As a film/tv editor, this completely rings true!! One of my favorite quotes from Walter Murch -- editor of Apocalypse Now -- is this: “When you go to a doctor and tell him that you have a pain in your elbow, it is the quack who takes out his scalpel and starts to operate on the elbow. An experienced doctor studies you, takes an x-ray, and determines that the cause of the pain is probably a pinched nerve up in your shoulder-you just happen to feel it in your elbow. When you ask audiences “What was your least favorite scene?” and eighty percent of the people are in agreement about one scene they do not like, the impulse is to “fix” the scene or cut it out. But the chances are that that scene is fine. Instead, the problem may be that the audience simply didn’t understand something that they needed to know for the scene to work. So instead of fixing the scene itself, you might clarify some exposition five minutes earlier. The audience will never tell you directly where the source of the pain is, they’ll just tell you where they feel it, and you as the editor must suss out its source.”
I hadn't really written anything I was proud of up until I started watching these videos, and now I actually feel like I am making conscious decisions while writing stories, rather than just trying to use fancy words because I thought "that's what makes a good book". Your takes on storytelling are very refreshing and I hope you find the success you deserve, both in and beyond this TH-cam channel.
Keep in mind that literature is much more free and it depends on what you want to achieve though. Literary fiction doesn't follow much in that regard, in fact, plot is completely irrelevant in many many cases for example. I'm sure you're aware already. I like to watch his vids but I often disagree a bit. It's still interesting to hear perspectives and often times sound advice, I just consciously abandon stuff. I value boredom in a story a lot, that's why I appreciate 200 min+ films. That's also though why publishers are showing me the finger lol so yeah.
@@njux1871I honestly just really like how fresh and different these videos feel they portray such a different perspective than the other writing videos on TH-cam. I also often disagree with his takes. Also, what do you mean when you say you value boredom in a story? Do you mean that you like feeling bored when experiencing a story, or do you like it when the characters feel bored? Or something else? I've just never heard someone say this.
@@or9422 I think "boredom" may translate into what I would call "mundanity" or the state of existing. Some films and shows can just hang on a moment or a mood for a long time just to give the audience so time to reflect, recover, or even a safe place to zone out without missing the story (see: Twin Peaks: The Return's infamous peanut sweeping scene.) I love that stuff, but I definitely wouldn't call it boredom.
@@glitchy000 I agree with what you're saying, and think mundane is a good word for it. When the story slows down and not much is happening in front of you, but the story is still so immersive that instead of your mind wandering you start reflecting on the story itself. That being said, boredom isn't really a good word for it, and scenes where the story slows down to let the audience pause and reflect are expected and certainly not a reason for the publishing world to give this commenter the finger. I figured there was something else to the comment but I could be wrong.
I think my iconic example of ‘rushed pacing’ comes from Netflix’s Castlevania. The human twins go from, ‘You’re the best teacher ever, Alucard! We love you!’ to a murder plot because he told them _one time_ to study the basics before he’d teach them endgame shit. Maybe things were cut for time, but the result felt like the writers only established, ‘Twins are upset’ before jumping straight to murder, rather than having a separate beat for, ‘Twins are upset,’ ‘Twins become mistrustful,’ ‘Twins feel betrayed,’ and finally, ‘Twins don’t see any way to fix this besides murder.’ Flicking a single domino off the table isn’t as satisfying as watching the whole chain fall.
The third season of Castlevania I think was kind of messy just on account of how it was trying to tell four separate stories. Which, honestly, I respect, that's a very ambitious thing to do. But it ultimately felt like a lot of the content was less detailed than it should have been, resulting in only Isaac's story resulting in something that was really satisfying, while the other three suffered from a lot of issues.
Funny, Netflix's Shaman King had the same problem of rushed pacing. A cult hit anime from the very early 2000's which suffered from adapting a manga that hadn't finished at the time and thus wound up inevitably missing the point got its long-awaited faithful adaptation... and had to cram over 200 chapters of source material into 52 episodes. Profound character moments often had little time to breathe (whereas in the original manga one could fairly say they probably had _too much_ time to breathe) and didn't land right, especially in the first arc, and not helped by the updated animation looking particularly cheap. Shaman King was always the runt of the old Shonen Jump litter, and most chalked this up to series creator Hiroyuki Takei not being _particularly_ entrepreneurial compared to his peers. Frustratingly, a lot of problems seemed to stem from behind the scenes attempts to get the old band back together with all the original seiyuu, particularly Megumi Hayashibara and Mizuki Nana, and that devotion to getting everything just right forced compromises in other areas, notably the choice in animation studio, Bridge. As a _huge_ proponent of artistic integrity at all costs, this was a cold, harsh wake-up call: you simply can't have everything.
Honestly I think it was because they didn't know what to do with Alucard so they thought of something and end it with a murder plot. They could have left him alone just for that one season and explain what happened to him when you see all those bodies outside. That would have been better story for Alucard because it would feel like he still had agency in that season while it wasn't focused on him while showing why is reluctant to help his neighbors.
Weren’t the human twins planning to kill Alucard from the beginning tho? Like all their interactions were clearly a ruse but Alucard missed having friends and was going insane being alone in a castle so he ignored all signs and tried to bang them both. This was also obvious bc the whole theme of that season was about how looks are deceiving and that humans suck usually.
1:52 This kinda fits into a game dev adage: players are great at identifying problems, but horrible at coming up with solutions. And that is because, usually, they are wrong about what's causing the problem, so their solution doesn't fix the actual issue but the symptom as you put it. Great video!
YES i hear this everywhere. if enough of your audience tells you there’s a problem then there is. if they try to tell you what the problem actually is they are most likely wrong
You put my feelings into words, as someone who hardly gets bored watching stuff, it took me a while to realize what people meant by "The pacing is too slow", I've lately been seeing it as people saying "I don't find anything interesting happening on screen"
Yeah it’s a completely subjective thing - “good pacing” is different for literally every viewer. But people believe it’s somehow quantifiable because it’s been given a label. It’s masquerading as some objective science
@@localscriptman "Bad pacing" imo happens when there's a disconnect between what the writer sees as important and what the audience sees, or maybe there's not enough reasons to care about what the writer wants you to care about. There's also some stubborn people, I have a friend who decided he was going to hate a character, and even with all the good the character did, he held onto a bad thing she did (Even though she felt bad about it and spent the rest of her life atoning). You can't control how your audience feels, you can just try.
@@localscriptmanI don't really see what you're getting at, loving a character is also weird if you apply similar logic. People suspend their disbelief all the time and apply real world standards to fictional characters. You can absolutely detest a character's actions, think they're annoying etc. Just like you would a real person. Of course, they're not real, but having the audience pretend that they're real is kind of the point. There are also people who hate characters simply because they think they are poorly handled or dislike how they're written. It really depends.
@@mcgoldenblade4765what he means probably is that people will just attach themselves to their knee jerk reaction to a character without taking into account the purpose if the way they're written or the context they're in. Like they're taking their actions "personally". The mother of all examples of that? Skyler in Breaking Bad. There hasn't been a single human being that hates Skyler for any reason other than being a believable, well written and very significant character that just happens to be in the role of pushing against what we want to see, which is walter doing drug lord shit. They see that and are annoyed for no reason other than "I want to see this and she's in the way of the character doing it with no conflict whatsoever".
I don't write (words) but I actually love the discussion of "translating non-experts' critiques" because people who don't know music won't give you coherent feedback, you have to deduce what they really mean. I'm sure it's likewise with any artform
Yeah, as an artist I have the same struggle. I ask my brother for critiques sometimes, and something he told me once was "This character just doesn't have anything interesting about them. There's nothing that draws me in." And, like, what does that mean? Do you find them generic? Does it lack visual interest? Are the colors too dull, or the silhouette too basic? Or maybe this character just isn't to your tastes specifically? It's such open-ended feedback that blurs the line between personal opinion and (as) objective (as possible) advice
@@sheppin_ I have never gotten this note, but I feel this almost sympathetically. Like...what is the criteria for an interesting character to you? Is that same criteria just for you, or for a lot of people?
There's a great quote about videogames, but it applies to all art. It goes something like this: "Average person will tell you how they feel about your project, but they wouldn't be able to tell you why they feel that way". Paraphrasing, of course
Yeah, this also part of why getting LOTS of feedback is important. Frankly, some feedback is bullshit. There’s always going to be that one person who says “there shouldn’t be any action scenes in this story” when that story is an action script. Some people in the FNaF fan base would actually get mad at other creatives, including creator Scott Cawthon himself, over moments or works of art that made Foxy “too scary” because “Foxy is supposed to be the good guy” (something that was never anything more than a fan theory). Some people just don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, which is why listening to individual people’s feedback will never be as important as listening to the feedback of a bunch of people from a variety of different backgrounds, and then interpreting the patterns.
@@raven75257 A saying I regularly use: When someone tells you that something in your writing sucks, he's probably right. When he tries to tell you why, he's probably wrong."
I remember when Across the Spiderverse came out and there were people complaining about some of its scenes being too long and it has pacing problems and stuff. This tip really solidifies that yes, sometimes despite what the audience says, it's too bad for them. When I saw Across the Spiderverse, I think it's "pacing is just right" only because I can discern that every dialogue, every beat, every moment serves the narrative and a bigger picture down to the intricate details of who the characters are and their purpose in the story. (The scene about Gwen and Miles, Miles and his mother, the rooftop party, the scenes of Miguel meeting Miles, etc.) But on the other hand, I like this tip because the "pacing problems" can be boiled down to scenes not being efficiently utilized to maximize its impact. Often when the audience complain about this, it is either something about the story made them feel bored (lacking character richness or weak plot moment), or a beat was rushed too fast (underutilized scenes wrapped up too quickly without needed depth).
There’s a lot of perspective stuff that changes on rewatching a film. Viewers have limited attention span and energy, so a lot of time people will just miss stuff. Like they have no idea what that detail was supposed to mean while they are watching it so they forget, or they have different things in their mind when seeing a scene for the first time. I know there are a lot of people who missed a chunk of Gwen’s character development because they just stopped thinking through her perspective when the POV switched to Miles. Even though half of Across the Spiderverse is Gwen’s story. Just because a lot of people tend to miss things doesn’t mean those details shouldn’t exist, or trimmed down to “streamline” the film.
That is wild, honestly I think it's still leaning forward towards fast pace with the heartwarming moments being the slow one. If some people think Across the Spiderverse is slow, how are they going to watch a slowburn animated film like Perfect Blue or Spirited Away ?
