How to Write a Page-Turner: The Art of Pacing

When paying for a class, most people (myself included) want to know the instructor's bona fides. In writing, one of the best ways is to hear from other authors — usually more prominent ones — who can vouch for their skills. 

My debut novel ended up winning a literary award and got me a spot on the International Thriller Writers' Debut Author stage at ThrillerFest in New York, which for this kid from Texas was a BIG DEAL! But before all that, I got some one-star reviews that really hurt my first-time author heart, including this one: "Takes this book for....ever to get going."

Whether you're still unpublished or are a veteran of four novels, many authors are seeking representation and publishers for their work. That process often involves sending the opening pages of a novel to those industry professionals. The length can vary (usually between 10 and 50 pages), but whatever that agent or publisher wants, that's how long you have to get them excited enough to request the full manuscript! 

It's not necessarily true of literary fiction, but for most genres (including the somewhat amorphous "upmarket fiction"), getting readers interested in both your character and your plot in the first chapter or two is what will get them excited to keep reading your book. Just one or the other, and you risk them putting your book down. An author may never know if a reader doesn't finish their book. But sometimes, they do ... 

Though it gets easier over time to get negative — and sometimes downright harsh — feedback from the reading public, most authors don't enjoy reading that their book was "boring" (I've heard that one) or that they "could not get through" the story (yep, got that review, too). But worse than the small dagger to an author's heart, these reviews can hurt an author's bottom line... 

For authors who write novels for profit, which is the majority of us, sales is the bottom line. And having too many reviews out there commenting on your book being slow or boring can cause potential readers to pass. And even if they skip the reviews, Readers use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and read the prologues and first chapters of novels in bookstores. Starting too slowly can hurt your chances of converting those people into buyers and readers. 

As discussed earlier, no matter the genre, getting to the inciting incident early is key to keeping readers moving along. 

I'm no good at reading my own work, but I wanted to share the first page of my award-nominated speculative political thriller, Divided States, because it's a great example of getting things moving right away — without completely ignoring characterization and backstory. Download the PDF so you can read along or later.

Time to get hands-on! 

 Download this worksheet to help you think about the opening of your current work-in-progress. It's only three questions, and I'm not grading you! (Pro tip: Try the Word document to fill it out now and save it for reference later.) 

Nearly every author I’ve talked to or read about struggles with getting from the setup to the climax of their novel. This middle is not easy. For me, it takes about twice as long to write that half than it does to write the beginning and ends of my novels. Download the handy tips sheet below to tighten up your story's middle. You want it to have an eight pack, not a beer belly!

f you write the slow parts fast in the middle of your story, that means you should write the fast parts slow in your climax. Because there should be a lot happening, even if it's just internal piecing together of the many open threads you’ve left throughout the novel, the climax is where you can afford to really give your reader an emotional gut-punch.

It's important to get from climax to ending without adding in too much more story. One of the themes among the negative reader reviews for my debut was that my falling action was too long. Part of this relies on writing a good climax, where most of your conflict is resolved. Thrillers in particular can be known for incredibly late twists, but those usually don't take long to describe and pull off.

Download a checklist you can use while developing your plot!

Many modern novels use multiple points of view (POVs) to get through their narratives. Sometimes chapters directly alternate between two or more characters, such as my June 2021 release Divided States. Others have double-digit POVs and change when it's best for the story. 

Another similar technique is writing your story across different timelines. Most authors stick to two — usually the past and present — like I did in my July 2020 novel Let the Guilty Pay. Sometimes authors can use all three (past, present, and future). Whatever they choose, switching timelines has the same effect as multiple POVs. You can end chapters at a bad spot in one timeline and switch backward or forward so the reader has no choice but to keep finding out what happens.

On paper, the narrative techniques I used in Let the Guilty Pay look like a dumpster fire. See below for an example of how my POVs and timelines rotated (I stop after the pattern starts repeating). And oh, by the way, I had excerpts from a book-within-the-book, which acted as yet another unreliable narrator depicting a version of the past timeline.

Dan Brown likes to have all his novels take place in one day. It took me until my second novel to have one timeline take place in one day: the past narrative in Let the Guilty Pay. The chapter headings include the exact time they're taking place (ex. 1:43 p.m.). And, by the end of the day, the reader knows one of the characters will be dead, giving us a ticking clock, a great literary device directly related to compressing your timeline.

Download a checklist for your narrative techniques!

The shorter the chapters, the more often your readers will have to turn pages to get the answers they seek. This works because you will want to utilize cliffhangers. Also, many readers will know it’s about time to get back to the real world and see how much longer a chapter is, or how long the next chapter is. If it’s a couple of pages (I try for between two on the very low end and five or six on the high end), they are more likely to go ahead and get through “just one more chapter.”

Scenes are smaller chunks of text that make up a chapter and end with a blank line, then something like three centered asterisks (* ), followed by another blank line, then the start of a new scene. A chapter can be just one scene, but usually only short chapters.  Scenes are useful because they can skip over the boring parts, like characters driving from one location to another or sleeping.

Since we’re talking about the physical act of turning pages, creating whitespace on the page by having shorter paragraphs and more returns will make your readers have to flip paper more quickly to get through the story. It sounds like a cheap trick, but in the end, this quickens the pace for the reader and makes them feel like things are really moving because they are physically doing something more often.

Many writers subscribe to the idea that every scene is its own short story with a beginning, middle, and end (this is how I try to write). With that in mind, shorter paragraphs are most important at the end of scenes and chapters. This amps up the pace (perceived and physical), and gets readers excited to turn that next page. 

I've mentioned cliffhangers a couple of times because if you only take one thing away from this course, it should be the need to utilize them to compel readers to finish your novel. When done correctly, you’re making a promise that you’ll come back resolve the cliffhanger. Sometimes it's on the next page. Sometimes, especially if you are utilizing multiple POVs and/or timelines, it won't be for several pages.

In the download, I have taken a very short sample of the beginning of Susan Choi's Trust Exercise (part of what's available on the Amazon free preview), a literary novel that won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction. Read the excerpt, then turn that sample into more of a "page-turner" based on the lessons in this chapter.

Though you should now have many more tools in your toolbox for ramping up the pace of your novels and narrative nonfiction, there's nothing you can do to guarantee success. Not in getting an agent. Not in getting published. Not in getting spectacular reviews or sales. 

If you bought this course and made it here, you deserve a reward!