure as just an example because it's like you can do three, four, five. It's just that is the most common—people know those cues.

[KARLI] People know it quite well at this point. So yeah.

[JAMIE] Breaking down complex things is—can kind of be a beast sometimes.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] We've said the obvious. Pacing is what moves your story forward. I wanted to break it down to like a more of a base level. Like, what does that mean? Because you know, when people explain stuff and you're like, Yeah, but what does it mean? Like on a on the page?

[KARLI] On a tangible…

[JAMIE] What does that look like? And that's where I'm like the scene breakdowns and the multiple use scenes are important.

[KARLI] We talk a lot about like, these are the things that you—that we do, that we should do, but so rarely do you find really tangible, actionable steps, I guess in order to be able to understand what it is you're trying to do. So how do you go about figuring out if you are handling your pacing properly?

[JAMIE] A good way to go about that is I asked questions. I will look at industry little scenes, and then ask the series of questions and see how that affects my pacing. The first is, is this scene doing anything for the plot? What plot points are being hit? Are there none? Are there too many? And then I go to, how was the scene advancing the character? Because character arcs are also part of pacing and growth. Then I move to, how is this scene deepening the world? Because world building also factors into pacing. Just because you want to move at a quicker rate doesn't mean you have no worldbuilding.

[KARLI] Absolutely.

[JAMIE] The way I tie all three of those questions together, because it's like not to get—I mean, we both hate math, not to get into the math of it all. But there's like, a formula that you have to figure out for your writing and your style. What of these aspects is most important?

[KARLI] Yeah, like a ranking system even.

[JAMIE] Yeah.

[KARLI] If you didn't, if you don't want to use the word formula.

[JAMIE] Or like when you cook, what spices and what levels you want things to be at, for what your tastes are?

[KARLI] Absolutely. And what order are you going to tackle those things in order to get the best flavor?

[JAMIE] Now I'm hungry.

[KARLI] Yeah, [chuckling] I am really hungry.

[JAMIE] The next question is, does this scenes level of importance to the plot, character and world match its length? So am I waxing poetic about something that's not that important because I wanted to? Or am I giving the appropriate amount of weight for what we're realizing to give readers time to digest it?

[KARLI] Yeah, I will—I will fully admit, I love those questions. And I think that they're all great. But I, pacing is something that I personally struggle with. It's one of my bigger hurdles, whenever I'm writing something. And I definitely have had to lean more heavily on feedback for figuring out certain things, and once somebody like flags it, I'll be like, okay, yeah, I can see that. But before I tend to get in the weeds with it. But one thing that I was thinking about, and something that I forget frequently that I think is one of the bigger problems is exactly what you said, like, am I drawing focus to something that is not crucial to what's going on? And it is the literal stopping and smelling the roses. I mean, if you're putting those words on the page, you are telling your reader that they matter. You wouldn't put it on there if it wasn't important, right? And so you have to stop and think, is it important that my character stops to smell the rose? Well, yeah, because then he punctures his finger, and then there's poison in his veins, and he has to get the antidote. Like, there has to be a whole line of reasoning behind why things are there. And if you want to have pretty flower description, if you want to get purple prosy, sure, but it also needs to serve a purpose in furthering your character, uh, in furthering your story. And I spend a lot of time on words that don't serve anything except my own ego stroking. [laughs]

[JAMIE] I love a good world building. I don't listen to Brandon Sanderson for nothing. You're right. Like you have to have that balance. If somebody is going to describe a field to me, and it takes three pages to describe this beautiful field, and then when you realize that his mentor has died, it only takes two paragraphs.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] You have to give the proper weight and pace to what's the most like, impactful. I'm not saying that you couldn't do that.

[KARLI] Are you going to circle back to that field of poppies later? Because they're all gonna fall asleep in the field, because magic.

[JAMIE] Or is it just like, that was what—I just wanted to talk about these poppies for a while.[KARLI] Right, right, exactly. So...

[JAMIE] You got to evaluate like, is this something that is so important, it needs its own scene? Is this something that can be condensed? Or is it something that really needs to be elongated and fleshed out even more? Those are factors. And then the last question is, if I removed this entirely, would it affect anything at all?

[KARLI] I don't like to answer that question.

[JAMIE] You hate that question. It's Karli's least favorite quesiton.

[KARLI] It's my favorite question. And Jamie always makes me ask it and I love her for it. She makes me a better writer for it. But I still don't like it.

