There is a particular kind of rejection that arrives from a literary agent and ruins a perfectly good summer weekend. It goes something like: I loved the writing, but more needs to happen sooner.
Most writers overcorrect. They add a chase scene, a fire–they move up the murder to chapter two, cut the scene where they make soup and talk about their past because surely it’s internal conflict that’s the problem.
Rebecca Matte of Bradford Literary Agency, as part of our MSWL Live Panel, would like you to put down the red pen. In a recent session with us on motivation and pacing, she made an argument that sounds impossible for about thirty seconds: motivation and pacing are not two separate craft problems.
Rather, they are the same problem wearing two hats.
Aimless is not the same as quiet
Her framing is this. Every single thing a character does should point toward their overall motivation. That stays true even when the plot is shoving them backward, and it stays true in the scenes that are not big plot moments at all.
Plenty of scenes in a good book are small. They are character moments, or awkward interactions, or a detail that will not pay off for two hundred pages (hello, Chekhov’s gun). Those scenes are not the enemy. But all of them, Rebecca says, should be in service of the character’s overall motivation and goal. If a scene is not moving the story forward or moving the character’s internal journey forward, it starts to feel aimless. And aimless scenes are what slow a book down.
Notice the word she uses–it’s not “quiet” or “slow” but aimless. A scene where two people make soup and talk about their mothers can be the fastest thing in your novel, provided both of them want something from that conversation and neither is getting it easily.
The trick that makes a slow book feel fast
Go back to the five dollar bill test, which Rebecca borrows from Quinta Brunson: put a bill on the floor, and every character in the room picks it up differently. One asks who dropped it. One pockets it. One will not touch it because it is dirty.
Objectively, nothing occurred. No stakes were raised. But you are now asking why each of those people did what they did, and asking why is the entire engine of reading. Rebecca’s point is that this kind of character-driven decision keeps your reader engaged, keeps the plot moving, and keeps the story feeling fast even when it is not actually all that fast. (A book that does a great job of this is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.)
Pace is not measured in events per chapter. It is measured in unanswered questions per page, and characters who want things generate those questions for free.
What to do when it really is all interiority
A writer at the event asked the exact opposite question: everything my characters do reveals character and serves their goals, but I keep getting told the book lacks momentum. What now?
Rebecca’s answer was practical. Scenes that purely reveal character are excellent for internal plot development, but the external plot has to keep running alongside it. No matter which one you focus on, the other has to keep up. As your character grows, throw a curveball to knock the growth off course. Otherwise, as she put it, the book would be finished in ten pages. If we let all our characters sit down with well-adjusted people and talk to a therapist for a while, they would never go through the moments that make a novel a novel.
Interrupt the character’s momentum. An explosion, a plot turn, an ex walking in at the worst possible second. It’s never a bad idea to ask “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen–for this specific character?”
One caveat: the interruptions have to serve the story you are actually telling. Readers absolutely notice when you keep manufacturing roadblocks purely to stop two people from having one honest conversation. (In fact, it’s a common agent pet peeve–the plot that could have been solved with one quick chat.) Sometimes that frustration is the fun, the “ugh just say it” feeling that keeps people up past midnight. But it only works when the obstacle fits the book.
If you are working out whether your interruption is doing real structural work, our post on the difference between an obstacle and a plot twist is a useful next stop, and the stakes formula explains why piling on more danger often does not register at all.
A diagnostic you can run this afternoon
Take the chapter that dragged. For each scene, write one sentence: what does the point of view character want before this scene ends, and what is stopping them?
If you cannot answer, you have found the drag. (And we’re guessing it’s not the soup.)
Once your pacing is holding, ManuscriptWishList.com, our sister site, is where you go to find your best agent fit and see who is actively asking for your kind of book. And if you want eyes on the manuscript itself, our live classes and events run all year, membership opens up the full replay library, or you can book a 1:1 consultation with a top literary agent here.