I did my best to make Sector 36 a fast-paced pageturner. In the process, I learned a lot about pacing. There are many ways to keep the story intense and the reader hooked.
First, I used present tense throughout the book, minus the flashback chapters which are in past tense. Present tense adds urgency. The action happens now, it’s not a retelling.
She keeps moving. Here, the crowds are even thicker than on the streets, but she joins the flow of people and makes good progress. Dock 128, dock 129. Most docks have ships connected to them; most ships are military.
She is on alert now, keeps looking around, glancing back. It’s hard to tell if anyone else is after her, too many people around. But her gut says “no”, which is promising.
From 05: Trailing. Contrast this with the past tense version:
She kept moving. Here, the crowds were even thicker than on the streets, but she joined the flow of people and made good progress. Dock 128, dock 129. Most docks had ships connected to them; most ships were military.
She was on alert, kept looking around, glancing back. It was hard to tell if anyone else was after her, too many people around. But her gut said “no”, which was promising.
The same version written in past tense is much less visceral.
Short sentences also help with the sense of urgency, as you can see in the paragraphs above. You can’t write a whole book like a telegram though - a good rhythm alternates between short, staccato sentences and longer ones to give the reader a chance to breathe.
In fact, I did the same with the chapters. If a chapter is very intense, the next chapter gives the reader a chance to catch their breath. For example, after the violence in 16: Flop, the flashback 17: Metagame slows it down a bit. After Elena is fighting to stay alive in 18: Survival Instinct, the Marcus PoV chapter 19: Redeployment advances the plot at low intensity.
To take it one step further, from Part 1 to Part 3, Elena gets in deeper and deeper trouble, climaxing with her almost getting killed. I slow the action down a notch in Part 4, before the conflict becomes sector-wide in Part 5. Elena and the crew of the Charon have a small sidequest on Horizon Station, which is very much intentional. I’m slowing the pace down a bit, to build it up again. Well, “slow” for Sector 36.
In the same vein, I tried to keep descriptions brief. Reading Jules Verne in my childhood traumatized me. Pages and pages of descriptions. While I’m very proud of the world I built and its various locations, and I could spend a lot of ink describing them in detail, that would detract from the action. What I tried to do instead was to paint things with few brushstrokes. Enough for the reader to get the highlights and fill the details with their own imagination. Here’s how I introduce the crew of the Charon in 06: Charon:
“This is Rynn, our pilot. We call him Ghost.” Ghost – a lanky man with brown eyes and long slick hair – rises from his chair and extends his hand. She shakes it. He smiles a thin smile, which doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Elena notices he is wearing the same type of overalls as Jaxon. Is that their uniform? He has a tattoo on his neck, the tip of what looks like a wing or a tail disappearing under his collar.
“Terek here is our medic.” Terek, the one standing, is in his late 50s, with salt-and-pepper hair and a full beard. He nods in greeting. He wears a white, wrinkled shirt, and comfortable black pants. When he holds out his hand, she notices a few very faint pink stains on his sleeve.
“Call me Doc” he says.
“And Kaela here is our digital specialist.”
By digital specialist he means hacker. No doubt in her mind now that the Charon isn’t on the up and up. Kaela is a petite woman with spiky blue hair and a wiry frame. She swivels her chair to face Elena, doesn’t bother standing up.
And this is for characters that show up throughout the book. Characters that appear once get even less space. In 16: Flop, Elena comes face to face with her assailants:
“Come on in,” says the one on the right. He has an Eclipse Corps sergeant insignia. The other two are privates, one is blond, the other bald. She steps in very slowly, mind racing, using the little time she has to assess the situation, come up with something. Her eyes dart in every direction. This unit is completely empty, not even a mattress on the floor. No place to duck behind. The privates are both wearing light body armor. The sergeant isn’t. They’re geared up for business: boots, gloves, utility belts.
This is enough detail to distinguish them throughout the rest of the chapter - one is a sergeant, one is blonde, one is bald. Body armor, boots, utility belts. This is enough to picture them standing in the room, waiting for her. I didn’t want, at this critical moment, to spend a bunch of time on everyone’s eye color, build, facial features. Elena doesn’t care much about these details either, she is in imminent danger.
Dialog is another way to keep a good pace. Give the reader information through characters talking rather than the author “talking”. Whenever possible I let the characters do the talking. From 07: Ousted:
“Doctor,” he says as soon as he steps out of his vehicle, “there’s some people asking around about you.”
Doctor Linton feels a void in his stomach. He can’t make up his mind whether he should be happy (they’re finally coming to pick him up!) or afraid (what if it’s not Spark?)
“Who?”
“A bunch of mercenary types. I think they call themselves Eclipse Corps. They’re going around town, asking about you. Anyone seen you? Where do you live? Stuff like that. Are you in some kind of trouble Doctor?”
The “there’s some people asking around about you” does the heavy lifting - what faster way of learning you’ve been found out?