[JAMIE] I'm like, if you want to keep this could you make it mean something?

[LAUGHTER]

[KARLI] I'm pretty sure you have said that verbatim to me at least once before.

[JAMIE] I'm like I get it. It is really cool. But also...

[KARLI] Something needs to happen with this.

[JAMIE] That's just like one way that you can—and I'm not saying that that's gonna work for everybody. I'm just saying that those are some things you could potentially ask yourself about some of your scenes that would make you think about your pacing and the vibe of your story.

[KARLI] I mean, if you are building a world that has a lot of mystery inherent in it, then sure, you're going to end up mentioning some things that you may not call back to for chapters later.

[JAMIE] Or maybe even a book or even a book later.

[KARLI] Yeah, absolutely. And so just because somebody else may not be able to see it, you know, if you know that serves a purpose, stick to your guns on it, but also be honest with yourself. Hmm, I'm preaching to the choir on this one. Is this a callback? Or is this just…

[JAMIE] Indulgent.

[KARLI] Indulgence! Thank you. I was trying to find the right word. And that's it. To get further into this whole example of talking about the world building, every genre has different pacing requirements. You're talking epic fantasy, bringing up Brandon Sanderson. And I mean, pretty much every other epic fantasy writer out there, like, we, we show up for that.

[JAMIE] Oh, yeah.

[KARLI] And we know going into it, it's going to take some time and the pacing is going to be vastly different than it will be in a crime thriller.

[JAMIE] Oh yeah. You don't pick up a epic fantasy novel and expect to be just like, go go go.

[KARLI] Break neck speed. You'd die because you would—

[JAMIE] You would be exhausted. When it comes to epic fantasy. I think that the magic in it, and why I always mentioned Brandon Sanderson is because even though it's like a slower build a slower revelation of the world; he's a master of making scenes count for something. There's always new information that's being revealed, even if it's just about the way the magic system or the world works. Um, little tidbits that you are like slowly mining in this slower paced book.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] But the new information is still there driving the reader forward.

[KARLI] Absolutely. He is a master at pacing. Yeah, it's the revelations. I think a lot of times, we get stuck in our heads about a good paced book, even when I was googling what pops up. Good fast paced books. Like that's all that people think of; they think good paced, and they think a quick pace. Fast paced. That's not it, those things aren't one in the same. You know, yes, there absolutely can be good fast paced books, but there can be good slow paced books and slow middling pacing books, like...

[JAMIE] It's a well paced book. And that it all will depend on, like you said, genre is such a big factor.

[KARLI] Knowing your genre is crucial to you, knowing if you're hitting the right pacing, if you are trying to write an epic fantasy, and you're trying to hit all of the beats as quickly as like a thriller, you're, you're going to just—you're like Sisyphus, like you're pushing that boulder up the hill forever. Like it's not going to work.

[JAMIE] What you're going to end up with is a fantasy, but maybe don't call it epic fantasy, because there's different genre standards.

[KARLI] There's mashups. Yeah, you can definitely—like if you want to write an epic fantasy that is faster paced, absolutely do that just know going in, that you're not going to be marketing to the traditional epic fantasy audience. And so, if you're trying to do something different, just be aware of what it is you're trying to do. And look at other examples that are closer to what you're aiming for. So that you can have like a guideline to kind of follow.

[JAMIE] And then know how to articulate that to readers in your marketing.

[KARLI] Which is so tough.

[JAMIE] Yeah. ’Cause you don't want to promise something and not deliver and then be torn up about it, because you didn't pitch it right.

[KARLI] But that's why you have alpha, critique, and betas like that—that's what they're there for, is to help you find that niche that you're trying to fit into. And if you're pitching it as something, and they're seeing it as something different, that's a flag for you to be, “okay, is my pacing off? Or am I using bad examples? Or what's going on here?” And you can start asking yourself, yeah, some of the questions that you brought up, those are great places to start.

[JAMIE] I haven't read as much epic fantasy in recent years. Most of the epic fantasy I've read in the last five years, is Brandon Sanderson. Because I know that all these details that he's slowly revealing over time always equate to something. They're always building to something.

[KARLI] He always keeps his promises.

