Pacing and timing can create or destroy a good story. Even with perfect characters, perfect location, and a perfect plot, your story is doomed if your pacing is off.
Intensity, by Dean Koontz, is among the greatest momentums in a novel. It catches you at the beginning and the plot never slows. You follow the heroine through the initial tragedy and you’re still breathless when she confronts the monstrous killer.
Suspense and suspicion will leave you with an active story no matter what its about. A good writer can create a suspenseful atmosphere just with two characters in the same room together and introducing a suspicion. Doubt, question and anxiety propel the pages until the story has climaxed.
Ghost Story, by Peter Straub, does a good job of incorporating pacing and timing. He places you in situations that are decades apart, yet everything is braided together in an active and on-going manner.
The short story, “The Cask of Amontillado,” by Poe carries the weight of pacing. “The Tell-Tale Heart,” also uses this advantage and the reader knows what the character has done. He knows what he did with the evidence. The story is a formal introduction at first, but it grows in speed. Suddenly, the element of a beating heart is introduced and the story goes faster and faster.
“Lunch at the Gotham Café,” by Stephen King, is another fine example of pacing. This along with “Riding the Bullet,” (Both are in Everything’s Eventual).