To be fair, Across the Spiderverse is like, 1 half of what is supposed to be a much larger film (It was originally titled as Across the Spiderverse: Part 1 and Beyond was Across the Spiderverse: Part 2) The pacing probably feels off to them because the film was quite literally cut in half.
I really like the part where the hypothetical critic don't have the sufficient tools to nail the diagnosis. You will not believe how prevailant this issue is in interaction- and game design. This is why we observe before we ask (fortunately we have a physical interaction to scrutinize, and don't have to rely on self-report). This also means we have to wrangle well-meaning technical team members who aren't used to this distinction, and assumes everyone's vocabulary is sufficient to pinpoint problems about an interaction that is 90% emotional, intuitive and invisible.
I personally think observing physical reactions is an effective method of evaluating and refining writing further. I am more likely to pay someone to let me stare a them and take notes while they read my story than to pay an editor. Both of those are useful though.
Pro tip: Never let the Internet rewrite your story for you. If some reddit forum guesses the ending, good for them. Give them kudos after the series finale. But don't change the ending to try and evade any and all fan theories. This is how a lot of obnoxious serial TV shows are written now (and also how Rian Johnson wrote The Last Jedi) where the writers dredge Internet forums for predictions and then rework plots or introduce red herrings to ensure those predictions are all wrong, and to keep fans guessing under the guise of "subverting expectations". Just tell the story you want to tell. Write it completely from beginning to middle to end, and don't worry about how predictable and tropey the Internet thinks it is.
I think there's one exception to this. If I you're writing some sort of series, and a fan comes up with a theory that's actually way cooler than what you had planned and fits really well with your lore, I don't see a problem with stealing it.
@@bengal2441 scott cawthon uses the versatile method of "make some vague plot points that seem connected in a vaguely coherent way but dont actually figure out the details, just let the fans write the rest of the story for you lmao"
The criticism of tone being a symptom of storytelling issues rather than the disease is spot on actually. I've never really liked the criticism of having an "inconsistent tone" when referring to a srory having contrasting elements/characters/etc. (For example, a funny character in a 'serious' story), and now I think I can understand why. For it to be an actual criticism would mean that you can't use the clashing of "tones" to flesh out your story and its elements, create a unique aesthetic, or a whole host of other uses for having contrasting elements. Having jokes in a "serious movie" is not by itself a bad thing. It's a bad thing when, say, the heavy hand of the writer forces a character to make a joke in a situation where they otherwise probably would not.
>It's a bad thing when, say, the heavy hand of the writer forces a character to make a joke in a situation where they otherwise probably would not. It depends on both a character character and a situation. For example, people often joke, often very crudely, under extreme stress or when there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Fictional characters can be like that as well. There's nothing inherently wrong about having jokes during otherwise extremely serious and highly stressful situations, yet this was one of the most common and one of the most silly criticisms of, let's say, action and horror movies.
In a serious story, jokes should be used sparingly. I'm not a big Marvel fan because they can't stop making jokes all the time, and ruining the serious moments. Asgard is destroyed and they use toilet humor. That style infected the Star Wars sequels, particularly TLJ. Snoke and Hux became clowns.
Pacing was always one of my biggest problems to handle just because it seemed so elusive as a concept and I couldn't really grasp how to fix it. Now knowing that it itself is not the problem but just a symptom is so much more productive for fixing things since I can look "around" issues of pacing instead of getting tunnel visioned on it.
It's very funny how seemingly worlds apart things like software development and writing have a huge amount in common when it comes to interacting with "clients" lol. Translating the user lexicon to usable feedback is a challenge in every creative process
For me, sometimes I read my writing and just rush through it. Everything happens so fast and it’s all dumb and there is no development and blah blah blah. But once I start reading as the audience, and not as myself, it comes across more like I want it to. Idk just a thought.
As a creator, the most important audience member is YOU. It seems like you've adapted to a process to balance between you (as the artist) and you (as the audience), which is fantastic because that's no easy feat. I wish you well on future endeavors and have a blessed day!
I understand this feeling so well. It's like you can't distinguish between yourself as the writer and yourself as the audience member. I have to remember to read it like I would read a book, instead of reading it like a critic. Hope you've progressed since then, and good luck on that path if you're still pursuing it!
What's this? Writing advice that is actually _insightful_ and encourages you to _think_ about what you're doing rather than just regurgitating generalized platitudes and arbitrary "rules"? A rare treat indeed!
Top tier advice as always of course. I just want to say, the idea of you just talking while the old windows screensaver plays in the literal bg of the video through a projector is quite the cool trick for engaging short attention spans. If it was just you speaking I can definitely see this video feeling slow but the screensaver playing at that speed really draws the eye. Idk if it was intentional on you're part but points for the choice from a presentation perspective *tips hat*
Finally someone who says it out loud!!! I'm so tired of hearing all these 'expert writers' on YT who instantly urge you to change your whole manuscript just because a proofreader got bored with your text. Especially in these times, when every piece of media feels rushed, copied or even too superficial, I think it's crucial to let the artists mind establish new ways of storytelling. If a writer enfasizes a particular scene, even if it's the most common scenario instead of the (already cliche) most epic battle in the plot, let it be. The writer has a REASON.
This explains why I never understood when people criticise a movie for bad pacing. I never understood what it meant because it was always something different.
Hello LocalScriptMan, if you read this then may I say that I'm glad that you caught my eye to your channel and which you have grown into making these incredible videos that help writers, storytellers, and many people within this world making stories that build up creativity within the minds of people. Right now I am making a personal project which hopefully within 3-4 years I can present the story on YT and then expand it to promote and maybe release it as a series. However, this requires skills that need to be taught or learned by hand, that is secondly why I came to write this as you're one of bunch of helpful people when it comes to writing and especially to making characters. Hopefully and if not you haven't seen this comment, thank you for contributing to helping people like me to make stories and bringing them to light in our own ways!
@@RuffinItAB Im glad to hear your excitement to see Indie projects like mine to bloom especially with major movie cooperations lacking the imaginations in their stories. I leave you fellow person of the internet a small spoiler/detail from my setting and how it will lay the format to my project, thank you SuperDooperMC again! (10/29/1918 - Germany)
Imo the best way to improve your "pacing" is reading thrillers and studying them. That shit is built to keep you reading and the biggest part of that is the hook. You can apply it all levels of writing. What's this story's hook? Why do you want to keep reading this scene right now? This chapter? It's mainly done through either progression or mystery. If the reader isn't getting answers to previous questions or being incited to ask new questions and if there's also no progress on any character arc or story thread then people are gonna have a harder time getting excited about reading it. I think a lot of these problems come when writers zoom out too much and forget that they need to keep hooking the reader on a micro level. Maybe the writer thinks a scene is super important because it's setting up something super cool 500 pages later, or maybe it makes a reread better, but if you're a first time reader and there's nothing in that scene that is hooking you WHILE READING IT, then that's what's dragging your pacing.
Heh. The name change threw me off I agree with your assessment. When I say pacing, as a reader or watcher, it usually means slow which usually means redundancy or lack of conflict or lack of stakes which usually means character motivations and goals are off and there’s little purpose to some scenes, or if there is, it’s wayyyy to subdued.
“Bad pacing” has always been one of my least favorite criticisms of media. It can be levied against any work nonspecifically. I read a lot of amateur criticism of film and whenever a poor critic is tearing a work apart they always bring up “bad pacing” and “tonal inconsistency” without a single concrete example. You apparently don’t come across accusations of “rushed” pacing very often, but I watch a lot of anime, and fans often have this bizarre expectation that any important point a story is making needs at least two full episodes of focus. That’s nonsense, many profound things have been communicated in few words, and many great scenes take only a few minutes. Pacing and whether a work has a consistent tone are tricky criticisms to counter because they’re entirely vibes based. The critic has a duty to provide examples when making such unclear points. Great video, no notes.
Animes do tend to have more exposition than western media, though I don't know why that's the case. Don't get me wrong, I love anime but, sometimes they just dump a whole monologue or dialogue exchange for about half the episode just for the sake of exposition, and sometimes when it's a seasonal anime, you get a rushed ending where you actually see the "pacing" issues appear. An example for this was the Cautious Hero isekai anime, where they put every twist and emotional beat, and then some more, all in the last episode of just 22 minutes to work with, and didn't give the audience time to take in what just happened. You can even discern the voice actors' dialouges edited closer to each other more than the earlier episodes to really fit everything into one single episode. They could've separated it into 2 episodes but idk what happened behind the scenes.
I'm not lying when I say that you literally changed my storytelling. I reread my first draft - which I wrote before I began to religiously binge your videos - and compared it to my current draft, they weren't even written by the same person. The first draft was way too fast, the characters were dull and uninteresting and... weirdly perfect, and there was genuinely no reason to read the story. It felt useless and unimportant. Thank you so much for these videos!
This is probably my favourite writing advice channel right now. This is the only one I've seen with actual nuance and care put into it's advice. You won me over when you mentioned a MASSIVELY important point every single other writing advice channel seems to skip every single time: do not give in your vision as an author to the short attention spans of viewers. Artistic intent above all! Subbed.
This makes crazy sense. "Bad pacing," also known as the part where the story gets boring, essentially means something just isn't interesting, which can indicate it isn't good. And good on you for telling people to stand up for plot sequences that need to be super long, even if audiences won't get it. Great video as always! Edit: Also, I came to the same conclusion on tone a while back. After fretting about it for a bit, now I don't worry about what the tone's gonna be, just that the scene is great and transmits to the audience what is intended.
I remember trying to start my own small comic series as an adolescent, and the first thing my little sister told me was that "nothing happens". When she told me this, I was terribly confused. For me, it didn't look like "nothing was happening". There were two small creatures exploring an alien environment. I was introducing new settings and characters in each strip. The boring strips were intentionally designed just to flesh out a concept or pause my story. But there was *always* "something happening". Looking back, I think the real problem with my story was that my main characters were victims of their environment. Stuff kept happening, and yet my main characters never had the opportunity to make any actual decisions. In that way, she was right. "Nothing was happening." I just took her advice the wrong way and completely missed what the actual problem was.
@@Selrisitai Well, that was hers, and I think I agree. Not that the story can't succeed, but just that character decisions are the heart of what makes a story.
@@Selrisitai I think there should be a balance. If the environment just waits until a character does something, that's bad too. Especially if the writer has to force characters to make absurdly bad and stupid choices just to make the story go forward or fill gaps (cough cough the second season of The Witcher).