[JAMIE] So far, he's always kept his promises. The second book in The Stormlight Archives, which I believe is Words of Radiance. The pacing of that, to the buildup of what is like the climax of the book or like the big moment is the most memorable build and climax of an epic fantasy book. It's like that's chef's kiss what I want in my epic fantasy.

[KARLI] Yeah? Well, and I think that that's, that's definitely an example of the fact that a lot of people, I think, that are used to faster pace, their drawback to the slower pace is that if you, if you end up having having a bad example of a slower paced book where you don't get the payoff, it doesn't—you don't get that reward. Like this, this tension that is being slowly stretched across the whole book. If you don't have an author that can give you the payoff in direct proportion to the amount of time that they made you wait, it's not going to be worth it to you to read a slower paced book. It's just not.

[JAMIE] You said that perfectly. It's proportional, that slow, built up tension felt very earned. And then the payoff was there as a reader, I made it and it was all worth it. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Yes, yeah, you want to feel as though it's worth it in the end. And I think that's the challenge with pacing. How do you keep your readers engaged in what's happening in a moment by moment basis, and experiencing the emotions that you want them to, because sometimes you do want them to slow down and take a breath and consider the information that has just been given to them. And sometimes you want to keep them moving really quickly for several different reasons. And you have to find that balance to get them all the way to the end, so that you can give them the payoff. Because I mean, that's—let's be honest, that's what we're here for. Like, we like the journey, but we also really like a good payoff.

[JAMIE] Yeah, you can't be like, just keep reading. I know it's hard now, but it'll be worth it. No, nobody's doing that.

[KARLI] Well, some, some people are. [laughs]

[JAMIE] I'm not. [laughs]

[KARLI] Some people are and I used to be one of those people. But that's a whole can of worms. [chuckling] That’s a discussion for another day. I whenever people have discussions like this, I'm like, Okay, fine, but like, how, how do you make it faster paced? Or how do you make it slower paced? Or how do you know the difference? And I mean, I think it even comes down to your, your sentence structure, and your punctuation. And the way that you format your page, and...

[JAMIE] Dialogue tags.

[KARLI] Dialogue tags, absolutely. Like those little things, you know, if you have a big block of text that is going to slow a reader down, even a quick reader, because it's a large block. Smaller lines are going to draw them to the next one faster and faster and faster. And you have to think about okay, how long do people pause for a comma? And how long do they pause for a period, and do run on sentences make them read faster, or slower to figure out what exactly is going on? And so like playing with those elements are how different—and different writers use different tools. Some people I know swear by the fact that short, punchy sentences, read faster. I've heard some people argue there's more periods. And so they're going to stop longer naturally, because their mind tells them it's a period and they pause longer than they would for a comma and so they like it when there's more—

[JAMIE] If it's a big chunk, I'm definitely reading that slower. Now that you said it now, even in my own writing, I'm like, oh, yeah, I definitely veer towards more small paragraphs than one big paragraph.

[KARLI] You have punchier sentences, especially in your moments of tension building.

[JAMIE] Thank you.

[KARLI] And I think that that's true, the thing that you go for, I do think that you achieve, you achieve a quicker pace. And mine tend to be slower and sometimes slower than I even want, which is where I'm very grateful to have you helped me be like, "Hey, this is really draggin'. Let's pick up the pace." [laughs]

[JAMIE] And then you are like, "Can you maybe slow down and tell us where we are? Because we're just a bunch of talking heads, [Karli laughs] like we need to know where were at." And I'm like, okay, okay.

[KARLI] Fine.

[JAMIE] Balance people, balance.

[KARLI] Exactly. When I was a newer writer, I was so frustrated that people didn't talk about like, I didn't know what I didn't know.

[JAMIE] The formatting and grammar. Yeah.

[KARLI] But once I learned about, like, you know, formatting your page and, and how you deliver your sentences and your dialogue and all of those things. It matters.

[JAMIE] But that's a great point, because that's not even something I even thought about. But that's so, so true.

[KARLI] Yeah, it just, it contributes so much to how your pacing goes, how long your chapters are, how short your scenes are. There's so many little factors. I mean, the best thing to do, like I don't know—I guess we’re had advice giving time—is read. We talk a lot about reading and I know that like a lot of people don't have time to like sit and read. But if you can get eyes on the page so that you can visually see how they're formatting, how they're able to achieve what they're doing. But you can hear it even if you're listening to audio, and you just pay attention to the way that they're delivering the dialogue and stuff. But I mean, as a writer, it is helpful to actually visually see it on the page. I know it's helped me to actually look at it and go, oh, I didn't realize they have like, em dashes for interruptions. And then I use too many em dashes. And so you know, I get carried away, but...

