Story Pacing Directions and Template - Bregel

Mary Maloney loves her husband and enjoys being a wife.

She kills

Patrick.

Tries to cover up her crime (grocer, reports murder)

Police investigate the murder. Look for the weapon, interview Mary, sweep the house, etc.

Pacing Your Story

To pace your story, look over your plot diagram and your short summary. You know what you want to write about, but how much space should each section of your story take up? To visualize the sections of your story, create a pacing timeline below. There is an example first based on the story "Lamb to the Slaughter". You also have a sample plot diagram for this story. In this short story, most of the writing space is taken up with rising action. You can see this reflected below in the pacing sequence.

The width of the box represents the amount of "space" in your story you are going to spend discussing this topic.

She can't fathom why Patrick would leave her.

Convinces police to stay for dinner

Evidence Destroyed

From my pacing choices, you can see this story spends the majority of the time (or space) in the narrative talking about how Mary loves her husband and wants to be a good wife. When we read the story. The decision to murder Patrick and the end of the story where the detectives eat the lamb are both quick.

Pacing your story before you write will help you know when you need wrap up your writing and move on to the next part of your plot diagram.

Pace your own story below! I already provided some boxes to get your started.

Write the part of your story in each box.

Story Title Here