Lisa Cooper Ellison 讲解如何修复回忆录中拖沓或仓促的节奏

Today’s guest post is by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison. Join us on Oct. 21 for the online class Pace Your Memoir for Maximum Impact.

I got a Slinky for Christmas when I was five. Minutes after I opened the package, my cousin carried it to our apartment’s stairwell, placed the silver cylinder on the landing, then hooked a finger through the first ring and coaxed it down to the next step. Once the ring landed, she let it go. The Slinky expanded and contracted its way from one step to the next until it reached the bottom.

Anyone who’s played with a Slinky knows it doesn’t always go that smoothly. Sometimes it stalls on a step. Other times, it lurches too far, flops over the edge, and tumbles to the floor. Memoirs are a lot like Slinkys. Stretching certain moments and condensing others is how you create the forward motion that maintains your reader’s attention. Linger too long in an inconsequential event and the story drags. Hurry through a significant one and the reader might miss a crucial point.

Pacing is all about how quickly or slowly you deliver the events in your story. Those strategic moves manipulate the reader’s experience of time. The key to pacing your story well is knowing what to contract and expand as well as the effect each decision has on the reader.

Slowing down immerses the reader in the narrator’s experience. It says this event is so important readers need to live through it. That’s crucial when something life-changing occurs in your memoir. But not everything in your book will fit that bill. Sometimes seasons change, characters or events must be introduced, or you simply want to share a quieter moment that provides a respite for the reader.

The first step when deciding whether to stretch or compress sections of your memoir is to ask yourself these questions:

• In which scenes do fundamental changes occur? These are scenes where the narrator enters as one person and leaves as another.
• Of the scenes and content that are left, which sections introduce characters or events that are essential to your story, even if change doesn’t occur? Who or what must be introduced or the story falls apart? If you’re not sure, omit those details and see what happens. If the story holds together without them, that material might not be as important as you thought.
• Of the content that’s left, where is time simply passing?

Slowing down strategically

Essential, no-turning-back moments are where you want time to slow down. But that doesn’t mean pumping the brakes on everything. Find the moment within the scene where the narrator faces their problem and must decide what to do. Linger there. Speed up everything before and after it.

To get to that moment faster, start the scene a little later or with fewer details. Begin mid-meal rather than when the food is served. Drop readers into an argument already in progress. On the other side of the turning point, end your scene as quickly as you can. Jump off the cliff. Then yell cut.

If you’re struggling to do this with a multi-page scene, write a three-sentence version, where the first sentence sets up the situation, the second sentence shows the narrator wrangling with an obstacle, and the third reveals how doing so has changed them. When you return to your scene, trim the sections representing sentences one and three so you can spend your time in number two.

Slowing down doesn’t mean adding more events. It means giving the reader more of the one moment that matters most. You can do this by adding sensory details the narrator would notice under pressure, sharing their thoughts, fears, and the internal bargains they make, and changing the way you deliver the material on the page. That could mean writing longer or shorter paragraphs depending on your usual style, using white space, including dialogue, or changing the length of your sentences to signal we’ve reached an important crossroads.

For example, a rushed version of a life-changing phone call might read like this:

My sister called to tell me Dad died. I drove to the hospital in a daze.

A slowed-down version might look like this:

My phone buzzed on the counter. My sister’s name appeared on the screen. I looked at the clock. It was well after ten. She never called that late. I set the dish I’d been washing back in the sink, then dried my hands before answering.

“Are you sitting down?” she asked.

Nothing good happened after those words. Everybody knew that. So I stood there, watching the bubbles on the rim of that dish slide back into the water as if standing still would freeze time.

It’s easy to see the difference between the two versions, but you can also feel it by reading both out loud. What do you notice about how the two versions feel? What does your inner editor tell you about them?

This is an important exercise because the moments you most need to slow down might be the ones you race past due to the emotions associated with them. Anytime you notice you’re dashing past crucial events, pause and ask yourself why this might be. Is it that you minimized their importance in the story you’re trying to tell, or are there feelings you need to attend to before you stretch those moments out?

Speeding up with summary

When your memoir sags, compression is your best friend. Shortening certain moments quickens the pace of your book, which can provide relief for the reader, especially if they’ve just read a heavier scene. One easy way to compress your work is to summarize essential material that doesn’t reveal a major change in your book. Summarizing shares the gist of what happened without fully fleshing out all the details. It’s a handy shortcut that allows you to insert important information into your work without unnecessarily slowing down your story.

I’ve spoken to many writers who bristle at the concept, either because condensing feels overwhelming or because they worry summarizing their work will squeeze the juice out of their story. But really, it’s the same content, just in a smaller package, sort of like those fun-size candy bars you get at Halloween. Whether your Snickers bar is large or small, the flavor is the same.

If something belongs in your memoir but doesn’t reveal a big change—say, the introduction of a character who plays a major role later in your memoir—consider writing the three-to-five-sentence version of the meeting. Once it’s written, introduce the character when they play a role in your book. Then share the three-to-five-sentence version of how you met.

For example, maybe there’s a scene in your memoir where a senior executive named Marsha stands up at a team meeting and tells the facilitator you’re the one who came up with the great idea someone else is claiming as their own.

After that scene, you could include a summary of your relationship with her.

I met Marsha on my first day of work. She smiled at me as I shook her hand and told me to let her know if I needed anything. Four months earlier, I had mentioned this idea in passing. I hadn’t thought she was listening. Apparently, she had been.

Summarizing the passage of time can be another way to pick up the pace in your book. Let’s say you’re writing an addiction memoir, and the narrator has just gotten out of rehab. You’ve written several scenes about what life was like after re-entry, but as you review them, you notice that not a lot is happening. The narrator is pretty much the same until six weeks later when they run into their first big challenge. You can compress those scenes into a snack-size bite that gives the reader a sense of time passing like this:

The first six weeks passed in a monotonous loop: work, twelve-step meetings, calls to my sponsor, and the silent dinners with family where no one mentioned where I’d been.

Discovering your own pacing problems

Writers often feel their pacing problems before they can name them. Many ignore those inner signals in hopes that they’re wrong. But if a section bores you, or feels a bit slow or rushed, it likely is. There’s nothing wrong with getting feedback from others to confirm your intuition—in fact, flagging the places in your manuscript where you suspect problems, then comparing your notes to feedback from others, can help you trust your inner editor. But once that trust has been built, use those nudges to improve your work on your own.

To do so, read sections of your manuscript out loud and notice how you feel as you’re reading them. If simultaneously reading out loud and noting your feelings is difficult, record the excerpt into your phone’s voice memo app and listen back to it, or have someone else read that section to you. As you listen, pay attention to your inner experience. Does the pacing feel right in your body? Is your voice confident? Does it read smoothly, or is it stilted? If sluggishness hits, or whispers about boredom strike, it might be time to compress that section. If you notice yourself bracing, stumbling over a summary, or sensing you’ve glossed over a big event, you might have sped past something that deserves more attention.

If you’re not sure, take a break and watch this Slinky make its way down the stairs. Pay attention to those moments of expansion and contraction as it reaches its goal—they mirror what a good memoir does. Once you feel rested, take that image with you as you fine-tune the pacing of your book.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Oct. 21 for the online class Pace Your Memoir for Maximum Impact.