Unit 7 · Topic 7.4

7.4 Pacing: how a story controls time

Pacing is how fast or slow a story seems to move. Writers control it through how many events they include, how much detail they give, how long their sentences are and when they skip time. The order in which they reveal information also shapes what you feel and when you feel it.

Key terms

pacing
scene vs. summary
time skip
sentence length
order of revelation

Scene vs. summary

Pacing comes down to the relationship between story time (how much time passes for the characters) and reading time (how long it takes you to read about it).

Technique	What it does to pace	Typical effect
Scene: moment-by-moment detail and dialogue	Slows down; reading time nearly matches story time	Builds intensity, lets you live inside a moment
Summary: a quick account of a stretch of time	Speeds up; months can pass in a sentence	Moves past what matters less, creates a sense of routine or distance
Time skip (ellipsis)	Jumps over time entirely	Creates surprise or lets you fill in what happened
Long, flowing sentences	Slow, immersive	Dreaminess, reflection, rising emotion
Short, blunt sentences or one-line paragraphs	Fast, abrupt	Shock, finality, emphasis

The Story of an Hour: slow, then sudden

Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" (1894) covers about an hour. Most of it slows down to show Louise Mallard alone in her room after hearing that her husband has died in a railroad accident. Chopin gives paragraph after paragraph to what Louise sees through the open window and what she feels, as grief turns into a whispered realization: "free, free, free!"

Then the pace changes. In a few short paragraphs, the front door opens, her husband walks in alive, and Louise dies. One paragraph is a single short sentence: "But Richards was too late." The ending happens so fast that you feel the shock almost as she does.

Order of revelation

Pacing isn't only about speed. It's also about when you learn things. A writer can hold back a key fact until late, reveal it early to create dread, or give you information a character doesn't have. Ask what you knew at each point and how that shaped your reactions.

Chopin tells you in her first sentence that Louise has "a heart trouble." It seems like background, but it sets up the ending. Details placed early that pay off later are part of how a story controls your experience of time.

How to write about pacing

Point to where the story slows down and where it speeds up.
Notice sentence and paragraph length changes, especially very short paragraphs.
Say what the slow parts make you notice and what the fast parts make you feel.
Tie the pacing to meaning: what does the story want you to linger on?

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Explaining a sudden change in pace
The last paragraphs of "The Story of an Hour" read: "Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey." Brently Mallard enters. "But Richards was too late." "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills." Explain how the pacing of the ending shapes its effect.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Contrast with the middle: the story spends many paragraphs slowly tracing Louise's private feelings.
2. Step 2: Describe the ending: only a few paragraphs, short sentences, a one-sentence paragraph. Events that change everything happen in a blink.
3. Step 3: Name the effect: shock, and a sense that Louise's long hour of imagined freedom is wiped out in seconds.
4. Step 4: Connect to meaning: the slow middle belonged to Louise's inner life; the fast ending belongs to the outside world, which takes over again.
Answer: Sample answer: Chopin lingers on Louise's hour alone, but she crowds the ending into a few clipped paragraphs, so the reader experiences her loss of freedom as abruptly as she does. The one-sentence paragraph "But Richards was too late" gives the moment of death no description at all, as if Louise's inner life, so carefully shown, simply stops mattering once her husband walks in. The final sentence moves to the doctors' verdict, a public explanation delivered quickly and confidently, and the speed makes their mistake about "the joy that kills" all the more ironic.

Common mistakes

Saying "the pacing is fast" without pointing to the specific sentences or paragraphs that create it.
Confusing pacing with plot. Pacing is how a story handles time, not just what happens.
Ignoring where the story slows down. The slow parts are usually where the writer wants your attention.

On the exam

Multiple-choice questions may ask about the effect of a very short paragraph or sentence, or why a passage gives so much detail to a brief moment. Ask what the change of speed makes you notice or feel, then pick the answer the passage's details support.
In the prose fiction essay, pacing is a good choice when a passage has a clear change of speed. Quote the short sentence, then explain what the change of speed does.

Connected topics

Videos

Slowing down time (in writing & film) - Aaron Sitze
TED-EdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to make your writing suspenseful - Victoria Smith
TED-EdWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Pacing Your Story (And Your Sentences!)
Writer Brandon McNultyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Story time and narrative time (writing tip 43)
Online writing tipsWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Control Your Speed, Control Your Pacing - Lessons From William Faulkner
K.M. WeilandWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 7.4 Pacing: how a story controls time. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Mid-way of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance."

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890), Part I

Question 1 of 4

The step-by-step description of the plank in paragraph 4 affects the pacing of the passage by

Question 2 of 4

In paragraph 5, a sound “like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil” turns out to be “the ticking of his watch.” This detail chiefly shows

Question 3 of 4

The passage ends with two short sentences: “the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.” (paragraph 7). This ending is effective chiefly because

Question 4 of 4

The narrator’s comment in paragraph 7 that the prisoner’s thoughts “have here to be set down in words” but were “flashed into the doomed man’s brain” chiefly

0 of 4 answered