[JAMIE] Calibrate.

[KARLI] We can't all be perfect.

[LAUGHTER]

[JAMIE] When pacing is done, well, you don't even notice it, which is kind of what you're going for. But when it's done poorly, you do notice it. For me, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[KARLI] Absolutely. It leaves you going, why? Why was that weird? It's like that, when you have an awkward interaction, in real life. I know as socially awkward people, we all have a lot of awkward moments in real life. But you know, when you have a good interaction with somebody, you can feel it, you have—you had a good time, there weren't any of those awkward pauses. And when you're either watching or reading something, where you're like, I feel like I just had an awkward, like social interaction, it throws it off.

[JAMIE] Just like there's more than one way to do correct pacing. It doesn't have to be fast, it doesn't have to be slow. There's more than one way to mess up, as well. There are different, different problems and flaws. And so I have examples which I'm not going to wax poetic about. But I will disclaimer by saying if you enjoyed any of these things, I'm happy for you. I know that lots of people did. I'm just saying that for these specific reasons, they weren't my thing. And because I haven't had as much time to read lately, all of my examples are television based or shows or movies. Two of the things that I'm like, I didn't care for the pacing were, The Book of Boba Fett, and The Wheel of Time. Don't come at me. [Karli laughs] If you loved it. I loved it for you.

[KARLI] As much as I am a die hard fan of Wheel of Time, I was very disappointed with the pacing as well. There were plenty of things I did like about the show, but the pacing weren't one of 'em.

[JAMIE] And both of these are for completely different reasons. Boba Fett felt like the wrong type of pacing for the characters legacy.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Everybody thinks of him as the badass bounty hunter. And the pacing was too slow. And it was boring. Not enough things were happening, not enough information that was interesting was being given.

[KARLI] I was interested in enough of what was going on that that wasn't the problem for me. But the first thing that you said that the pacing was wrong for the character, I completely agree with that. I love the Star Wars world. So I—there was enough interesting information coming at me because I'm always interested in like the different things going on in the universe, period. But it pulled apart one of my favorite characters. I stopped watching though, as much as I was interested just because it was, it was ruining this vision that I had of one of my all time favorite characters.

[JAMIE] We were more watching it because it was a thing to watch and to have seen to relate to other aspects of the Star Wars universe.

[KARLI] Yeah, and I'm sure I'll finish because of that, but I'm not going to be happy about it. [laughs] Which is sad.

[JAMIE] Yeah, I get that a lot of people like the Star Wars universe so much that that keeps them interested. But I feel like a piece of work should be able to like not depend on some sort of previous built in fan base, like it should be good enough to draw its own.

[KARLI] You're touch—you're touching on stuff that we're gonna have to can of worms and come back to another episode because, oh, don't even get me started on that.

[JAMIE] So to me, The Book of Boba Fett was the wrong pacing for the character. And it, it bored me, people are gonna hate me. It didn't pace out the hype. And for The Wheel of Time, it was a completely different problem. And there's so many factors that I'm going to try and put a lot of information in a very, very short amount of time. There are so many factors with making a movie and what you get funding for and who's making the decisions. So nothing is one person's fault. There's a lot of moving parts. This season should have had more episodes, they should have had more time to do the story. But even with what they did have, I felt that some of the earlier episodes, time was squandered on things. We're giving a lot of importance to something that didn't feel like it needed to be as long as it was and then we quickly skipped over things that were really interesting and really important.

[KARLI] Yep, absolutely.

[JAMIE] So two very different problems for my preferences in those things I needed more, I just wanted more of some things and way less of other things. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Yeah, I absolutely agree with those examples.

[JAMIE] It's sad because they only got eight episodes. And there's so many characters. And when you have that many characters in such a short amount of time, you don't have as much time to invest in any one individual character. That was a pacing issue, too, because sometimes your pacing is personal development.

[KARLI] Absolutely. Especially when you're building off of an epic fantasy, which I think is such a struggle that a lot of people don't realize, which is I think, again, why they should have had more episodes, but I understand why they didn't, because the standard isn't at that. But the problem is, there's not many epic fantasy—live action, epic fantasy out there. So they don't really have a good margin to com—or whatever—they don't have a good thing to compare it up against. There's not a lot of data out there to say, eight episodes isn't enough time. Although I would argue it would have been enough time if they hadn't have just made stuff up out of nowhere. [laughs] But there's—that's a whole other discussion, so.

