Wednesday links: Pacing and setting

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. Pacing: Space out the Tense Moments, from Fiction Notes: Your novel needs tension. But, you’ll also need to let things breathe once in a while. That’s where pacing comes in. Excerpt: “Some scenes may be crammed with small actions, while others pace steadily through the setting. Sometimes, though, I find that I’ve packed a scene with too many MAJOR revelations or actions, creating a top-heavy scene; that scene is usually matched by another scene that lacks enough tension.”

2. The 5 Secrets of Choosing the Right Setting for Your Story’s Climax, from Helping Writers Become Authors: When you think about the climax of your novel, setting may not be the first thing that comes to mind. And that’s fine. But you need to think of it at some point, and you need to make sure it works. Excerpt: “Too often, the climactic setting is an afterthought. The action, after all, is what’s most important–not where it takes place.”