That's interesting. I make short narrative-driven computer games and have had similar issues. I once showed my dad a game and he said "and so does anything happen?" which really hurt at the time haha. I had put so much effort into the environments, but it sounds like it was similar to your comic in the way that the main character never made any actual decisions. You basically just walked around looking at stuff, as the idea was that you're just observing and exploring a strange world. But I don't think there's an issue with main character(s) not making decisions in a story, necessarily. I'm still not sure what the issue is really, but it can work sometimes, and other times it can feel 'off'. I've played many games where the player character 'doesn't do anything', and yet they can still be very captivating experiences just from exploring the environment and watching what happens.
@@kiasia3219 I think what was also at play was that my characters didn't really have any motivation...like, at all. I did plan on a motivation for them, but I hadn't written it out yet so it just looked like they were doing whatever for the sake of whatever. I think these kinds of stories still generally need the protagonist to have an explanation for why they make the decisions they do- Why they have to interact with the environment in the first place.
Pacing, rythm, and tempo can all be traced back to theater writing where they meant different things. I find that if I put myself in the place of a musical writer I can contextualize them better but they're really too antiquated.
I think "rhythm" is still useful because it refers more to how pleasing a sentence is to read. "Flow" I tend to think of as a matter of ideas: How well does one sentence's ideas flow into the next? I also call this "logical progression." Certainly you can have exceptionally tight writing, from a thematic, characterization and plotting perspective, but every single one of your sentences could suck to read.
Same thing as with lenght. "Too long" is a bit nonsensical in and of itself as a criticism. There is nothing inherently wrong with a certain runtime. It would be far more useful to be told why certain parts are maybe more drawn out and not as interesting as others by comparison. That advice you can use to restructure the story to flow better. Instead people talk as if you can just slash ten minutes off a rough cut and it'll be better automatically, no matter how or why, just because it's shorter. Anytime I felt a film was "too long" it was always more about the level of engagement I had with it at any given point. Like it could be fixed by using that same time differently, instead of just having less time.
Also, if your film is very long, find some natural break points to put in intervals. An audience with a full bladder will be too focused on that to engage with the climax. With really long stories, it's best to convert them to a mini-series, rather than a movie.
i'm usually pretty slow to check out your shorter vids, but this one was laser focused to my interests. i've *never* understood what pacing is and have long considered it to be an confusing, multifaceted mismash of a bunch of different if related things like 'writers block'
I find this very interesting. My understanding of pacing has always been that it’s a means of communicating the overall structure of a story via reader + my own (writer) experience, because it just… made sense?? So I guess for me, what I got from this is that not everyone will see it that way. Generally I’m the one who’s picking critique apart from someone else, in which case it’s fine, but not knowing could have led to critical miscommunications down the line, so it’s great to know anyway. The reason for my understanding is Hello Future Me’s stuff on pacing, which tackles all (or at least many) of those structural issues that contribute to it. I’d also argue that pacing is valuable as a writer’s term, we just need to make it more widely understood that it means “there’s something going on with this scene/etc. that’s making it feel fast/slow in a way that doesn’t support the narrative intentions for said scene”. There are enough issues pacing points too that we might not be able to figure out what’s off beyond that. Sometimes it isn’t even that the things happening on the surface are structured wrong, maybe it’s perfect, but lacking subtext! It’s so situational that pacing may still be a valuable blanket statement. But again, only if we treat it as such.
As a game designer, when I'm playtesting and feedbacking, I'm constantly feeling like, yeah "the pacing of this is bad", and then certainly I'll get into more detail about whether there's too little development in a level, or too many things being thrown at the player all at once (I'm guessing this is a far more common occurrence in games than how you describe the rare rushed story). I think this criticism is fair, that we can find much more detailed ways of explaining our problem with a piece of media than just saying "bad pacing". One thing I find contradictory with what I learned from people w/ a lot more experience, and what I feel for myself, is how to provide that feedback in a non-prescriptive way. It sounds like you suggest getting to what you see as the core issue (5:10) , though I was taught more to express what I'm feeling during play, and if it's clear what's making me feel that way, eg "this enemy moves really erratically and it makes me feel frustrated and unprepared", that can be valuable. I often found that people with a bit of media literacy (especially gamers playing games), *think* they know the source of the problem- "this enemy is really annoying to deal with, you should make it more obvious how they are going to move", but they *very rarely* understand the whole picture, or the intention of the designer, or even what solutions are possible or make sense in the design/computing space. Thus, that's what I learned and usually try to practice- rather than trying to engineer a solution for them, focus first on describing your experience, and then possibly why you think that is happening. If it's engaging / disengaging for you, or any multitude of other emotions, reactions, that's up to the designer to make a determination about if it's wanted / acceptable. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your advice, I think either method could be useful in the right hands, but I definitely know with games that problems are misdiagnosed by players and testers way more often than not, and a good designer should be able to take information about feelings surrounding an interaction / time in the game and create solutions when they're not working as intended. Anyway, cool video & thanks for your brevity and clarity! :)
In your talk about tone: I think us writers get very caught up on how other people feel, but its for the wrong reasons. When you grow a story to invoke a specific emotion, you can plan for that emotion. You can build a tragedy around its own feeling. So when people say they found it inspiring you look at them and are confused. It does mean you failed to convey your emotion, but it also means the reader drew their own emotion out of it. I think, to boil down what I just said, writers try to bring specific emotions out, but when they see someone draw their own, they think they've failed. In reality, though the story might not be as potent for it, the emotion drawn out is still a win. Pulling any heart strings is a success, but the further you pull them the better
Intriguing but not something necessarily constructive for fellow storytellers. What you're saying is just a notch above "As long as I made you feel something...'. Well true but not the reaction intended. If you're writing a horror (for example) and it isn't scary, you HAVE failed. Under the context of creating a story for horror, you succeeded in the sense you created it and it does exist. However, that's the starting goal (getting it done), while the new (ultimate) goal is to successfully translate what you intended however you intended. An example scenario: A young boxer wants to go pro and eventually become a champion. He successfully becomes a pro boxer at 20 years old. 6 years later, he's gearing up for the fight of his career; the one that will make him champion... Although he loses the fight so he doesn't become a champion. At this and only this point in time, the apt assessment would be he indeed became pro (start goal) but failed to become champion (ultimate goal). He ultimately failed BUT didn't "totally fail (which would be failing to become champion as well as a pro boxer at all)". There is difference between "ultimately failing" and "totally failing". Your line of thinking on this would react to that ultimate fight where he fails to become champion; something along the lines of "Well, he didn't fail because he's still a pro boxer". Yes, he is a pro boxer but that is not the ultimate goal, it's not the context we're operating under. The good news is he's only 26 now and he still has time to become a champion. That also translates to the original conversation; ppl still have the chance to try again and not only create something that invokes an emotional response, but to create something that invokes an emotional response that was intended.
@@browniebear That's all well and good, but what if the audience just doesn't buy it, straight up refuses to buy it? Subjectively, I don't like horror genre. There is no way for me to like what passes for horror genre, because I find most of its scenarios stupid and contrived, and some kind of perverse indulgence with no deeper meaning to it. I will not watch horror movies, I will not indulge in horror movies, I will laugh and the nonsense in horror movies that is mechanically necessary for them to work. I am full on "if this story is horror first, it's garbo" hater and that's that. You know when horror works for me, though? When it's something that just happens in a larger story. Sudden tragedy, unsettling encounter, the grinding futility of war, grim darkness of a bleak world where the horror is just consequence of its setting, rather than the destination. That's when I'm all in. So what's the difference? Why do I have this arbitrary cut off? Because for one, most people are like this - they have their own subconscious or conscious biases where even the most expertly woven scenario just won't work! They just refuse to be immersed into whatever is happening and that's that - and that's not the fault of the text, it's just them not liking it. But for the other, and more important factor - what I outlined is a scenario where an author portrays many things at once. It's not just a horror story. It's not just OHH SPOOKY SKELETONS NOOO. The spooky skeletons just happen as part of something larger and the author trusts in their storytelling enough to not care if I feel the specific emotion at the specific time. I can get spooked out by the skeletons, I can think they're cool, I can just feel nothing - the author is 100% cool with me feeling whatever, because he's not some weird control freak trying to soothe his ego. People will dislike and drop your writing for absolutely arbitrary, petty, nonsensical reasons. Accept it and don't try to ascribe any deeper meaning to it. Just focus on making the coolest stories for you as the audience - and you'll find an audience that wants the same things that you do, guaranteed.
@@thesunthrone I understand what you're saying and contrary to what you've seemingly preconceived I agree with most of what you're saying. By no means was I championing shallowness and surface level work, I detest that. That's also not what genre is. Genre is an approximated categorization not a total summation. I'm a proponent of the notion "The most important audience member is you, the creator". You shouldn't gear towards an audience. However I simultaneously believe there are avenues to objectively create specific tones and emotions. That's why genres like Tragedies, Underdog, Inspiring exist. Most ppl will follow the curve, most people look at Anakin Skywalker as a fallen angel of sorts who eventually redeemed himself (example). I'm not saying cater to the audience, I'm not saying service the audience. I'm saying you can maneuver the audience (the majority tho not everyone, but those that aren't, for whatever reason, are exceptions, the minority) tho ultimately you as the creator is still the most important audience member.
@@browniebear I agree to an extent. It is good to understand what makes a tragedy tick, sure - but trying to engineer a specific emotion is pointless simply because people react differently to the same event. So instead of trying to make the audience feel a certain way, focus on showing how the characters feel. One of them feels sad, other feels angry, third one feels disappointed because for some reason, they feel nothing at all yet they feel like they should. A personal example to illustrate that point. I've been to a fair few funerals, and none of them has felt the same - in some I've been stoic and wondering if I'm weird for not feeling sad, in others I've felt tears in the corners of my eyes at the "right times", and in some I've just completely broken down mid-sentence at a random point of it, and started shaking from grief, because all of a sudden a song played that made that loss fully real - something that very few in the room understood the significance of. Why? Because each of those funerals was different - each goodbye was to a person of different intimacy and relationship, each had some certain points that made them feel normal (in the case of the elderly, 95 is a good age to go) versus absolutely tragic (26) - and it's not so much about the age as what those people meant. Saying goodbye to a grandma who had long accepted the inevitable and to whom death was the end of suffering is one thing. Saying goodbye to a best friend with whom you talked just few days ago about him finally getting his courage together to pursue his dream? Words fail to describe how it hurts - so why even bother trying? So don't bother trying to capture an emotion, because it's something intangible anyway. Write what those around the situation feel and let that evoke emotions within them. Show what the situation means to them, whatever it is - tragedy, comedy, triumph or despair. It'll feel way more personal to the audience, because you let them feel what they feel. Now, there are certain ways to reinforce an emotion if it's a theme - with some kind of reoccurring pattern, whether a description in a novel, or a certain leitmotif in an audiovisual work. But even then, you are not reinforcing something you want the audience to feel - you are reinforcing something they feel on their own.