[JAMIE] Yeah, the epic fantasy into series is still fairly new in the game. This is like, it used to be like, you know, Lord of the Rings movies were made. But we've moved on to like, oh, what if we made these into shorter series, which, let's be honest, like all fans love. Like we're going to get—that means we're going to get more of than we would in a movie. But the industry is still figuring out the sweet spot of how to do that. So it's like, I get it.

[KARLI] Yeah, they had a really distinct challenge to um, tackle there. And I just don't think that they had enough space to do it in and, and they just, they, they had some pacing issues that I think could have been fixed within the space that they did have. But that is my personal interpretation. So I have, I have another example. And in this one is a TV show, which I—it's such a challenge to even bring it up because I haven't finished the show itself. But this one season in particular really bothers me, and—or parts of the season—and that's Breaking Bad. And everybody raves about Breaking Bad. And don't get me wrong, like I'm enjoying it. And I will finish. But bits of season two and season three, just bored me to tears. And it was really disappointing because I was—it offered in the first season—this is what this is going to be and then it turned into um, a whiny main character. And we just spent so much time on this main character. Walter's being just a whiny mess. And I'm like, I have no interest anymore in this. Like, I don't want to watch him be a whining mess. I want to watch him do stuff. And if he's also whining in the process, fine. [chuckling] Like, he's got a whole lot of crazy stuff going on. It's understandable that he whines sometimes. But that felt like all he was doing. And I'm like this is a pacing problem. We are spending far too much time on this. And not enough time on developing the other aspects of the plot.

[JAMIE] Yeah. If you're looking for like good examples and case studies for pacing, I believe it's done well, I think Baby Driver, if you're looking for like a fast pace, adventure, I think that one just delivers how to do fast paced well.

[KARLI] Where you give the appropriate breaks at the appropriate times and still keep things moving along at a quick clip.

[JAMIE] Yes, exactly. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I was thinking about the show The OA on Netflix, because it is kind of more of a slow burn. And with every episode, you're getting this new information that just really spurs you to watch the next episode. It's so sad it got cancelled after two seasons.

[KARLI] And see, that makes me not want to watch it because I don't like it when that happens.

[JAMIE] But it was just—it's weird. It's weird, but it's amazing.

[KARLI] That's great. Thank you for sharing those. I have not seen either of them. They are on my list. But a good example of a fairly fast paced comedy type movie—which I don't know maybe that's not the best way to explain it—I'm gonna say the movie you can tell me. Stranger Than Fiction, I feel like keeps things moving at a steady rate but there are beats of slower pace and contemplation. I feel like it is very well balanced.

[JAMIE] Yeah.

[KARLI] It is one of my favorite movies.

[JAMIE] That's a good example.

[KARLI] Yeah, thank you.

[JAMIE] So do you have a two cent recommendation for us this week, Karli?

[KARLI] I do. My recommendation for this week is The Jekyll Revelation by Robert Masello. I think that's how you pronounce it. Sorry if it's wrong. It is a mystery thriller and like alternate Historical suspense. So it's got kind of like a fantasy vibe to it. Basically, it's this modern day environmental scientist finds the secret journal of Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And so he's reading the journal and it's going back and forth between modern day and the journal. And he's piecing together this mystery of something that obviously didn't happen in real life. And it's a very interesting, the way that it is paced back and forth. Because sometimes what's modern day is what's faster paced, and sometimes it's what's in the journal. And so it, I think, is a really great example of a different way to pace your book and keep things rolling.

[JAMIE] Nice.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] There's just so much to think about when it comes to pacing. It's trial and error. You're gonna figure it out as you go. The more books you write, the better you get.

[KARLI] Yep.

[JAMIE] [laughing] Insert all the normal advice.

[KARLI] Yeah, absolutely.

[JAMIE] Just keep going. Thanks for listening, follow and subscribe on Spotify or Apple podcasts. A transcript will be available on our website at scifiohmy.com/podcast. You can find us on Instagram @theactbreak_podcast or on Twitter @theactbreak_. That's all for this week, and we hope that it was helpful.

[KARLI] Thanks for listening, internet friends.