Pacing Your Story (And Your Sentences!)

[@Greatermaxim]

"Lettuce know in the comments below." Funny and always a classic. Thx.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

In your opinion what is one story that is well-paced and one story that is poorly paced? Let us know!

[@HeWentRogue]

I can't think of a well paced book at the moment but the first poorly paced story that popped in my mind is Misery by Stephen King, the book within a book thing really slowed down the book for me.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

@@HeWentRogue I skipped those parts the first time I read it, and when I listened to the audiobook years later, I zoned out. I get why King included Sheldon's writing, but it made for a boring read

[@HeWentRogue]

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty I'm a casual reader and don't understand why there was a need to add Sheldon's writing. I read it years ago and maybe I just missed the point. Or I zoned out while reading those chapters and missed out on key elements

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

@@HeWentRogue The reason why Paul Sheldon's writing is included is because it shows his state of mind (writers express themselves through writing). It also serves as a palate cleanser, because Misery only has one plotline: Paul is trapped in Annie's house, and that's the whole plot. Including Sheldon's story makes the book more dynamic (although you and I both feel it detracts from the overall story). If we're being honest, Misery is a novella that got stretched to the length of a novel. I'm not sure whether King did this because novels sell better than novellas or because everything he writes is longer than it needs to be, but Misery easily could've been edited down.

[@PuppetMaster-Blade]

A well paced book is Lotr and a poorly pased book is Lotr 🤣😂. I love lotr its one of the few inspirations that drove me to write a book but my god is the pacing all over the place sometimes good and sometimes bad. I also feel most of Stephen Kings books are like this as well. They have really good parts then slow to a crawl at other parts. Which i dont hate like other people do, i think books need slow parts or poorly paced parts in order to fully appreciate the well paced parts

[@Space_Writer]

This video helps me a lot. I have a bad habit of writing heavy paragraphs, usually with big pieces of dialogue. I just recently learned I could break up a single person's dialogue with multiple, shorter lines. Who knew? 🤦🏼‍♂️ I want to try that subplot jumping. Sounds fun to write.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Glad it was helpful! Best of luck breaking up your paragraphs

[@mantistoboggan265]

Can the football fans among us just take a moment and appreciate Brandon's shirt in this video? I know it's been six years but that doesn't make it any less true

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Hahaha Myles Jack absolutely wasn’t down. Should’ve been 27-10 with 12 minutes left in the 4th. I’ll never get over it

[@Louiseandtheart]

Yay, another great video! 😊 I really love the punchline thing - such a relatively simple yet effective way to make sentences more exciting. 👍 In terms of good / bad pacing, I feeel like Netflix series at some point started having these extreme near life-and-death cliff hangers at the end of every episode, and then when you watched the next one, meh, the conflict is resolved pretty quickly and nobody died anyway. That kinda feels like cheating your audience and at some point you just stop believing in the series’ cliff hangers altogether. 🤷‍♀️

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Yeah you can only sell the idea of “deadly stakes” so many times before audiences start seeing through it.

[@SteveJubs]

Been binging your stuff and gotta say this is the best one I’ve watched so far!

[@FardtilUshid]

This is my favorite video so far. Love the punchlines.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Thanks for watching, and for the kind words!

[@Mostirrelevant]

I should explore it, but the best are probably ones I don't remember, because I was busy turning pages and stopped analyzing story. Thank you for wonderful videos and lot of effort you put into making these. I will definitely compare pacing in some stories, it is interesting

[@PatIreland-tw9lr]

Thank you for this video. I found the section on sentence pacing especially helpful.

[@lauraroberts2250]

Great lesson. Thanks, Brandon.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Thanks for watching!

[@brownell.landrum]

This is so helpful! Thanks, Brandon!

[@matt_valentine]

Awesome video. I can take a lot from this. So helpful!

[@skerr3773]

You're such a great teacher!

[@TrevorDuran3390]

I was just thinking about this!

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

Haha seems all my subscribers are on the same wavelength. This video request actually came from the Netherlands... Pacing problems are everywhere!

[@TrevorDuran3390]

@@WriterBrandonMcNulty the advice on sentence pacing was eye opening.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

@@TrevorDuran3390 Yeah I can't remember what writing guide I found that in. Might've been "Writing for Emotional Impact" by Karl Iglesias but don't quote me on that. The punchline thing is super helpful though.

[@magnomendes7373]

Can you explain a little what is "high conflict" and "low conflict"?

[@Jollygreen2854]

Too many good videos I'm overwhelmed with info! Go Seahawks btw

[@ridleyformk1244]

10:14: One example of 'poor pacing' is Skyalnders Academy. It might be just me, but it really annoys me whenever they change the story focus on the Skyalnders to Kaos and visa versa. Just when I was getting invested in one story, the rug is pulled from my feet and now I had another story that I had to get invested, only for that to be taken away too when that finally happens to switch back to the original story at the most inconvenient time. This links to one of your points in the video, and while I'm a fan of muliplte plotlines, like with Death Note, and writing one myself, with Skylander Academ however, I just don't really get behind it most of the time. It might be a me problem, or it does indeed have bad pacing problems that other shows/movies jump over, just don't like it.

[@Davidabc755]

I was writing my first story and people said its going too fast I revamped it and people said "its still too fast"

[@MichaelJPartyka]

"Terminator 2" is my go-to example of a perfectly-paced movie. P.S.: Least believable sentence ever: "When she picked up the gun, she realized the blood wasn't human." Um...what? I think the best any normal person can do is distinguish between "blood" and "not blood". I'm trying to imagine a character saying, "Why, this is *lion* blood! I had some splatter on me once during a safari -- I'll never forget the texture!"

[@keenynthewise]

@@Montainmentto be fair most of the characterization was done in the first terminator

[@PhoenixCrown]

One of my favorite series is The Wheel of Time, which is incredible DESPITE its pacing. I can't stand how much RJ smelled his own farts in his writing, probably the most egregious example being his description of the embroidery on everyone's dress, every, time, they, changed. But this bled into the overall wordiness of the books that moved from great immersion into "get to the point." (I quit reading WoT TWICE at book 8 before finishing the series.) Compare that to The Lightbringer Series that was 5 books, EPIC, tons of description, depth, culture, detail, yet it pulled me through the entire way.

[@youzerseif]

is it only me or the audio is way too low, I have maximum volume and it's still not loud enough...

[@dineshimmanuel9714]

Bro, audio is quite low in all your videos.

[@WriterBrandonMcNulty]

I worked on fixing it in recent months. Didn’t know it was an issue years ago

[@kaijuge6934]

One Piece has awful pacing, but I love it anyway.