@@thesunthrone Maybe I've just skedaddled around this but I'm not maneuvering to depict an emotion *for* the audience. I'm maneuvering for the story so it may be told as best as I see it. The story *should* occur how the 'creator's self as the storyteller' and the 'creator's self as the most important audience member' both see fit. I believe there are things like emotions that can be *objectively* depicted and as a consequence the audience (most of them) will have no choice but to respond and recognize, if the storyteller has done their job well. Some won't respond/recognize (for whatever reason) but as I've said, those are exceptions and every rule has its exceptions. MOST people will follow suit whether voluntary or voluntary but that is not the goal, it is a consequence of the goal; objectively depict emotions/events however the story requires according to the storyteller. My bad, I've not been concise.
There was one part of me that was fearing that you'd go full "pacing issues just means you have to rethink everything from the ground up don't be such a baby" but I'm glad I watched this.
I really like that you draw attention to something important - that people have a very limited vocabulary, and it's up to you as a writer (and really, any professional in general) to figure out what the layman means with their vague and sometimes even contradictory feedback. The fact that they're conflicted and contradict themselves, that instead can indicate false promises that gave them an impression that it's gonna be this one thing, but then ends up being something else. Promises are very important to keep an eye on, it's what really makes or breaks you as a storyteller. If you promise something, you better have it happen in one way or another - not necessarily because you need to mind the audience's feelings, but, well, why did you promise stuff you weren't going to follow through, anyway? Unless your story is intended to be a con job, better just cut the thread entirely.
the idea of taking the criticism but not the “fixes” people suggest is very similar in board game design, it’s where i first heard that advice. and it makes so much sense, playtesters or readers won’t fully get what you’re trying to accomplish, and more often than not they have no idea how to design good games/write good screenplays.
Thank you. I needed this video. I've been working on 2 different stories. One for an indie game I am working on and the other for an animation wondering why the pace feels off.
This is a video that I disagreed with when it started, but now i see your point. I disagreed because I didnt understand the scenario you were taking about at first. The thing is, i feel like pacing can be completely valid and useful feedback, but only when it's expanded upon by the critic. "I feel like the pacing is too fast," should be followed by a more specific explanation like, "You dont give enough time or thought to the visuals and environment, not giving the reader enough information to understand the setting. If this is an supposed to be an old and worndown house, maybe consider describing the tattered curtains, the creaky floorboards, or the dust and mildew smell that burns at your nose." Thats actually spefiic, and gives the writer somewhere to go. (Inspired by a true critique Ive gotten)
Another youtuber recommended your channel to me and I literally just binged a bunch of your videos last night coming up with lesson plans for my creative writing students. It's amazing seeing the cogs turning in their heads while they have epiphanies about their own writing. We all really enjoy how easy these are to digest and create exercises with. Thanks a bunch for posting these!!
Pacing is completely subjective. Scenes that are too slow for one person can be too fast for another and vice versa. There's no such thing as perfect pacing and even defining good and bad pacing varies wildly from person to person.
When I get a "pacing" critique, it's usually because the person thinks they read a novel, instead of a screenplay, so they have an issue with figuring out the timing, how much time it actually takes for those two things to transpire, which they think occur immediately after each other, only because those things are consecutive parts of a sequence. Then they look at an actual visual representation and what they feel feels rushed in writing is suddenly sluggish and dragged out in action by comparison, because I do not waste two pages in a screenplay to describe all the visuals.
Haven’t watched the entire video yet, but this came at the right time. Needed it for my intro. Just felt too long. Thanks script man. Edit: i have watched the video and read my story again. I realized that the reason my pacing is considered slow is because of the filler you mentioned, the moments where a scene/lines do not pertain to the theme/plot/characters. I’m going to find a way to fix this and make sure that the story flows without being stopped by this filler. Thank you!
"... lack of falling action." I'm one of the few who apparently writes at breakneck speed and doesn't slow. Also, I don't notice it. I've taken my novels to multiple professional editors, critique partners, and others. None of which could tell me WHAT was off, or even articulate why they felt that way. Just that it was off. Paid a dude 50 bucks to read it and he was the first person to give me that exact feedback. I guess I'm just in a minority, but I wish I'd seen this kinda advice earlier.
"have a spine" Thank you!! I'm so tired of every movie, tv show, and video game catering to people without attention spans by putting meaningless, flashy things on screen that destroy momentum and stakes because they were too scared to let a long, quiet moment happen in case they lost their audience. This is especially true of the beginnings of most things recently. They feel the need to start in media res, or with some big setpiece, because god forbid you build tension over time.
I mean, when I talk about pacing, I'm absolutely thinking about it from the perspective of the audience because, honestly? It's not my show. If I only have 180 characters in which to give my opinion, I'm not going to comb over every single wasted line or point out every unnecessary scene. I'm just gonna say 'pacing bad' and move on. The show's already out at that point. They aren't gonna change it. Unless I'm trying to teach a friend how not to write, further detail isn't warranted. Maybe I'd feel different if I was someone's beta reader, but I'm just not in that space. I feel like I already knew this advice but, real talk, that just means I know you're right. Subbed.
I have truly experienced the "tone" comment when i was trying for comedy There were times when i tried to "write" funny and times were i had no intention of humor Interestingly no one saw the effort, the only parts my readers found funny was when the characters were genuinely being themselves, mocking each other, being confused or just saying weird sh!t in character I have one strong comdey work wich i did not once try to be funny in it My character was just enough amount of stupid and i let him make his own decisions As much as tips and tools can help us in the process of improvement - which we need while we are not experienced enough to convey our characters perfectly - in the end a good story is when we put our characters in different situations and let them run around, whatever "mood", "vibe" or "tone" those scenes give, is fully on the readers And trust them a little They will feel it when the time comes, no effort needed I still do have bad pacing though it goes with my mental health effecting my plots and writing
Can't believe I'm finding this channel almost immediately after a personal epiphany on storytelling. This is exactly what I needed to reinforce my understanding.
Man, I just love these videos so much. They're indescribably helpful, and hold my attention so well. It's just great advice every time. For this one, I'm DEFINITELY one of those audience members who complains about pacing. In a lot of my reviews on letterboxd - especially superhero films - I talk about bad pacing. So this video was very eye-opening into why those things happen and what it really means, both for me as an audience member and an amateur writer
Good point. Its important to remember people also have different taste, so no matter how you write a story its not gonna fit for everyone. But there could still be someone else that loves the way its written. One needs a good balance between researching and listen to critizism, and NOT listening to critizism too blindly, and actually make your own choices. It also dont need to be perfect to be good
Great advice! Pursuing efficiency helped me to pull off the first draft of my second theater play in a matter of days. Now, I'm at the "it's too fast!" end of the pacing spectrum, but I've got material to cover maybe an hour or so (don't have enough experience to really tell), and it tells EVERYTHING. Like, literally... The driving question of the main narrative is "what if contradiction and tension is the driving principle of the universe?" and the side narrative's question is "are things basically always the same or do they change?", and I narrate them through Eve's temptation in paradise, except that god and the serpent are bad cop and good cop, the serpent being the good cop trying to get Eve out of her abusive relationship with god who does bad things to her until she runs out of excuses for him. Oh and yeah, good cop, bad cop means that they're actually playing for the same team. In fact, they turn out to be identical.
My hot take is that Dune 2, a very cool and great movie, had actual pacing issues. I didn't think that the beginning was too slow objectively, and I enjoyed feeling the tension of every important plot point, and the sense that nothing was cheap or easy. I also didn't think that act 3 and the "final battle(s)" were too fast objectively. But SUBjectively, It felt like things suddenly sped up a lot near the end of the film and it felt dissonant compared to everything else. Kind of like 2 miles were covered in the movie, but one of them took twice as long as the other. Yeah, Obviously it makes sense for a fight itself to feel fast and violent, but even all of the leadup and connective tissue just seemed rushed.
I love the rebrand, tbh “local” was kinda hard to remember and hard to find in the search bar but “LocalScriptMan” is soo much more memorable. Love the new style.
I think it's a pretty common view. Personally, I always translate "poor pacing" in reviews to movies, novels and other narrative-focused fiction to "the person who is saying this wasn't invested into the scene/character/work for whatever reason or a multitude of reason, they were taken out of the story and thought that it or some parts of it were boring, bland, uninspiring".
What I have seen is that if the pacing feels slow - it is often a sign to slow significantly down. A book where then that happened, then that, then that... can easily feel slow. But a book that dares to stop and smell the flowers can feel so much richer that we don't notice that the pacing is slower
God yeah, like when the audience instantly jumps to criticise a scene for being 'slow' or 'boring', and never once stopping to consider that perhaps that's what the writer is fully intending for. Like the pie scene in A Ghost Story. I believe it is down to this pre-conceived notion that anything out there, or potentially boring won't sell. But surely the opposite is true? Radical authenticity is far more valuable than merely following in the footsteps of everyone who preceded them.
everytime i felt something was wrong with my own writing I kinda just assumed it was pacing, and most of my friends couldn't see it, this kinda puts it in perspective on why I'm arriving there, its just weird that I'm doing it for my own writing
It feels odd being this early, but hey! The screensavers make for such a distinctive feel - somehow, you’ve managed to keep that balance of laid-back old-school nostalgia and a no-nonsense present moment, even after this transition to mostly filming yourself rather than collecting clips to edit together. I like the way you approached this one, just as delightfully information dense as ever. The symptom-vs-problem point is really sharp, and it could apply to a lot of other situations. Really, everything here fits together smoothly. You also do a lot of good describing these storytelling features and concepts without too much jargon - which may be partly from the way you learned, or the specific way you’re trying to help us as viewers and fellow writers, or both. It’s a real sign of competence when you can explain a concept well enough to not just teach one-on-one but also give advice in a video like this. Oh, one last thing, I do 100% agree that feelings are always inexact, and it’s never going to help arguing with feelings (this applies even in the rest of life). It’s amazing what a little extra care can do for problem-solving. Now, I need to sleep, so I won’t ramble any longer. Much love to you too, brother!
I just earlier today had this talk with one of my friends who said that Oppenheimer's biggest flaw was the Pacing, thank you for putting this into such clear vernacular.
As someone else said in the comments, pacing is subjective. For people with low attention spans, the movie was too slow. For people who wanted to take in every information from every scene, it was too fast. You can't please everyone, you can just find what works best for your story.
