Wednesday links: Pacing and what a story really is

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few.

Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. Scene: Fast or Fast-Paced?, from Fiction Notes: How quickly your scenes move will vary, depending on what’s happening in them. But a scene moving quickly doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over quickly. Excerpt: “Fast-paced scenes are almost always welcome. Fast scenes have a place in fiction when you need something to happen in an economical manner.”

2. What Kindergarten Got (And Still Gets) Really, Really Wrong, Part One, from Writer Unboxed: Do you remember when you were taught what a “story” is? Well, it’s quite possible that what you were taught wasn’t entirely right. Excerpt: “I’m often asked, ‘What’s the biggest mistake writers make?’ The answer is simple: they don’t know what a story is. So instead they write about a bunch of big, eventful, unusual things that happen. And so although they may indeed devise a fascinating protagonist, spin an interesting set-up and write beautiful sentences, their story will still be completely uninvolving.”