Control pacing by slowing down key moments into full scenes and compressing less important time into brief summary.
Pacing is how much space a writer gives to different stretches of time. The most important moment in your story -- the flood arriving, the road collapsing, the wall breached -- deserves a full scene, told moment by moment. Less important stretches of time can be compressed into a single summary sentence, like "Three days passed before the water finally receded."
New writers often give equal space to every moment, which buries the important parts. Deciding what to slow down and what to speed through is one of the most powerful choices a storyteller makes.
Mastery looks like: They slow the story's most important moment into a detailed scene while compressing less important time into brief summary.
Common stumbles: Giving equal, moment-by-moment detail to every part of the story, which buries the truly important scene.
See it visually
Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.