Thank you for this video @LocalScriptMan I'm writing a novel and I have been really struggling with its pacing every chapter is divided into five sections with a for ten chapters what you said about pacing and flow being like a fever and the problem is about getting the storytelling down really helped me see where I went wrong. Also I feel I need to mention my novel is about someone with Cerebral Palsy who goes into his imagination when he is alone as a child and even though he is on his own he feels completely in control so his environment bends to his imagination, if he wants to go into a castle under siege from Monsters he can, if he wants to go into an enchanted Forest with his teddy bear Junior he can. But when he goes to school he finds he's afraid of being away from home and his family. But when he gently nudged into making friends he feels comfortable showing them his imaginary worlds, but only can make the scope of his imagination small at first bringing small figurines to life and so forth. But when he becomes a teenager he starts to experience certain physical changes that he doesn't understand, or the fondness he has for his best friend. so when he finally is on his own again he starts to regress mentally back into the imagined state of childhood but his adolescent longing becomes warped and slightly twisted versions of themselves. I've been working on it for years and I'm still stuck in a few places is my plot dreadful or am I just lacking confidence ? Thanks again I have subscribed to your channel and all the best 👍😊
Love this video too..... good call. :) I've been told by my players that my adventures I run are "very well paced" and I don't even know what that means. But this definitely clears up some coinfusion. They're using a "readers" word to say that "hey, the encounters are good and not too confusing or badly done" or something like that. Thanks again. Appreciate your great insights. :)
This video felt more causal and conversational than you're other ones, and I really liked that! Great advice as always, and I appreciate that you didn't try to pull out your simple message into a thirty-minute essay like I've seen a lot of other writing channels do.
Pacing is a balancing act of weighing importance. If its empty of content it feels too fast, if you don't give things the time their weight implies they need also. If you give something to much emphasis, reiterations or over explaining or overexagerations, or even just lengthy descriptions can make it feel too slow. You want the amount of time and effort for a scene you make to match the importance it has in the narrative. The favorite color of the character would be said in passing if at all but a sentimental item they carry would be described with all the meaning to it, its history, depending on the weight it has of course. It depends. Good luck story telling!
Was trying to find your Avatar video since your rebranding and all I get is other videos about why avatar is good or some shit, thank the lord I found you either way 🎉
The thing I love the most about your videos is I find that much of your advice feels close to home to me as a lot of it is things I couldn't bring to words until now. I feel its the same for a lot of people here too
Old school windows screen saver in the background, big ups. Liking the rebrand, and always enjoy listening to your takes on these topics. I don't disagree. Pacing is an interesting subject. It's something I find almost impossible to fully evaluate in my own work, because I'm never really able to read it the way I would read something I have no creative part in.
I've never really had much contact with writing stories but I love learning in all kinds of different fields, and your videos give me that terrifying yet exciting feeling of getting just far enough into a subject area that you are beginning to get a sense of the vastness of skills, tools and knowledge that is to be found and learned there. I love consuming stories but actually creating them is so enticing.
I've been consuming writing advice type videos for years, so it's rare that I find new perspectives that I've never thought of or seen before. But somehow, pretty much every video you've released so far has opened up new possibilities for me and my approach to writing.
This is super useful content. Pacing is something I have received as feedback and never really understood. But as you mentioned, I had to translate what this actually meant- a symptom of a larger problem... Thank you for taking the time to create this!
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 65 | คู่เอก "จ้าวเสือใหญ่ vs ผึ้งหลวง"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TDpOh5eEJKw/mqdefault.jpg)
Watch without audio and he looks like he's dropping the most well paced diss track the world has ever seen.
Lol like he's about to drop Thanos level destruction. His words of wisdom are so insightful that half the population that hears it gets faded.
I would actually argue that he's dropping the most well-structured diss track the world has ever seen
the rebranding, I am gonna miss Alien Man.
He died and his body was recovered by the US government
@@localscriptman the same way they recovered that chinese spy blimp they later reported they couldn't find?
Aye
I dunno, I think the new alien looks way more mysterious
Localscriptnonhumanbiologic
As a film/tv editor, this completely rings true!! One of my favorite quotes from Walter Murch -- editor of Apocalypse Now -- is this:
“When you go to a doctor and tell him that you have a pain in your elbow, it is the quack who takes out his scalpel and starts to operate on the elbow. An experienced doctor studies you, takes an x-ray, and determines that the cause of the pain is probably a pinched nerve up in your shoulder-you just happen to feel it in your elbow. When you ask audiences “What was your least favorite scene?” and eighty percent of the people are in agreement about one scene they do not like, the impulse is to “fix” the scene or cut it out. But the chances are that that scene is fine. Instead, the problem may be that the audience simply didn’t understand something that they needed to know for the scene to work. So instead of fixing the scene itself, you might clarify some exposition five minutes earlier. The audience will never tell you directly where the source of the pain is, they’ll just tell you where they feel it, and you as the editor must suss out its source.”
Common Murch W
Well said, words that can only come from experience
nah, remove that shit
I hadn't really written anything I was proud of up until I started watching these videos, and now I actually feel like I am making conscious decisions while writing stories, rather than just trying to use fancy words because I thought "that's what makes a good book". Your takes on storytelling are very refreshing and I hope you find the success you deserve, both in and beyond this TH-cam channel.
Thank you!
Keep in mind that literature is much more free and it depends on what you want to achieve though. Literary fiction doesn't follow much in that regard, in fact, plot is completely irrelevant in many many cases for example. I'm sure you're aware already.
I like to watch his vids but I often disagree a bit. It's still interesting to hear perspectives and often times sound advice, I just consciously abandon stuff. I value boredom in a story a lot, that's why I appreciate 200 min+ films. That's also though why publishers are showing me the finger lol so yeah.
@@njux1871I honestly just really like how fresh and different these videos feel they portray such a different perspective than the other writing videos on TH-cam. I also often disagree with his takes.
Also, what do you mean when you say you value boredom in a story? Do you mean that you like feeling bored when experiencing a story, or do you like it when the characters feel bored? Or something else? I've just never heard someone say this.
@@or9422 I think "boredom" may translate into what I would call "mundanity" or the state of existing. Some films and shows can just hang on a moment or a mood for a long time just to give the audience so time to reflect, recover, or even a safe place to zone out without missing the story (see: Twin Peaks: The Return's infamous peanut sweeping scene.) I love that stuff, but I definitely wouldn't call it boredom.
@@glitchy000 I agree with what you're saying, and think mundane is a good word for it. When the story slows down and not much is happening in front of you, but the story is still so immersive that instead of your mind wandering you start reflecting on the story itself.
That being said, boredom isn't really a good word for it, and scenes where the story slows down to let the audience pause and reflect are expected and certainly not a reason for the publishing world to give this commenter the finger.
I figured there was something else to the comment but I could be wrong.
I think my iconic example of ‘rushed pacing’ comes from Netflix’s Castlevania.
The human twins go from, ‘You’re the best teacher ever, Alucard! We love you!’ to a murder plot because he told them _one time_ to study the basics before he’d teach them endgame shit.
Maybe things were cut for time, but the result felt like the writers only established, ‘Twins are upset’ before jumping straight to murder, rather than having a separate beat for, ‘Twins are upset,’ ‘Twins become mistrustful,’ ‘Twins feel betrayed,’ and finally, ‘Twins don’t see any way to fix this besides murder.’
Flicking a single domino off the table isn’t as satisfying as watching the whole chain fall.
The third season of Castlevania I think was kind of messy just on account of how it was trying to tell four separate stories. Which, honestly, I respect, that's a very ambitious thing to do. But it ultimately felt like a lot of the content was less detailed than it should have been, resulting in only Isaac's story resulting in something that was really satisfying, while the other three suffered from a lot of issues.
Funny, Netflix's Shaman King had the same problem of rushed pacing. A cult hit anime from the very early 2000's which suffered from adapting a manga that hadn't finished at the time and thus wound up inevitably missing the point got its long-awaited faithful adaptation... and had to cram over 200 chapters of source material into 52 episodes. Profound character moments often had little time to breathe (whereas in the original manga one could fairly say they probably had _too much_ time to breathe) and didn't land right, especially in the first arc, and not helped by the updated animation looking particularly cheap. Shaman King was always the runt of the old Shonen Jump litter, and most chalked this up to series creator Hiroyuki Takei not being _particularly_ entrepreneurial compared to his peers.
Frustratingly, a lot of problems seemed to stem from behind the scenes attempts to get the old band back together with all the original seiyuu, particularly Megumi Hayashibara and Mizuki Nana, and that devotion to getting everything just right forced compromises in other areas, notably the choice in animation studio, Bridge. As a _huge_ proponent of artistic integrity at all costs, this was a cold, harsh wake-up call: you simply can't have everything.
That’s great advice but The twins goal was to kill alucard from the beginning
Honestly I think it was because they didn't know what to do with Alucard so they thought of something and end it with a murder plot. They could have left him alone just for that one season and explain what happened to him when you see all those bodies outside. That would have been better story for Alucard because it would feel like he still had agency in that season while it wasn't focused on him while showing why is reluctant to help his neighbors.
Weren’t the human twins planning to kill Alucard from the beginning tho? Like all their interactions were clearly a ruse but Alucard missed having friends and was going insane being alone in a castle so he ignored all signs and tried to bang them both.
This was also obvious bc the whole theme of that season was about how looks are deceiving and that humans suck usually.
1:52 This kinda fits into a game dev adage: players are great at identifying problems, but horrible at coming up with solutions. And that is because, usually, they are wrong about what's causing the problem, so their solution doesn't fix the actual issue but the symptom as you put it. Great video!
YES i hear this everywhere. if enough of your audience tells you there’s a problem then there is. if they try to tell you what the problem actually is they are most likely wrong
Similarly with fans who want more of their favourite work. They know _that_ they love a particular scene but are terrible at understanding _why._
yeah players don't really know what makes games games, but they can tell if a game is shit.
You put my feelings into words, as someone who hardly gets bored watching stuff, it took me a while to realize what people meant by "The pacing is too slow", I've lately been seeing it as people saying "I don't find anything interesting happening on screen"
Yeah it’s a completely subjective thing - “good pacing” is different for literally every viewer. But people believe it’s somehow quantifiable because it’s been given a label. It’s masquerading as some objective science
@@localscriptman "Bad pacing" imo happens when there's a disconnect between what the writer sees as important and what the audience sees, or maybe there's not enough reasons to care about what the writer wants you to care about.
There's also some stubborn people, I have a friend who decided he was going to hate a character, and even with all the good the character did, he held onto a bad thing she did (Even though she felt bad about it and spent the rest of her life atoning). You can't control how your audience feels, you can just try.
