Dan’s Writing Blog

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Have you felt your heart pound with fear during horror movies? Did it make you nervous when the slasher was about to stab the lady in the shower? That’s because the writer was controlling you. You can also control your readers in the same method. You can learn to control their heartbeat and the rate at which they read.

Maybe you’re wondering why you would even want to control how fast they read. The answer is that fast scenes pull the reader into the action; unending fast scenes tire them. The reader needs slow scenes to rest their minds and emotions. During the slow scenes they will reassess the anxiety of the previous scene, and you want them to do that.

Let’s look at some samples of how you can control the reader’s speed:

“We bounced up the stairs two at a time, slipped into my room unnoticed, and closed the door without making a sound.”

• That sentence is fast because it has alliteration. (Alliteration is a successive sound of same letters.) Notice these words: bounced, stairs, slipped, unnoticed, closed, and sound. All have the S sound. There is a second sound of alliteration in the T words – stairs, two, at, time, into, and unnoticed. This is double alliteration, and it increases the speed even more.
• Another way to speed up a scene is with action verbs, such as: “The roller coaster zipped and whirled at lightening speed,” or “The skater swished by in a rush.”
• Slow the scenes with settings, scenery, or by using words with Ws and Ls, like this:

“A little lady watched from the crowd, and glanced momentarily at her watch.”

Note the four Ls in the last sentence and the three Ws. According to our rule, the double alliteration should make a faster flow, right? Not in this case. The lulling hum of the Ws and Ls overpower the sounds of alliteration and make it a slow sentence.

Let’s look at this sentence again, and apply what we know at this point:

“The roller coaster zipped and whirled at lightening speed.”

This sentence is fast because it has the S sound of alliteration. Right? No. It will be slow because of the four Ls and one W? No, that’s incorrect.This sentence has to be fast. Why? Because Ls and Ws overcome alliteration, but action verbs overpower Ws and Ls. You must know these tips in order to write affective stories, articles, and blogs.