Archive - August 9, 2015

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book. — Cicero, circa 43 BC In this lesson we are concerned with two aspects of your writing. Pacing Dialog Pacing of Your Story My wife likes to tell a story in great details giving it also a historical setting. For example, she might mention what happened to her when she took her clothes to the dry cleaners. Telling her tale, she will include historical data, asides, the cast of endless characters she saw or waved to, or thought about, even tangentially, from the time she left the house until she reached the cleaners two blocks away. Over the years of our marriage I have listened to many such endless narratives, so now I chime in as soon as she takes a breath with, “Faster! Funnier!” (Sometimes it works.) Pacing is everything in the narration of . . .