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Pace vs. Prose
I recently (like ten minutes ago) read a post on a writer’s site about this subject, and it spurred me to examine my own thoughts on pace & prose, and where and when to use them. This is what I came up with:
There’s a time for pace, and a time for prose. Each is merely a tool used to carve a path. Here is an extreme example:
Say your mc is currently racing against the clock – dodging bullets, pedestrians, rush hour traffic, and two or three heat seeking missiles – in order to save a hog-tied damsel who has a bomb strapped to her chest. The clock is ticking, so there’s no time for shit and shenanigans. Prose has no place whatsoever within this portion of a story.
Okay, say the mc made it there ten seconds too late and the damsel is naught but a black powder burn on a patch of pavement. Now is the time for prose; he laments, he cries, he tosses out that rubber he’ll never get to share with her and her sister Babette, he swears blood vengeance upon the person responsible, and does it all from beneath a heavy fog of prose.
Pace:
anger, lust, rage, excitement, fight, flight, character interaction (i.e., dialogue, phone conversations, sports, etc.)
Every golfer knows the term ‘You drive for show, but putt for the dough’, and here’s where it applies to you and I as writers. You’ve got the reader’s attention with the chase, the crazy cabbie who spoke a language you thought only trekkies knew, the barking dogs, errupting flames, shattering glass, the falls, the ever-present tick of the clock, and now you need to slow down and allow the reader to take a gulp of air while their heart stops racing.
Enter Prose:
Scene and character descriptions, back story (if any, but not huge chunks at once, cuz the last thing you want to do is have the reader forget where they are in the story), character inner monologue – their hopes, dreams, petty piss-offs – and setting.
None of this is according to some book. This is how I do it.
Writing Exercises
Creative Writing: Exercises for Writers More Exercises: Write the first 250 words of a short story, but write them in ONE SENTENCE. Make sure that the sentence is grammatically correct and punctuated correctly. This exercise is intended to increase your powers in sentence writing. Write a dramatic scene between two people in which each has [...]
Rename that Book Contest
Well, I finally think I need to change the name of Dropcloth Angels. I’ve decided to make this a contest with prizes and everything. All you need to do is submit your entry as a response to this post and I’ll put the ten I like best into a Poll to be voted upon by [...]
Meek & Deeply Confused
For a very long while now I’ve been sitting on my first novel. Waiting. For what, I don’t know – maybe for some agent to magically appear, claiming my writing came to them in a dream or as a vision as they rode the subway home one day. And that’s how it would have to [...]
On Writing Fiction (And a Few Vague References Regarding Improving)
This is a large topic, so I’ll be breaking it down into smaller posts because I bore quickly, and likely wouldn’t finish it if I did it all at once. Myth #1: “Fiction writers learn to write by writing.” While this is fundamentally true, it’s incomplete and should be part of a larger statement which [...]
Writing for screen
This is way different than writing a novel. Scene set-up and how you split them seems to be only slightly less important than dialogue. Began my foray into this medium with a short work I wrote last year, ‘Merry Fucking Christmas’. Did I already mention that it’s nothing like writing a novel? To be continued. [...]
The Myth That is Writer’s Block
I hate to sound like a dick — and I’m really not — but writer’s block is an excuse for many other things. Writers are writers and they write. Or they are a doctor, a garbage man, a housewife, a secretary who writes stories. There’s a varying gap between a writer and one who writes, [...]
The Most Excellent Christopher Moore
Last week, I attended my first book signing. I’d always hoped my own would be the first, but barring that, this man was at the top of the list of who I’d see. So I did. Before meeting him in Waterloo at his book signing, I’d already formed an opinion of him: He was a [...]
Dropcloth Angels vs. Cannibalangelo
So here’s the thing: Every time I turn around I see another novel with either an angel on the cover or in the title somewhere. Is this the end of the line for a title that’s been with me since I first changed it from ‘The Saviour’? Last night I was chatting with a friend [...]