Embracing Darkness IV - On Pacing and Timing in the Narrative
Recognizing when and where to pull back on the darker aspects of our stories is just as important as recognizing how to do so.
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The four month cycle has officially been broken.
I hadn’t anticipated returning to my Embracing Darkness series of essays so soon, but in the wake of penning my third entry last week,
and I engaged in a brief discussion on the subjects of breathing room and levity in darker stories. I always enjoy speaking with Lesley about the various facets of fiction writing. While she and I do write material that’s rather different in many ways, there’s a considerable overlap in our tastes and thought processes when it comes to how we approach fiction. This extends both to what we read and what we write. Our chief preferences aren’t one-for-one, but they’ve been close enough that we’ve made frequent jokes about each of us stepping all over the other’s quantum string.
Suffice it to say, our brief discussion after she read last week’s essay sparked a series of tangential thoughts related to the subjects I brought up. Speaking of the previous essays, if you haven’t yet read them, I recommend doing so before continuing here. At the very least, I recommend reading the third entry since I will be referring back to it here. You can find my other Embracing Darkness essays below:
Today we’ll be discussing the use of time in dark fantasy stories. Not in terms of the passage of it within the narrative, but how to utilize pace and the timing of the different events within your story effectively. The goal here is to help less experienced writers within the genre, or act as a helpful reminder for those of us who’ve been at it for a while like myself, in recognizing where and when we can best utilize those valuable moments of downtime, quiet contemplation, and/or levity that allow darker stories the breathing room they need to help maintain the strengths their darker qualities can bring.
Let’s get into it.
Keeping Proper Pace
Pacing can be a challenge to pin down in writing. The effects of pacing in visual media such as film, television, and video games tend to be easier to recognize because we can see and feel them in a more immediate manner.1 For example, a well paced movie with an extensive run time - films like Unforgiven, the extended Lord of the Rings films, Blade Runner, The Shining, and so on - will stand a far better chance of maintaining its hold on the audience’s attention than poorly paced films of similar length. I’m sure the vast majority of you reading this essay have had the experience of watching a poorly paced movie, only to start checking to see just how much time has passed. This problem has only become worse in recent years, thanks to Hollywood’s apparent inability to trim films down to a length that’s properly digestible for the stories they’re attempting to tell.
Books are prone to this same issue, be they fiction or nonfiction. Just like in other forms of media, poor pacing can run a gamut from being an occasional annoyance to so insufferable that it causes readers to close your book and not come back. As writers, it’s contingent on us to recognize the causes of pacing issues. We need to learn not only how to avoid them, but how to develop our pacing in such a way that our stories feel satisfying for our audience to read.
If it feels like I’m speaking in generalized terms here, that’s because I am. Many of the ideas I’ve touched on in this series are those which can and do apply to other genres and styles of fiction; and often nonfiction, too. That being said, as has so often been the case across this series, I am of the opinion that dark fantasy is one of those genres in which issues of pacing are particularly detrimental. Horror and thrillers also inordinately suffer when pacing is poorly handled, and I think that’s often due to the same root challenge that comes with handling darker subject matter.
There’s no argument to be made against the idea that our popular culture is currently in a period of oversaturation when it comes to dark stories. It’s been like this pretty much since Game of Thrones peaked in its popularity, and it’s only grown more intense now that the superhero genre has waded into the deep waters of lampoon and deconstruction on the big and small screens alike. We’ve been on this course since well before either of these points, as can be attested to by the popularity of shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos well before that. Hell, gritty and violent crime dramas have been a film staple since the 80’s, and they arguably peaked in the 90’s thanks to directors like Martin Scorsese with films like Goodfellas and Casino, and Quentin Tarantino with the likes of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
You can see it in the realms of written media, too. Comics entered their dark and edgy phases in the 80’s and 90’s, and there’s always been a plethora of darker fiction stories throughout the course of human history. Just as we’re drawn to things that are beautiful and heartwarming, we’re drawn to the dark and the dangerous because there have always been valuable lessons which can be taken from both.
There’s something important to note about the latter examples which I gave above. Say what you will about them, they’ve endured in people’s minds for a reason. Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Goodfellas, Casino, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction all continue to be appreciated because whatever faults they might have, they’re all well crafted stories that engaged their audiences. Now there’s a good many facets for why this is the case. Robust characters. Compelling narratives. Strong acting, camera work, and directing. All of these have an effect, and pacing is a large part of that.
