Relentless Pacing: Compressing Action

Last night I read a rejection letter (it wasn't mine, because I'm not cool enough to have started getting those yet), in which the agent said that novels must have "relentless pacing." I've heard the phrase before, but last night it caught my attention. What is relentless pacing? How does it work? What are its characteristics? Sure, I've studied fail cycles, etc., but I still don't have pacing anywhere close to mastered.

As it happens, I'm reading Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz, who is pretty much the master of relentless pacing, and one thing I've noticed about his book is that the action is extremely compressed. My action is often slow and spread out because I want my book to be realistic, and in reality, major events rarely happen on the same day as each other; characters usually dink around before they get around to doing things; and important discoveries usually occur over time rather than at the most convenient, interesting moment.

But let's take a look at what happens in the first 24 hours of Odd Thomas. 

SPOILERS AHEAD.

I MEAN IT. LOTS OF SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ ODD THOMAS, YOU SHOULD REALLY LEAVE THIS POST AND GO GET THE BOOK RIGHT NOW. IT'S QUITE GOOD.

AND MORE SPOILER WARNING . . . 

'Nuff said? Okay, then.

In the first 24 hours of the book, Odd Thomas identifies a child killer, chases him through a house, saves another child, and turns the killer over to the cops. (That's in the first hour of his day.) Then he slings hash for several hours. Then he spots a suspicious character, breaks into his house, and discovers a portal to hell and the character's shrine to mass murderers. He reports that to the cops, and then he sees the suspicious character again and tries to chase him down, picks up his girlfriend for dinner, gets chased from a church by a rampaging poltergeist, gets engaged, tucks his girlfriend into bed, goes home to find a dead body in his apartment, disposes of the body, confronts a pack of coyotes, releases a hooker's ghost from limbo, discovers that his contact on the cop force has been shot, and finds a meditation card that is basically meant to summon the devil. In addition to this, he makes about 6 social calls, describes 6 different locales, and interacts in about 10 different major relationships (7 of them with the living, 3 with the dead).   And I don't think he's even hit the 24 hour mark yet.

Now, I realize that not every book is suited to be a Dean Koontzian novel, but this is an excellent example of how time and events are tightly compressed so that bam, bam, bam. There's never a down moment.

Of course, there's a lot more to relentless pacing. There's the variety of setting and character dynamics. There's the variety in types of conflict. There are reveals that dangers were misunderstood or underestimated. There are the introductions of new dangers and new disasters. There's the overall sense that this world is alive and moving on, with or without the reader. I'll probably write more about those later as my brain works through them, but for now--compression of action. This is one of my biggest weaknesses, and Odd Thomas is a great example of how to take it to the extreme, and pull it off.

This Story is Too Smart For Me

I woke up this morning with a great idea for a time-travel thriller. (Ran it past hubs, who is totally willing to tell me when my ideas suck or are mediocre, and he confirmed that this is indeed a exciting idea.) The problem is that I'm the type of writer who thinks I need five generations of explanation for why my MC owns a dog, so trying to plot and come up with adequate quantum and character background for a time-travel thriller is literally giving me heart palpitations and a headache.

I Want to Quit

Today is a day when I really want to quit writing, but I won't because after ten years of trying, I know it won't do any good.

An Open Letter to My Parents

Dear Parents,

Remember that time in first grade when I hid my nightgown in my backpack, wore it all day at school, told everyone that I was a fairy princess and could grant them wishes if they drank water from an old spice bottle, and signed all my homework Rose?

If it's any consolation, I am now trying to raise myself. I tell BookBoy to brush his teeth, and fifteen minutes later, he's still in his room with an old shirt wrapped around his face. Why? He's being a ninja. I tell him to go to bed. He can't because he's a mad scientist and has figured out how to make himself nocturnal. I tell him to get dressed. His shirt and shoes end up backwards because he was thinking about what he would do if he lived 125 million years ago and a dinosaur was chasing him.

So don't worry, folks. There is justice in the world. It's served every night at bedtime, courtesy of your oldest grandson.

Love,

(Your now remarkably pragmatic daughter)

Heidi

After the Flash

It's always weird to get a great idea or have a ton of new insights because on one hand, I get so excited thinking that this idea, this solution, is going to be the thing that fixes everything that is wrong with my story. (And I always think there's a great deal wrong with it. I can't imagine what it would feel like to think, even for a short time, that a manuscript was good enough.)

On the other hand, I know that as soon as I start trying to implement the idea or apply the structure, the entire idea (or at least some part of it) is going to fall apart like a card house and I'm going to have to re-invent swaths of plot, character, and dialog, and that even then, I'm not sure I will get it right.

Before I dive back into PHOTO FINISH (which has a partial request on it), I need to reorder my plot according to Elana Johnson's Storymakers presentation on beats and strengthen some of my characters and scenes based on Annette Lyon's presentation on the Hero's Journey

I rarely get discouraged when I have to grade a huge stack of papers or clean a phenomenally messy room or weed an hugelovergrown patch, no matter how big the task is. This is because it has a seeable beginning and a seeable end, and I know that one step after another will inevitably get me where I need to be. This is different. One step after another could just send me trudging in circles. However, I can't see any other way to approach this. I'm just going to have sit down, start doing the work, and hope that somehow it takes me in the right direction and gets me where I want to go.

It's overcast and warm, and there's this staticky feeling in the air, like somewhere some kids are finding a coin that half-grants their wishes or stepping into a wardrobe rich with the smell of cedar. I wish I could just grab this feeling out of the air, slam it onto the page, and make it stay there. *Sigh*. Limitations.

Stalled on Edits

Blech. Something feels wrong. I'm trying to edit PHOTO FINISH, and while I can normally muster the creative energy to write something that at least sounds okay for the moment, for the past few days I've just been dragging. The sentences are short and choppy. They all have a repetitive form. The verbs are muted or strained. Everything sounds like this.

I suspect that there are several culprits: stress, exhaustion, the deep immersion in choppy academic writing (I'm grading a lot of papers right now), and the fact that I haven't read anything good for a few days. I know a lot of writers suggest staying away from good writing, especially within your genre, when composing or revising, but for me a great novel is like a drink of water or lube for an engine or a spark for a fire. It gets things started, keeps them going, and gives them the energy to run.

And of course the mounting panic that comes from realizing that I have to pitch in 8 days and feeling like my novel is total garbage is not helping.

I need sleep, chocolate, water, melon, watermelon (as long as we're on the topic), sunshine, new flowers, a good book, and an hour long massage. Ah, man. A girl can dream.