Episode 19: Suspense, pacing, action! Oh my!

In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore return for a third time to the question “What makes a book a page turner?” Join us, as we dive into how writers use pacing, action, and suspense to keep us (as readers) engrossed in their novels.

We discuss such things as creating a sense of tension through planting questions in the mind of the reader, using the framing of your words and whitespace on the page to create and maintain pacing, and keeping action sequences taut and clear to keep the tempo. This conversation also unpacks the importance of a good edit that ensures all of the words pull their weight in the story.

As with our previous page turner episodes, we reference many different works of fiction as examples to reinforce our points, but we try not to give away any spoilers so that everyone can enjoy the episode even if you haven’t read the books.

We hope you enjoy this week’s conversation about page turners, and that you find it helpful in your own writing (or reading) journey as well.

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The definition of tension is "the state of being stretched tight, a strained state or condition resulting from forces acting in opposition to each other, a relationship between ideas or qualities with conflicting demands or implications".

The “Mystery Box” story style mentioned by the Verbivore was created by J. J. Abrams and tends to be seen in most of his work including the TV show Lost which he co-created. In his Ted Talk, J. J. proposes that this style of storytelling makes the unknown mysteries (hidden in the Mystery Box) that intrigue and generate questions more important than the solution to that mystery. The rabbit’s foot device that is the MacGuffin that everyone is after in Mission Impossible III and remains undefined throughout serves as a good example of this concept.

The Verbivore mentions managing the white space of your work as a way to keep the reader engaged and the pace moving. Here is a definition from the writerswrite.co.az:

“White space is a design principle. Simply, the absence of text draws your eye to the text. It literally refers to the amount of space around and between the words”.

While doing research for these notes, we stumbled on this great article from WriteItSideways.com that shows some good examples of how writers can use white space to break up ideas, she also includes an example where the author choose to have a large block of text. The choice of how to employ white space is something every writer can decide for themselves based on the needs of the work.

Fable references the Writescast Network blog post on Micro-pacing and Macro-pacing that she read prior to our conversation. That post is titled “Pace Your Way to Pro-Level Publishing”.

The Stephen King 10% rule comes from his book On Writing, where he received advice from an editor that the formula for the 2nd draft should be the first draft minus 10% of your words.

Fable and the Verbivore discuss the idea of “Killing Your Darlings”. In his book On Writing, Stephen King says “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” This idea is often discussed in reference to favorite characters who may have outlived their purpose, but the meaning is trully about any element (scene, title, sentence, theme) in a work where the author may have lost objectivity and kept it in solely due to sentiment rather than benefit to the story. The websites WritingCoopoerative.com and TheWritePractice.com each have an interesting article about this topic, with ideas about how a writer can identify these elements in their work.

Fable mentions the Emotion Thesaurus (2nd Edition) as a tool to find realistic physical movements that express the emotion your character is feeling (ex. hands shaking when afraid). This is a great resource currated by writers Becca Pulisi and Angela Ackerman. They also have additional character emotional and personality development resource books titled The Emotional Wound Thesaurus, The Positive Trait Thesaurus, and The Negative Trait Thesaurus. Their website Writers Helping Writing is also a good place to find a list of recommended craft books for writers.

The Verbivore discusses the important role of nonverbal communication in expressing what a character is feeling in a work of fiction. There are many articles that discuss and debate from a Psychological perspective the breakdown of what impact verbal and nonverbal elements have on the receiving end of our communications to each others. However, Albert Mehrabian’s research suggests that in some situtions our nonverbal communication (what we do) may be as important or more important than our verbal communication (what we say).

  • https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/nonverbal-communication.htm

  • https://www.businesstopia.net/communication/verbal-vs-non-verbal-communication

Books Mentioned:

TV Shows Mentioned:


Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman