Desmond’s Drops: Pacing
By Desmond Hall | January 18, 2023 |
Welcome to a new edition of Desmond’s Drops!
This month, enjoy three drops focused on one topic–pacing–each packed with great examples.
- Pacing
- Montage
- Compression
Email subscribers, please click directly to staging-writerunboxed.kinsta.cloud to view, or visit all of Demond’s Drops on YouTube.
Look for more of Desmond’s Drops in March!
Have your own bit of wisdom to share? Drop it in comments.
Desmond Hall, author of YOUR CORNER DARK, was born in Jamaica, West Indies and then moved to Jamaica, Queens. His second novel, BETTER MUST COME, a fiercely evocative, action-packed YA thriller that examines that darker side of light-filled Jamaica, released in May, 2024. He’s worked as both a high school biology teacher and English teacher, counseled at-risk teens, and served as Spike Lee’s creative director at SpikeDDB. He’s also written and directed the HBO movie, A DAY IN BLACK AND WHITE, which was nominated for the Gordon Parks Award. He’s written and directed the theater play, STOCKHOLM, BROOKLYN, which won the audience award at the Downtown Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Theater. He’s also served on the board of the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, and was a judge for the Addys, and the Downtown Urban Arts Film Festival. Named one of Variety Magazine’s 50 creatives to watch.
Always awesome and helpful. But I will compress my comments, as your teaching is clear and easy to access. Thanks, Desmond.
Ha! Love the compressed comment!
Good stuff, Desmond. I have a tendency to overwrite some scenes, which slows the pace at times where slow isn’t what a reader needs. Assessing and addressing those places with your suggestions is helpful.
Me too, Tom! Thanks!
An excellent trio of drops, Desmond. It makes sense, doesn’t it, to fast forward through the unimportant stuff, as you would with a video. Or, to paraphrase the great Elmore Leonard: You don’t want to write the parts that people don’t want to read.
Yeah, we can do a lot worse than Elmore Leonard.