by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Sometimes in my stories, I want to pick up the pace, especially to move the mystery along. I’ll quickly move through a scene, summing up something that’s happening–a party, a walk that several friends are taking, a picnic–to get to what I think of as ‘the important part’…whatever that might be at the time.
One of my editors at Penguin would frequently type notes in Track Changes at these spots: “Could you expand on this scene and let the reader see this happening? I think they’d enjoy being part of it.”
The truth is that showing takes time. It takes time to write and read. But my editor was right: there are parts that I shouldn’t rush through as a writer, even when I feel the pace of the narrative needs to pick up.
For a while, I just gave completely in. Let’s say we’ve got a carnival going on as a good set-up for our protagonist to be able to casually speak to another character in the story (this character supplies information of some sort for our protagonist).Continue reading