@@repli2991 Hating a character is kinda weird also
@@localscriptmanI don't really see what you're getting at, loving a character is also weird if you apply similar logic. People suspend their disbelief all the time and apply real world standards to fictional characters. You can absolutely detest a character's actions, think they're annoying etc. Just like you would a real person. Of course, they're not real, but having the audience pretend that they're real is kind of the point. There are also people who hate characters simply because they think they are poorly handled or dislike how they're written. It really depends.
@@mcgoldenblade4765what he means probably is that people will just attach themselves to their knee jerk reaction to a character without taking into account the purpose if the way they're written or the context they're in. Like they're taking their actions "personally". The mother of all examples of that?
Skyler in Breaking Bad. There hasn't been a single human being that hates Skyler for any reason other than being a believable, well written and very significant character that just happens to be in the role of pushing against what we want to see, which is walter doing drug lord shit. They see that and are annoyed for no reason other than "I want to see this and she's in the way of the character doing it with no conflict whatsoever".
I don't write (words) but I actually love the discussion of "translating non-experts' critiques" because people who don't know music won't give you coherent feedback, you have to deduce what they really mean. I'm sure it's likewise with any artform
Yeah, as an artist I have the same struggle. I ask my brother for critiques sometimes, and something he told me once was "This character just doesn't have anything interesting about them. There's nothing that draws me in." And, like, what does that mean? Do you find them generic? Does it lack visual interest? Are the colors too dull, or the silhouette too basic? Or maybe this character just isn't to your tastes specifically? It's such open-ended feedback that blurs the line between personal opinion and (as) objective (as possible) advice
@@sheppin_ I have never gotten this note, but I feel this almost sympathetically. Like...what is the criteria for an interesting character to you? Is that same criteria just for you, or for a lot of people?
There's a great quote about videogames, but it applies to all art. It goes something like this: "Average person will tell you how they feel about your project, but they wouldn't be able to tell you why they feel that way". Paraphrasing, of course
Yeah, this also part of why getting LOTS of feedback is important. Frankly, some feedback is bullshit. There’s always going to be that one person who says “there shouldn’t be any action scenes in this story” when that story is an action script. Some people in the FNaF fan base would actually get mad at other creatives, including creator Scott Cawthon himself, over moments or works of art that made Foxy “too scary” because “Foxy is supposed to be the good guy” (something that was never anything more than a fan theory). Some people just don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, which is why listening to individual people’s feedback will never be as important as listening to the feedback of a bunch of people from a variety of different backgrounds, and then interpreting the patterns.
@@raven75257 A saying I regularly use: When someone tells you that something in your writing sucks, he's probably right. When he tries to tell you why, he's probably wrong."
I remember when Across the Spiderverse came out and there were people complaining about some of its scenes being too long and it has pacing problems and stuff. This tip really solidifies that yes, sometimes despite what the audience says, it's too bad for them.
When I saw Across the Spiderverse, I think it's "pacing is just right" only because I can discern that every dialogue, every beat, every moment serves the narrative and a bigger picture down to the intricate details of who the characters are and their purpose in the story. (The scene about Gwen and Miles, Miles and his mother, the rooftop party, the scenes of Miguel meeting Miles, etc.)
But on the other hand, I like this tip because the "pacing problems" can be boiled down to scenes not being efficiently utilized to maximize its impact. Often when the audience complain about this, it is either something about the story made them feel bored (lacking character richness or weak plot moment), or a beat was rushed too fast (underutilized scenes wrapped up too quickly without needed depth).
There’s a lot of perspective stuff that changes on rewatching a film. Viewers have limited attention span and energy, so a lot of time people will just miss stuff. Like they have no idea what that detail was supposed to mean while they are watching it so they forget, or they have different things in their mind when seeing a scene for the first time.
I know there are a lot of people who missed a chunk of Gwen’s character development because they just stopped thinking through her perspective when the POV switched to Miles. Even though half of Across the Spiderverse is Gwen’s story.
Just because a lot of people tend to miss things doesn’t mean those details shouldn’t exist, or trimmed down to “streamline” the film.
That is wild, honestly I think it's still leaning forward towards fast pace with the heartwarming moments being the slow one.
If some people think Across the Spiderverse is slow, how are they going to watch a slowburn animated film like Perfect Blue or Spirited Away ?
@@yup7380 They might find it better paced, because the story is singularly focused on the main character.
@@PengyDraws If that's the case, the arguement should be it's not well paced instead of slow. Slow doesn't mean bad
To be fair, Across the Spiderverse is like, 1 half of what is supposed to be a much larger film (It was originally titled as Across the Spiderverse: Part 1 and Beyond was Across the Spiderverse: Part 2)
The pacing probably feels off to them because the film was quite literally cut in half.
I really like the part where the hypothetical critic don't have the sufficient tools to nail the diagnosis. You will not believe how prevailant this issue is in interaction- and game design. This is why we observe before we ask (fortunately we have a physical interaction to scrutinize, and don't have to rely on self-report). This also means we have to wrangle well-meaning technical team members who aren't used to this distinction, and assumes everyone's vocabulary is sufficient to pinpoint problems about an interaction that is 90% emotional, intuitive and invisible.
I personally think observing physical reactions is an effective method of evaluating and refining writing further.
I am more likely to pay someone to let me stare a them and take notes while they read my story than to pay an editor. Both of those are useful though.
Pro tip: Never let the Internet rewrite your story for you. If some reddit forum guesses the ending, good for them. Give them kudos after the series finale. But don't change the ending to try and evade any and all fan theories. This is how a lot of obnoxious serial TV shows are written now (and also how Rian Johnson wrote The Last Jedi) where the writers dredge Internet forums for predictions and then rework plots or introduce red herrings to ensure those predictions are all wrong, and to keep fans guessing under the guise of "subverting expectations".
Just tell the story you want to tell. Write it completely from beginning to middle to end, and don't worry about how predictable and tropey the Internet thinks it is.
I think there's one exception to this. If I you're writing some sort of series, and a fan comes up with a theory that's actually way cooler than what you had planned and fits really well with your lore, I don't see a problem with stealing it.
@@bengal2441 ??? I'm pretty sure Scott Cawthon does the exact opposite.
@@bengal2441 scott cawthon uses the versatile method of "make some vague plot points that seem connected in a vaguely coherent way but dont actually figure out the details, just let the fans write the rest of the story for you lmao"
On The Last Jedi point I think you're confusing doing something new and interesting with subverting expectations just for thr sake of it.
@@margaram78yeah exactly this guy had to mean rise of skywalker cause the last jedi was just fine
Idk buy a pacemaker
The criticism of tone being a symptom of storytelling issues rather than the disease is spot on actually. I've never really liked the criticism of having an "inconsistent tone" when referring to a srory having contrasting elements/characters/etc. (For example, a funny character in a 'serious' story), and now I think I can understand why. For it to be an actual criticism would mean that you can't use the clashing of "tones" to flesh out your story and its elements, create a unique aesthetic, or a whole host of other uses for having contrasting elements.
Having jokes in a "serious movie" is not by itself a bad thing. It's a bad thing when, say, the heavy hand of the writer forces a character to make a joke in a situation where they otherwise probably would not.
>It's a bad thing when, say, the heavy hand of the writer forces a character to make a joke in a situation where they otherwise probably would not.
It depends on both a character character and a situation. For example, people often joke, often very crudely, under extreme stress or when there's no light at the end of the tunnel. Fictional characters can be like that as well. There's nothing inherently wrong about having jokes during otherwise extremely serious and highly stressful situations, yet this was one of the most common and one of the most silly criticisms of, let's say, action and horror movies.
In a serious story, jokes should be used sparingly. I'm not a big Marvel fan because they can't stop making jokes all the time, and ruining the serious moments. Asgard is destroyed and they use toilet humor.
That style infected the Star Wars sequels, particularly TLJ. Snoke and Hux became clowns.
Pacing was always one of my biggest problems to handle just because it seemed so elusive as a concept and I couldn't really grasp how to fix it. Now knowing that it itself is not the problem but just a symptom is so much more productive for fixing things since I can look "around" issues of pacing instead of getting tunnel visioned on it.
It's very funny how seemingly worlds apart things like software development and writing have a huge amount in common when it comes to interacting with "clients" lol. Translating the user lexicon to usable feedback is a challenge in every creative process
For me, sometimes I read my writing and just rush through it. Everything happens so fast and it’s all dumb and there is no development and blah blah blah. But once I start reading as the audience, and not as myself, it comes across more like I want it to. Idk just a thought.
As a creator, the most important audience member is YOU.
It seems like you've adapted to a process to balance between you (as the artist) and you (as the audience), which is fantastic because that's no easy feat.
I wish you well on future endeavors and have a blessed day!
I understand this feeling so well. It's like you can't distinguish between yourself as the writer and yourself as the audience member. I have to remember to read it like I would read a book, instead of reading it like a critic. Hope you've progressed since then, and good luck on that path if you're still pursuing it!
What's this? Writing advice that is actually _insightful_ and encourages you to _think_ about what you're doing rather than just regurgitating generalized platitudes and arbitrary "rules"? A rare treat indeed!
Top tier advice as always of course.
I just want to say, the idea of you just talking while the old windows screensaver plays in the literal bg of the video through a projector is quite the cool trick for engaging short attention spans. If it was just you speaking I can definitely see this video feeling slow but the screensaver playing at that speed really draws the eye. Idk if it was intentional on you're part but points for the choice from a presentation perspective *tips hat*
I didn't even know it was a Windows screensaver, never seen it before
@@racool911It's quite old. I'm pretty sure the last version it is natively available on is windows 7
As someone who spent 50% of video looking at the screensaver because my monkey ADHD be ADHDing, I concur.
@@auliamate same
i completely stand by your decision as an artist to pace this video in this exact way, especially those last 30 secs or so
Finally someone who says it out loud!!! I'm so tired of hearing all these 'expert writers' on YT who instantly urge you to change your whole manuscript just because a proofreader got bored with your text.
Especially in these times, when every piece of media feels rushed, copied or even too superficial, I think it's crucial to let the artists mind establish new ways of storytelling. If a writer enfasizes a particular scene, even if it's the most common scenario instead of the (already cliche) most epic battle in the plot, let it be. The writer has a REASON.
OH NO, HE'S HOT
the beginning of the end
I didn’t take a word of this seriously until you bit your lip at the end. That was when I knew this was something special
This explains why I never understood when people criticise a movie for bad pacing. I never understood what it meant because it was always something different.
Hello LocalScriptMan, if you read this then may I say that I'm glad that you caught my eye to your channel and which you have grown into making these incredible videos that help writers, storytellers, and many people within this world making stories that build up creativity within the minds of people.
