As writers, we strive to find creative ways to hook our audience and make them interested in reading our stories. But how do you keep their attention? How do you convince them to buy into your premise and stay engaged throughout your story? The answer lies in how effectively we can generate momentum while maintaining a steady pace that keeps your readers hooked.
Knowing how to avoid the things that slow your narrative can help you keep an ideal pace that encourages readers to keep turning pages. Let’s take a closer look at those speed bumps as we explore these pacing tricks to keep your readers engaged.
Four Pacing Tricks To Keep Your Readers Engaged
Why Pacing Is Important?
Telling a complete, cohesive story can be challenging, especially when you have a lot of information to share. As writers, we often don’t just focus on the main plot. If we’ve done our work, we usually gather plenty of extra material that provides background on the history, the world, and the characters in our story. And because we invest so much effort into creating that material, our instinct is to include as much of it as possible in our narrative. However, all of this material is exactly what brings our stories to a screeching halt. If not handled carefully, it can confuse our readers and cause them to lose interest in our narrative quickly.
Avoiding these speed bumps is essential for maintaining a pace that keeps our audience turning pages. That said, I’ve put together a short list of pacing tricks to keep your readers engaged.
Start En Medias Res
Pacing is crucial at the beginning of any story. You face the challenge of introducing your main character, the setting, and the premise in a way that grabs your audience and keeps them reading. That’s when starting en medias res —“in the middle of things” — can be helpful.
The problem arises when your opening scene is all action with no context. Avoid this by not just starting in the middle of an action scene, but with a problem already in progress. Place your protagonist at the center of that issue so readers understand the stakes and become invested in that character’s journey.
One of the best examples of how to properly start your story en medias res is the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Instead of a long introduction to the premise or backstory about the main protagonist, the story flings us into the middle of the action as we follow Indiana Jones on his quest to retrieve a golden idol from an ancient temple.
The entire sequence is a microcosm of the rest of the film, showing a problem, a hero who is never quite up to the challenge, temple ruins full of dangerous traps, and villainous rivals after the same prized archaeological relics. It’s like the first drop on a roller coaster, and we’re holding on tight in anticipation of the twists and turns to come.
Use Smart Exposition
While it might be tempting to dive into the lore and history of your world, it’s important to remember that long info dumps always slow down a story. Smart exposition focuses on context, timing, and revelation. Choose to highlight key details through well-timed dialogue to reveal information about your characters and their world while moving your plot forward.
One of the reasons why Star Wars: A New Hope seems to keep moving at a fast pace is because it uses short, clear scenes with dialogue at key moments. Instead of a long, drawn-out history lesson, Obi Wan Kenobi quickly shares the story of Luke’s father before seamlessly giving us key details about the Jedi, the Old Republic, and the Force.
The entire scene lasts only a few minutes and doesn’t focus on granular detail. Instead, it provides a quick overview of what’s essential and presents it in a way that highlights the legendary and iconic nature of an ancient myth, naturally making us want to learn more.
Use Sound Structure
There’s no better way to keep your story moving than by making sure it’s well-structured. Advance your plot by using your protagonist’s choices to transition from one story beat to the next, keeping your audience engaged.
One of the best films that truly nails story structure is Die Hard. The story unfolds in real-time, quickly introducing John McClane as a New York cop traveling to Los Angeles to reconnect with his estranged wife. Things escalate rapidly when terrorists take over the Nakatomi Building, and John must rely on his wits to save his wife and the hostages they’ve taken.
The story doesn’t waste time with unnecessary setup, instead trusting the audience to quickly connect the dots through a series of scenes with sharp dialogue. This lets the movie focus on the problem at hand, hitting all the right structural beats along the way as we follow John’s efforts to stop Hans Gruber and his terrorist group.
Be Wary Of Flashbacks
While flashbacks can help shorten the timeline, they can also disrupt the flow of your main story. Ensure your flashback is as engaging as your main plot and reveals something that advances your protagonist’s journey.
One director who knows how to effectively use flashbacks is Christopher Nolan. His style of non-linear storytelling incorporates them in a way that makes them part of the overall narrative, allowing characters to control when and what is revealed. A good example of this is in Batman Begins. Using an unconventional four-act structure, Nolan lets the theme of fear organically reveal key details about Bruce Wayne’s childhood trauma and his early ways of coping with it.
Each flashback remains within the overarching theme of fear, exploring Bruce Wayne’s journey to confront and control that fear. It doesn’t slow down the story at all. Instead, each flashback reveals more details about Bruce and what pushes him to become Batman. By skillfully reflecting the same ideals in the main villain, Ras Al Ghul, Nolan creates a story that ends not with a physical fight but with a clash of ideas and principles, making for a much more interesting narrative.
Summing it up
Taking the time to identify what tends to slow down your story’s pace is the first step in keeping your audience engaged. Using these pacing tricks to keep your readers’ engaged is a good start, but there are many other effective methods you can use depending on what your story needs.
What are some other tricks you can use to keep your story’s pace? Are there other tends to slow down the story’s rhythm? What unique challenges have you faced? I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, keep exploring creative ways to maintain a steady story flow. Keep chasing your goals. And above all, keep writing!
Until next time,