The rate at which we proceed through a story, as well as the individual scenes and chapters within said story, all have a direct impact on how engaged your audience will be. But how do we determine what the proper pace for our stories is? That depends on the type of story you’re trying to tell. Is it a fast paced and pulpy adventure, or do you want something slower and more brooding? Do you plan to involve a lot of intense action, or are you more focused on scheming and political intrigue? Obviously none of these elements are mutually exclusive. Just because you’ve got a story that focuses on intrigue doesn’t mean it can’t have intense action. You’ll need to determine what your primary focus and goals with your story are, as these very often have direct correlations on what kind of pacing is most effective for you.
Generally speaking, though do bear in mind this isn’t an absolute rule, the more complex the plot you’re weaving is, the more measured you’ll want to be in your pace. This is because, again generally speaking, you’ll need to allow yourself the requisite time to put all the various pieces and players in your story into their proper places. Often times the more complex your story becomes, the slower you’ll proceed through it. Likewise for more adventure focused and pulpy affairs, the more simplified and action heavy the story is, the faster your pace will generally be.
I need to stress that these aren’t universal rules. Ultimately, your goal is to find the pacing that works best for the story you want to tell, and chances are almost certain that pace isn’t going to be single consistent thing throughout. After all, just as different stories come with different needs, so do different scenes, and shifts in your pacing are going to be one of those needs. Scenes of conflict, whether they be a more typical action scene or something like an argument between characters, or even someone going through the intense throes of a momentary personal crisis, are almost certainly going to need a faster pace than the moments of quiet reflection I discussed in the previous essay.
As a quick example, we can look at excerpts from two different scenes in my serialized novel, The Jarl’s Son. The first is an action scene, where Gaiur finds herself locked in combat with a supernatural creature when she disturbs an enchanted grove at the heart of Ostock Forest. The second is a quiet moment from earlier in the story where she attempts to contact a loyal companion in her dreams as she drifts off to sleep.
The action scene:
Reacting purely on instinct, Gaiur dropped to the ground. A heartbeat later, the elk fiend smashed into the birch wall, its branch warped antlers becoming lodged in the closely bound trunks. Rolling aside, she avoided its stomping hooves and pushed back up to her feet. Hunin continued to squawk above her, fluttering about in a panic as the beast tried to wrench its antlers free from the tree trunks they’d become lodged in. From the other side of that birch wall, Varro growled and barked, desperate but unable to get inside to help.
Steadying herself, Gaiur hefted her axe, aiming for the beast’s neck, but it loosed another deafening bugle. Gaiur winced against the sharp pain in her ears, but didn’t falter. She brought her axe down, then cursed as it passed through empty air! Engulfed in a sudden fire-like shimmer of gold and blue, the creature vanished, only to reemerge once more from the canal which it originally tore free of.
“Damnation,” she spat, holding ground as the monstrosity charged once more. Again she swung, and again it vanished in a burst of blue flame.
The quiet scene:
At first, the metal was cool against her skin, and its slight chill seeped pleasantly into her palms and fingers. Heat soon began to fill the axe’s head, but not the sort which comes from a body’s warmth chasing away metal’s surface cool. This was different, it came from deep within the weapon itself. Gaiur could feel how it differed, the way grew and radiated out like a flame that burned with intense heat, yet wouldn’t burn her. It reverberated through the metal, an energy which thrummed from deep within. She felt it in her hands, and from her hands it went into her body. She heard it in her soul, and from her soul it reached into her mind as she formed the silvery image of the one she sought.
Small and gray furred, with an underside of white. Sapphire-eyed and vulpine, with a bushy tail that glowed like the moon. Chittery and talkative, serious when need be, and chipper as often as he could be.
Sleep followed soon after. However, while it came quickly, it didn’t come easily. As she drifted into the warm dark, Gaiur felt a gentile tug at the back of her consciousness. She turned to face it, and in the distance she saw a solitary mote of soft orange light. It was then joined by another, and then a third after that. More and more and more, until the motes became flames, and the flames became infernos. Her heart stopped and she sucked in a gasping breath, only to find that her heart wasn’t beating and she couldn’t breathe. She looked around, tried to see where she was, then realized she couldn’t because she had no body.
The differences in the pacing are noticeable between the short passages. The action scene makes frequent use of shorter sentences or sentences made up of multiple short clauses. This helps impart a feeling of speed and urgency, which also helps to ratchet up the feeling of intensity and tension that comes with combat.
By contrast, the second passage has a slower and more relaxed feel to it. The sentences are longer, and they focus more on sensory details and the small differences Gaiur feels in her axe as she begins to form the image of Renald the fox in her mind. The pacing only starts to pick up again when, after falling asleep, she realizes she’s returned to the same violent nightmare she’d been experiencing repeatedly for weeks before this point. The increase in tension necessitated a slowly ramping increase to the pace in this case.
There’s a myriad of considerations to keep in mind when it comes to developing the appropriate pace for your scenes and story. Word choice, sentence structure, sentence length, punctuation, paragraph length, and so on can all be used to various degrees to achieve the sort of pace you’re looking for. Yet pacing alone isn’t the only piece of this puzzle.
Timing!
Equally important to the pace you set in your story is determining when the events that take place within it should occur. This aspect is primarily what Lesley and I ended up discussing after she read the previous essay. Timing is an immensely important aspect to any story, but for darker stories this holds particularly true. It isn’t enough to just throw in moments of downtime willy-nilly so that your characters can lay back and catch a breather. They need to be appropriately timed so they can support your story.
When we were talking about this subject, Lesley brought up a major difference that she noticed between The Jarl’s Son and its prequel, In the Giant’s Shadow. While both stories are undoubtedly in the realms of dark fantasy, In the Giant’s Shadow remains the lighter of the two stories despite the fact that the setting and the events therein may paint an initial image to the contrary. The reason for this is because of the different approaches taken to counterbalance the heavier elements in each story.
Within the first two chapters of In the Giant’s Shadow, Gaiur endures a pretty horrible fate that threatens to cost her not just her life, but her very soul. These are high stakes for her, and they do a good bit of lifting for the story’s darker tones and elements. However, since the story is an adventure mystery at its heart, it needed something lighter to counterbalance the trials and tribulations Gaiur faces within that narrative. Enter Renald, a talking fox who acts as her guide and companion within the story.
As I mentioned in the previous essay, Renald acts as a foil to Gaiur. Where she’s quiet, he tends to be chatty. Where she’s dour, he’s more confident and chipper. Where she’s out of her depth, he has a base of knowledge that allows him to begin piecing together the situation she finds herself in. Working in tandem, they provide banter and clashes of character that prove engaging and entertaining. These aren’t my words, by the way. I paraphrase them from testimonials given by my readers. Proud as I am of my book, I’m not inclined to assume my audience’s reception of my work for them.
This relationship results in a story that’s generally lighter than what’s presented in The Jarl’s Son. Renald does return in the sequel, but his role is much reduced from what it was in In the Giant’s Shadow. This is because a big part of what I wanted to focus on in the first half of The Jarl’s Son was Gaiur’s ongoing struggles with the great loss she experienced when she was a younger woman. A struggle which is brought to the fore when she realizes that the greater powers which now guide her along her destined path have led her to a scenario where she is forced not only to face these spectres from her own past, but also take on the responsibility of finding a way to save the life of a sick child before he dies.
With back and forth banter between Gaiur and Renald no longer present to act as a counterweight to the heavier elements in this story, it falls to carefully timing the different beats of The Jarl’s Son so they land correctly. The goal is to ensure that the darker parts of the story carry a high weight and a strong impact, but not so much that they cross over into the realms of being suffocating as I warned against in the previous essay. The solution, at least in my case, was to pepper smaller moments of lightness at times where it felt natural and appropriate to do so. Most of the time, these came in the form of developing the attraction and budding relationship between Gaiur and the story’s male lead, Marten, the elder son of Jarl Ostock.
However, these brief moments of levity and lighthearted banter alone wouldn’t be nearly enough to counteract the heavy elements of grief, loss, worry, and the tragedy inherent in an innocent child’s life being put in extreme danger. This story practically demanded larger moments of quiet contemplation be taken, points where the tension could be released and both the story and the readers could be given the moments they needed to breathe and process. As noted in the previous essay, this need was met with lengthy sections at specific points in specific chapters that allowed for proper breathing room to be taken. In fact the 8th chapter, titled “A Contest of the Heart,” is entirely dedicated to this purpose.
Lesley phrased it well when she laid out one of the big reasons why she thought this story worked for her despite not being someone who typically enjoys dark fantasy. Taken from our Discord conversation:
“One thing I think is important to note is that in The Jarl’s Son, the amount of bleakness and stress outstrips the laughs and levity by a large margin. It’s all about the timing imo
Every time Gaiur catches a break it feels like it happens just when she’s about to reach a point where she can’t move forward anymore”
-Lesley Cain
As an aside, this ended up being another of those “stepping on my quantum string” moments, as what she described was one of my goals with The Jarl’s Son.
Understanding when it’s appropriate to lean in or pull back from the heavier elements in a dark fantasy story isn’t just important for ensuring that the story has the correct balance needed for your readers not to feel smothered or overwhelmed. It’s necessary. It’s a key way in which we help our characters feel more complete and believable, even if they don’t succeed in overcoming the melancholies they may be feeling at any given time. Making the attempt, and in so doing releasing some of the stress and tension that builds up in a story, shows readers that your characters are growing. At the very least, it shows an attempt at growth, which is especially important for stories where a character’s struggles with change makes up the core conceit.