Right now I am making a personal project which hopefully within 3-4 years I can present the story on YT and then expand it to promote and maybe release it as a series. However, this requires skills that need to be taught or learned by hand, that is secondly why I came to write this as you're one of bunch of helpful people when it comes to writing and especially to making characters.
Hopefully and if not you haven't seen this comment, thank you for contributing to helping people like me to make stories and bringing them to light in our own ways!
Np glad I could be of service
@@RuffinItAB Im glad to hear your excitement to see Indie projects like mine to bloom especially with major movie cooperations lacking the imaginations in their stories.
I leave you fellow person of the internet a small spoiler/detail from my setting and how it will lay the format to my project, thank you SuperDooperMC again!
(10/29/1918 - Germany)
Imo the best way to improve your "pacing" is reading thrillers and studying them. That shit is built to keep you reading and the biggest part of that is the hook. You can apply it all levels of writing. What's this story's hook? Why do you want to keep reading this scene right now? This chapter? It's mainly done through either progression or mystery. If the reader isn't getting answers to previous questions or being incited to ask new questions and if there's also no progress on any character arc or story thread then people are gonna have a harder time getting excited about reading it.
I think a lot of these problems come when writers zoom out too much and forget that they need to keep hooking the reader on a micro level. Maybe the writer thinks a scene is super important because it's setting up something super cool 500 pages later, or maybe it makes a reread better, but if you're a first time reader and there's nothing in that scene that is hooking you WHILE READING IT, then that's what's dragging your pacing.
Heh. The name change threw me off
I agree with your assessment. When I say pacing, as a reader or watcher, it usually means slow which usually means redundancy or lack of conflict or lack of stakes which usually means character motivations and goals are off and there’s little purpose to some scenes, or if there is, it’s wayyyy to subdued.
“Bad pacing” has always been one of my least favorite criticisms of media. It can be levied against any work nonspecifically.
I read a lot of amateur criticism of film and whenever a poor critic is tearing a work apart they always bring up “bad pacing” and “tonal inconsistency” without a single concrete example.
You apparently don’t come across accusations of “rushed” pacing very often, but I watch a lot of anime, and fans often have this bizarre expectation that any important point a story is making needs at least two full episodes of focus. That’s nonsense, many profound things have been communicated in few words, and many great scenes take only a few minutes.
Pacing and whether a work has a consistent tone are tricky criticisms to counter because they’re entirely vibes based. The critic has a duty to provide examples when making such unclear points.
Great video, no notes.
Animes do tend to have more exposition than western media, though I don't know why that's the case. Don't get me wrong, I love anime but, sometimes they just dump a whole monologue or dialogue exchange for about half the episode just for the sake of exposition, and sometimes when it's a seasonal anime, you get a rushed ending where you actually see the "pacing" issues appear. An example for this was the Cautious Hero isekai anime, where they put every twist and emotional beat, and then some more, all in the last episode of just 22 minutes to work with, and didn't give the audience time to take in what just happened. You can even discern the voice actors' dialouges edited closer to each other more than the earlier episodes to really fit everything into one single episode. They could've separated it into 2 episodes but idk what happened behind the scenes.
I'm not lying when I say that you literally changed my storytelling. I reread my first draft - which I wrote before I began to religiously binge your videos - and compared it to my current draft, they weren't even written by the same person. The first draft was way too fast, the characters were dull and uninteresting and... weirdly perfect, and there was genuinely no reason to read the story. It felt useless and unimportant. Thank you so much for these videos!
This is probably my favourite writing advice channel right now. This is the only one I've seen with actual nuance and care put into it's advice. You won me over when you mentioned a MASSIVELY important point every single other writing advice channel seems to skip every single time: do not give in your vision as an author to the short attention spans of viewers.
Artistic intent above all! Subbed.
This makes crazy sense. "Bad pacing," also known as the part where the story gets boring, essentially means something just isn't interesting, which can indicate it isn't good. And good on you for telling people to stand up for plot sequences that need to be super long, even if audiences won't get it. Great video as always!
Edit: Also, I came to the same conclusion on tone a while back. After fretting about it for a bit, now I don't worry about what the tone's gonna be, just that the scene is great and transmits to the audience what is intended.
"I belive in you, I love you."
Thank you.
*he looks sexily at the camera like a k-pop boy about to rap*
Can you stop?
"Ok goodbye"
Sorry
The Windows 98 screensaver in the background is acting like a nostalgic equivalent of Subway Surfers gameplay for me rn
I remember trying to start my own small comic series as an adolescent, and the first thing my little sister told me was that "nothing happens".
When she told me this, I was terribly confused. For me, it didn't look like "nothing was happening". There were two small creatures exploring an alien environment. I was introducing new settings and characters in each strip. The boring strips were intentionally designed just to flesh out a concept or pause my story. But there was *always* "something happening".
Looking back, I think the real problem with my story was that my main characters were victims of their environment. Stuff kept happening, and yet my main characters never had the opportunity to make any actual decisions. In that way, she was right. "Nothing was happening." I just took her advice the wrong way and completely missed what the actual problem was.
Is it your contention that if a character doesn't actively choose to do something, then the story cannot succeed? (as in, it cannot be interesting)
@@Selrisitai Well, that was hers, and I think I agree. Not that the story can't succeed, but just that character decisions are the heart of what makes a story.
@@Selrisitai I think there should be a balance. If the environment just waits until a character does something, that's bad too. Especially if the writer has to force characters to make absurdly bad and stupid choices just to make the story go forward or fill gaps (cough cough the second season of The Witcher).
That's interesting. I make short narrative-driven computer games and have had similar issues. I once showed my dad a game and he said "and so does anything happen?" which really hurt at the time haha. I had put so much effort into the environments, but it sounds like it was similar to your comic in the way that the main character never made any actual decisions. You basically just walked around looking at stuff, as the idea was that you're just observing and exploring a strange world.
But I don't think there's an issue with main character(s) not making decisions in a story, necessarily. I'm still not sure what the issue is really, but it can work sometimes, and other times it can feel 'off'. I've played many games where the player character 'doesn't do anything', and yet they can still be very captivating experiences just from exploring the environment and watching what happens.
@@kiasia3219 I think what was also at play was that my characters didn't really have any motivation...like, at all. I did plan on a motivation for them, but I hadn't written it out yet so it just looked like they were doing whatever for the sake of whatever. I think these kinds of stories still generally need the protagonist to have an explanation for why they make the decisions they do- Why they have to interact with the environment in the first place.
Pacing, rythm, and tempo can all be traced back to theater writing where they meant different things. I find that if I put myself in the place of a musical writer I can contextualize them better but they're really too antiquated.
I think "rhythm" is still useful because it refers more to how pleasing a sentence is to read. "Flow" I tend to think of as a matter of ideas: How well does one sentence's ideas flow into the next? I also call this "logical progression."
Certainly you can have exceptionally tight writing, from a thematic, characterization and plotting perspective, but every single one of your sentences could suck to read.
Same thing as with lenght. "Too long" is a bit nonsensical in and of itself as a criticism. There is nothing inherently wrong with a certain runtime. It would be far more useful to be told why certain parts are maybe more drawn out and not as interesting as others by comparison. That advice you can use to restructure the story to flow better. Instead people talk as if you can just slash ten minutes off a rough cut and it'll be better automatically, no matter how or why, just because it's shorter. Anytime I felt a film was "too long" it was always more about the level of engagement I had with it at any given point. Like it could be fixed by using that same time differently, instead of just having less time.
Also, if your film is very long, find some natural break points to put in intervals. An audience with a full bladder will be too focused on that to engage with the climax.
With really long stories, it's best to convert them to a mini-series, rather than a movie.
Too long is definitely a fair criticism lol
i'm usually pretty slow to check out your shorter vids, but this one was laser focused to my interests. i've *never* understood what pacing is and have long considered it to be an confusing, multifaceted mismash of a bunch of different if related things
like 'writers block'
I find this very interesting. My understanding of pacing has always been that it’s a means of communicating the overall structure of a story via reader + my own (writer) experience, because it just… made sense?? So I guess for me, what I got from this is that not everyone will see it that way. Generally I’m the one who’s picking critique apart from someone else, in which case it’s fine, but not knowing could have led to critical miscommunications down the line, so it’s great to know anyway.
The reason for my understanding is Hello Future Me’s stuff on pacing, which tackles all (or at least many) of those structural issues that contribute to it.
I’d also argue that pacing is valuable as a writer’s term, we just need to make it more widely understood that it means “there’s something going on with this scene/etc. that’s making it feel fast/slow in a way that doesn’t support the narrative intentions for said scene”. There are enough issues pacing points too that we might not be able to figure out what’s off beyond that. Sometimes it isn’t even that the things happening on the surface are structured wrong, maybe it’s perfect, but lacking subtext! It’s so situational that pacing may still be a valuable blanket statement. But again, only if we treat it as such.
The computer background is the same as a subway surfers clip under a TikTok, it’s like acupuncture for the brain
As a game designer, when I'm playtesting and feedbacking, I'm constantly feeling like, yeah "the pacing of this is bad", and then certainly I'll get into more detail about whether there's too little development in a level, or too many things being thrown at the player all at once (I'm guessing this is a far more common occurrence in games than how you describe the rare rushed story). I think this criticism is fair, that we can find much more detailed ways of explaining our problem with a piece of media than just saying "bad pacing".
One thing I find contradictory with what I learned from people w/ a lot more experience, and what I feel for myself, is how to provide that feedback in a non-prescriptive way. It sounds like you suggest getting to what you see as the core issue (5:10) , though I was taught more to express what I'm feeling during play, and if it's clear what's making me feel that way, eg "this enemy moves really erratically and it makes me feel frustrated and unprepared", that can be valuable. I often found that people with a bit of media literacy (especially gamers playing games), *think* they know the source of the problem- "this enemy is really annoying to deal with, you should make it more obvious how they are going to move", but they *very rarely* understand the whole picture, or the intention of the designer, or even what solutions are possible or make sense in the design/computing space. Thus, that's what I learned and usually try to practice- rather than trying to engineer a solution for them, focus first on describing your experience, and then possibly why you think that is happening. If it's engaging / disengaging for you, or any multitude of other emotions, reactions, that's up to the designer to make a determination about if it's wanted / acceptable.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your advice, I think either method could be useful in the right hands, but I definitely know with games that problems are misdiagnosed by players and testers way more often than not, and a good designer should be able to take information about feelings surrounding an interaction / time in the game and create solutions when they're not working as intended. Anyway, cool video & thanks for your brevity and clarity! :)
In your talk about tone:
I think us writers get very caught up on how other people feel, but its for the wrong reasons. When you grow a story to invoke a specific emotion, you can plan for that emotion. You can build a tragedy around its own feeling. So when people say they found it inspiring you look at them and are confused. It does mean you failed to convey your emotion, but it also means the reader drew their own emotion out of it.
