Sentence Length and Scene Pacing

Darker PagesThis is a tip that got from Jeffrey Ford’s fiction seminar at Antioch Writers’ Workshop (AWW). If you’ve ever read Ford’s stories or novels, then you know that he’s a master of the craft. If you haven’t read his stuff, stop reading this right now, go buy one of his books, read it, and then come back.

All done? Good. He’s amazing, right?

The point here is a simple one: longer sentences slow the pace of a scene, while shorter sentences speed it up.

So we’ll start with a paragraph of long sentences:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and before he could ask the bartender for a bourbon, something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table cluttered with empty bottles—yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision—and crashed to the floor.

Now slice up those sentences into quicker bits:

Randy walked into a crowded bar. He motioned for the bartender. Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision. He crashed to the floor.

Or mix it up a little with some paragraph breaks:

Randy walked into a crowded bar and motioned for the bartender.

Something slammed into the back of his head. He spilled across a flimsy table. Empty bottles rattled. Yellow snowflakes flashed across his vision.

He crashed to the floor.

See how sentence and paragraph breaks really impact how you read the scene? The words stay the same, but the pacing changes subtly. So, for more introspective moments, I find that longer sentences do the trick. For more action-based scenes, I like to use short, quick sentences and lots of paragraph breaks.

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