As you write, look for places in the narrative that lend themselves to these larger moments of quiet, or spots where you can pepper in those moments of levity to lighten the mood. If you’re unsure where they might fit, reach out to friends or acquaintances who’s advice you trust. They’ll likely be able to help you find those moments. Once you spot them, note the tells that give them away for your story and feel for those as you continue. With time and practice, that feeling will become second nature.
Moments of Respite, Moments of Growth
As writers, we must keep in mind what it is that we need to accomplish with the tools and techniques we have at our fingertips. We need to understand what their purpose is, why that purpose is important, and how that will lead to improvement within our stories. Personally, I believe this is doubly true in the case of those of us writing in the dark fantasy subgenre.
Across all of my Embracing Darkness essays, I’ve made mention of the numerous pitfalls and failings that plague this genre, as well as the reasons why I believe they’ve become so prominent. I’ve got no doubts that whenever the day comes that I revisit this series with a fifth essay, I’ll likely make mention of those issues again. It may come across like beating a dead horse, but the fact of the matter is that we need to understand why those failings are, in fact, failings. It’s the only way those of us who wish to see the genre uplifted with stories of better quality, stories that will stand the test of time, will see our goal through.
I’m going to quote part of a comment from the previous essay, this one from my friend from across the Pacific,
:“You make several great points here, and could not agree with you more. For myself, I enjoy 'dark' stories, but those where a character repeatedly ruminates on their issues without doing anything about it get incredibly boring.
Psychologically, if the character does take some action to alleviate said negative emotion, or part of the story is about getting that motivation, then that can be powerful - even if they ultimately fail, like in 1984. Winston Smith takes action against Big Brother, the totalitarian state, falls in love, learns the truth, but - spoiler - he fails in the end.”
The second sentence it the most important for our purposes. As touched on in the prior section a few paragraphs back, there’s more value to including moments where we slow the story down and give room for it to breathe than just the releasing of tension and the prevention of heavy subjects becoming suffocating. They’re also important for our characters, often presenting some of the most potent moments of personal growth and reflection within our stories.
However, as Delinquent Academic suggests, it’s not enough for them to just sit and reflect. Direct action doesn’t necessarily need to be taken, and whether or not a character will take direct action is dependent on the story being told. Yet it’s important for us to understand that our characters must, at the absolute minimum, showcase the potential to change and grow.
Recognizing and ruminating on the problems, trials, and tribulations our characters face is all well and good, but if this doesn’t come with some notable changes for them then that purpose is wasted. The stress and tension don’t end up relieved, but deflated by the fact that the characters aren’t actually reflecting and learning. Instead of taking a portion of the lessons they can learn from their situations and experiences to heart, they end up bemoaning them, reducing what could otherwise be moments of potent character growth and emotional release to ceaseless complaining that can very quickly turn an otherwise interesting character into someone insufferable to read about.
This is one of the major traps that can occur when these valuable scenes are poorly timed, overused, or otherwise managed haphazardly. Just as with any tool, a lack of care in its use has the potential to completely undermine a good story. Once again, we find ourselves coming back around to the idea of balance. Precisely what the correct balance for your story is will depend on what you want it to say, but it’s something that must be pinned down as quickly as possible.
Note, this isn’t the same as saying you must do this fast. Sometimes we won’t recognize these problems until we’re deep into a manuscript. Sometimes we won’t see them until we’ve finished drafting the manuscript and move on to revisions and editing. Whatever the timeline ends up looking like for you, don’t shy away from problems of imbalance if you see them. As long as you’re still working on the story, they’re not indicative of failure. The only time they become such is if a story is pushed out before it’s truly ready. To my mind, that particular bad habit has a large part to play in the excessive amount of schlock we continue to see in dark fantasy today.
If those of us who love the genre want to see more stories of high quality come out of it, then much like our characters must ruminate, understand, and grow during their moments of quiet, so too must we recognize and understand how to avoid the pitfalls before us.
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
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Pacing issues within comics also tend to be more immediately recognized than in narrative prose. This is, once again, due in part to the visual nature of comics. Properly handled, dialogue and narration in comics should help you flow from panel to panel alongside the illustrations, with both working in tandem to not only set your scenes and showcase the events, but also set the pacing of said events. One of the most obvious misalignments here are comics that feature small panels with their art heavily obscured by large bubbles of extensive text. This is an obvious sign of poor storyboarding which, in the world of comics, often leads to poor pacing.
One thing I immediately noticed with your writing was the pacing - this might be, from my point of view, your best skill. At least with In the Giant's Shadow, and The Claws of the N'longu, it moved like a fast moving river - but not overwhelmingly fast - where the reader (in the kayak) did not capsize. Thanks for breaking down your methods, like the sentence structure. Illuminating.