Janice Hardy, back in 2011, wrote an article on Fiction University about pacing problems and how to fix them, called Move Along: Fixing Pacing Problems. Five years later, it’s still relevant.

If you’re a writer, you know that pacing is important. Personally, my greatest issue I’ve worked hard to overcome is rushing the ending. I have all this tension built up and then SPLAT–the end. Oops!

My coping mechanism is to actually reduce my daily word count by half when I get to the final third of my novel. If I did 3,000 a day, I shoot for 1,500. 2,000? 1,000. You get it. This way, I’m forced to take my time getting to the ending so I can build up the proper tension for the denouement.

No matter what your pacing problem is, Janice has a solution for you. Give it a read–it might help!

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