The Idiot's Guide to Writing

Lesson 9: Plot Structure and Story Pacing

It's odd to me that this is an issue I come across as often as I do when reading stories on Wattpad. Plot structure is the practically universal building and release of tension. Every successful story has a beginning, rising action, climax, and resolution to build tension and create catharsis. The length and pacing of the events to move the plot through these stages may be different (thus story pacing), and if you want to get more specific you can get into Freytag's Pyramid, the three-act structure, the Hero's Journey or other templates, but this storytelling pattern is as old as storytelling itself. We subconsciously build stories that way.

So why then, if story structure is so intuitive, do people struggle with it? Unfortunately, this has no universal answer and usually is a case-by-case problem, depending on the story itself, the medium, author's intentions...so on and so forth. But one way to help is by learning about story pacing, which is how plot beats flow into each other. Note that story pacing is separate from scene pacing, which concerns prose in particular. I'll deal with that in another chapter.

Story pacing is not an easy thing to explain or execute either, but the important part about story pacing is that your audience will remain interested and engaged throughout. Even if you have great characters, prose, thematic elements, and everything else, the plot can still be unengaging. It's hard to tell exactly whether or not your story has decent pacing and it's pretty subjective anyway, but there's a few good thoughts and practices I've come across to make judgments on pacing.

1. Having Coherency

I think the biggest problem I see with Wattpad stories is that they don't know what their main conflict is and they're wibble-wobbling around different storylines trying to find it. You don't have to meticulously plan your conflict, but at the very least: find your main conflict, know what the climax and endgame look like, and stick to it. Your other plotlines can either be shelved for other stories or become subplots. You just need to prioritize.

Not only does this help to streamline and cut down, this also helps the overarching pacing because you know when the stakes are at their highest and when to stop building up. 

2. Chekhov's Gun With More Steps

Chekhov's Gun is a principle where every detail in a story must be narratively important (for example, if there is a gun in the first act it should be fired by the climax). While I don't entirely agree with Chekhov's Gun, I agree that no scene in a story should be meaningless. For every scene you have, ask yourself: Who. Freaking. Cares? Why would anyone be interested to read this and why is it necessary for the story? If you don't have a good answer for either question, rewrite or cut the scene. That way, there's no slogging through anything boring or irrelevant.

What if you only have a good answer to one of these questions? Well, this is where I disagree with Chekhov's Gun because not every detail needs to have a narrative purpose. It's valid to have a scene that's just there for fun, to fill in the gaps between plot beats. If you have a scene that's interesting but unnecessary, that's fine. It still says something about the characters or setting, or...something. The more problematic beats are the ones that are necessary for the story but uninteresting to read, i.e. exposition. If they're bored enough, the reader might just skip it and miss important information. 

So, what do you do to make those scenes interesting? Firstly, consider if that one plot beat really is necessary. Sometimes you will have a plot beat or scene somewhere that, while at first glance seems important, may actually be slowing the overall narrative down because it's not really developing the characters, story, or themes. Hello Future Me has an excellent video on pacing where he describes this as the "Sidequest Problem", in which certain quests serve as filler to lengthen the story but are generally pretty meaningless. As a result, the reader taps out. These sidequests should be either cut or revised to focus on more narratively important things. 

In the event that you're not having a sidequest problem, then a boring plot beat can be a symptom of a lot of things. While I can't outline every single problem—again, case-by-case basis—I can speak for some common ones. One is a lack of investment, where the plot beat either doesn't have the impact it should. It might not have been built up properly, be melodramatic or not dramatic enough, is given too much or too little screentime...whatever the reason, find the perfect balance of tension. One good way to measure how much tension the beat needs is to figure out how much it impacts the characters and the story's conclusion. 

Another problem is that it might not be intellectually engaging, which is a very pretentious thing to say but hear me out! Stories need subtext to say deeper things about their narratives, and the reader is always looking for those, whether consciously or unconsciously, and that helps investment. A great example of this is Dune, which features complicated political, moral, and religious themes and interactions. Almost every line of dialogue and thinking has double meaning, and both the characters and reader are scanning for those intentions. Characters searching for subtext is also a great way to get an audience intellectually invested, because it shows introspection and deeper thinking in both the character and the writer. (I'll have a whole chapter on subtext later, which will go into this in more depth).

3. Decide What Kind of Pacing Your Story Has

Fast pacing is not objectively "good" pacing. Fast and slow pacing create different types of stories, but neither are inherently better and worse. You can rewrite the same story with slow or fast pacing, and it can still be good but it'll highlight different parts of the narrative. Fast pacing emphasizes action, while slow pacing emphasizes introspection. 

Again, like plot coherency: decide what's the most important focus of your book. What has the audience signed up for? Then, adapt your pacing to emphasize that focus. Romance novels generally have slow pacing because they focus on the relationships and emotional drama, where people have time to think and smooch or something. Meanwhile, action has fast pacing because there is no time to think. Choose accordingly and adapt. 

Story pacing is volatile and difficult to properly understand. While this is definitely not a comprehensive understanding of story pacing, as I still have yet to cover scene pacing and how word choice affects the pacing, but this should hopefully help with the overall narrative.