I think, to boil down what I just said, writers try to bring specific emotions out, but when they see someone draw their own, they think they've failed. In reality, though the story might not be as potent for it, the emotion drawn out is still a win.
Pulling any heart strings is a success, but the further you pull them the better
Intriguing but not something necessarily constructive for fellow storytellers. What you're saying is just a notch above "As long as I made you feel something...'. Well true but not the reaction intended.
If you're writing a horror (for example) and it isn't scary, you HAVE failed.
Under the context of creating a story for horror, you succeeded in the sense you created it and it does exist. However, that's the starting goal (getting it done), while the new (ultimate) goal is to successfully translate what you intended however you intended.
An example scenario:
A young boxer wants to go pro and eventually become a champion. He successfully becomes a pro boxer at 20 years old. 6 years later, he's gearing up for the fight of his career; the one that will make him champion... Although he loses the fight so he doesn't become a champion. At this and only this point in time, the apt assessment would be he indeed became pro (start goal) but failed to become champion (ultimate goal). He ultimately failed BUT didn't "totally fail (which would be failing to become champion as well as a pro boxer at all)". There is difference between "ultimately failing" and "totally failing".
Your line of thinking on this would react to that ultimate fight where he fails to become champion; something along the lines of "Well, he didn't fail because he's still a pro boxer".
Yes, he is a pro boxer but that is not the ultimate goal, it's not the context we're operating under. The good news is he's only 26 now and he still has time to become a champion.
That also translates to the original conversation; ppl still have the chance to try again and not only create something that invokes an emotional response, but to create something that invokes an emotional response that was intended.
@@browniebear That's all well and good, but what if the audience just doesn't buy it, straight up refuses to buy it? Subjectively, I don't like horror genre. There is no way for me to like what passes for horror genre, because I find most of its scenarios stupid and contrived, and some kind of perverse indulgence with no deeper meaning to it. I will not watch horror movies, I will not indulge in horror movies, I will laugh and the nonsense in horror movies that is mechanically necessary for them to work. I am full on "if this story is horror first, it's garbo" hater and that's that.
You know when horror works for me, though? When it's something that just happens in a larger story. Sudden tragedy, unsettling encounter, the grinding futility of war, grim darkness of a bleak world where the horror is just consequence of its setting, rather than the destination. That's when I'm all in.
So what's the difference? Why do I have this arbitrary cut off? Because for one, most people are like this - they have their own subconscious or conscious biases where even the most expertly woven scenario just won't work! They just refuse to be immersed into whatever is happening and that's that - and that's not the fault of the text, it's just them not liking it.
But for the other, and more important factor - what I outlined is a scenario where an author portrays many things at once. It's not just a horror story. It's not just OHH SPOOKY SKELETONS NOOO. The spooky skeletons just happen as part of something larger and the author trusts in their storytelling enough to not care if I feel the specific emotion at the specific time. I can get spooked out by the skeletons, I can think they're cool, I can just feel nothing - the author is 100% cool with me feeling whatever, because he's not some weird control freak trying to soothe his ego.
People will dislike and drop your writing for absolutely arbitrary, petty, nonsensical reasons. Accept it and don't try to ascribe any deeper meaning to it. Just focus on making the coolest stories for you as the audience - and you'll find an audience that wants the same things that you do, guaranteed.
@@thesunthrone I understand what you're saying and contrary to what you've seemingly preconceived I agree with most of what you're saying. By no means was I championing shallowness and surface level work, I detest that. That's also not what genre is. Genre is an approximated categorization not a total summation.
I'm a proponent of the notion "The most important audience member is you, the creator". You shouldn't gear towards an audience.
However I simultaneously believe there are avenues to objectively create specific tones and emotions. That's why genres like Tragedies, Underdog, Inspiring exist. Most ppl will follow the curve, most people look at Anakin Skywalker as a fallen angel of sorts who eventually redeemed himself (example). I'm not saying cater to the audience, I'm not saying service the audience. I'm saying you can maneuver the audience (the majority tho not everyone, but those that aren't, for whatever reason, are exceptions, the minority) tho ultimately you as the creator is still the most important audience member.
@@browniebear I agree to an extent. It is good to understand what makes a tragedy tick, sure - but trying to engineer a specific emotion is pointless simply because people react differently to the same event. So instead of trying to make the audience feel a certain way, focus on showing how the characters feel. One of them feels sad, other feels angry, third one feels disappointed because for some reason, they feel nothing at all yet they feel like they should.
A personal example to illustrate that point. I've been to a fair few funerals, and none of them has felt the same - in some I've been stoic and wondering if I'm weird for not feeling sad, in others I've felt tears in the corners of my eyes at the "right times", and in some I've just completely broken down mid-sentence at a random point of it, and started shaking from grief, because all of a sudden a song played that made that loss fully real - something that very few in the room understood the significance of.
Why? Because each of those funerals was different - each goodbye was to a person of different intimacy and relationship, each had some certain points that made them feel normal (in the case of the elderly, 95 is a good age to go) versus absolutely tragic (26) - and it's not so much about the age as what those people meant. Saying goodbye to a grandma who had long accepted the inevitable and to whom death was the end of suffering is one thing. Saying goodbye to a best friend with whom you talked just few days ago about him finally getting his courage together to pursue his dream? Words fail to describe how it hurts - so why even bother trying?
So don't bother trying to capture an emotion, because it's something intangible anyway. Write what those around the situation feel and let that evoke emotions within them. Show what the situation means to them, whatever it is - tragedy, comedy, triumph or despair. It'll feel way more personal to the audience, because you let them feel what they feel.
Now, there are certain ways to reinforce an emotion if it's a theme - with some kind of reoccurring pattern, whether a description in a novel, or a certain leitmotif in an audiovisual work. But even then, you are not reinforcing something you want the audience to feel - you are reinforcing something they feel on their own.
@@thesunthrone Maybe I've just skedaddled around this but I'm not maneuvering to depict an emotion *for* the audience. I'm maneuvering for the story so it may be told as best as I see it. The story *should* occur how the 'creator's self as the storyteller' and the 'creator's self as the most important audience member' both see fit.
I believe there are things like emotions that can be *objectively* depicted and as a consequence the audience (most of them) will have no choice but to respond and recognize, if the storyteller has done their job well. Some won't respond/recognize (for whatever reason) but as I've said, those are exceptions and every rule has its exceptions. MOST people will follow suit whether voluntary or voluntary but that is not the goal, it is a consequence of the goal; objectively depict emotions/events however the story requires according to the storyteller.
My bad, I've not been concise.
There was one part of me that was fearing that you'd go full "pacing issues just means you have to rethink everything from the ground up don't be such a baby" but I'm glad I watched this.
I really like that you draw attention to something important - that people have a very limited vocabulary, and it's up to you as a writer (and really, any professional in general) to figure out what the layman means with their vague and sometimes even contradictory feedback.
The fact that they're conflicted and contradict themselves, that instead can indicate false promises that gave them an impression that it's gonna be this one thing, but then ends up being something else. Promises are very important to keep an eye on, it's what really makes or breaks you as a storyteller. If you promise something, you better have it happen in one way or another - not necessarily because you need to mind the audience's feelings, but, well, why did you promise stuff you weren't going to follow through, anyway? Unless your story is intended to be a con job, better just cut the thread entirely.
the idea of taking the criticism but not the “fixes” people suggest is very similar in board game design, it’s where i first heard that advice. and it makes so much sense, playtesters or readers won’t fully get what you’re trying to accomplish, and more often than not they have no idea how to design good games/write good screenplays.
Thank you. I needed this video. I've been working on 2 different stories. One for an indie game I am working on and the other for an animation wondering why the pace feels off.
This is a video that I disagreed with when it started, but now i see your point. I disagreed because I didnt understand the scenario you were taking about at first. The thing is, i feel like pacing can be completely valid and useful feedback, but only when it's expanded upon by the critic. "I feel like the pacing is too fast," should be followed by a more specific explanation like, "You dont give enough time or thought to the visuals and environment, not giving the reader enough information to understand the setting. If this is an supposed to be an old and worndown house, maybe consider describing the tattered curtains, the creaky floorboards, or the dust and mildew smell that burns at your nose." Thats actually spefiic, and gives the writer somewhere to go. (Inspired by a true critique Ive gotten)
Another youtuber recommended your channel to me and I literally just binged a bunch of your videos last night coming up with lesson plans for my creative writing students. It's amazing seeing the cogs turning in their heads while they have epiphanies about their own writing. We all really enjoy how easy these are to digest and create exercises with. Thanks a bunch for posting these!!
Who was this TH-camr, I must thank them
@@localscriptman grizzlyplays! (nate)
@@localscriptman its probably not this guy www.youtube.com/@TH-camJulien
@@nuggetsfan231 true
Pacing is completely subjective. Scenes that are too slow for one person can be too fast for another and vice versa. There's no such thing as perfect pacing and even defining good and bad pacing varies wildly from person to person.
When I get a "pacing" critique, it's usually because the person thinks they read a novel, instead of a screenplay, so they have an issue with figuring out the timing, how much time it actually takes for those two things to transpire, which they think occur immediately after each other, only because those things are consecutive parts of a sequence.
Then they look at an actual visual representation and what they feel feels rushed in writing is suddenly sluggish and dragged out in action by comparison, because I do not waste two pages in a screenplay to describe all the visuals.
Haven’t watched the entire video yet, but this came at the right time. Needed it for my intro. Just felt too long. Thanks script man.
Edit: i have watched the video and read my story again. I realized that the reason my pacing is considered slow is because of the filler you mentioned, the moments where a scene/lines do not pertain to the theme/plot/characters. I’m going to find a way to fix this and make sure that the story flows without being stopped by this filler. Thank you!
"... lack of falling action."
I'm one of the few who apparently writes at breakneck speed and doesn't slow. Also, I don't notice it. I've taken my novels to multiple professional editors, critique partners, and others. None of which could tell me WHAT was off, or even articulate why they felt that way. Just that it was off. Paid a dude 50 bucks to read it and he was the first person to give me that exact feedback. I guess I'm just in a minority, but I wish I'd seen this kinda advice earlier.
"Have a spine."
Thanks for the reminder, man. Will do.
"have a spine" Thank you!! I'm so tired of every movie, tv show, and video game catering to people without attention spans by putting meaningless, flashy things on screen that destroy momentum and stakes because they were too scared to let a long, quiet moment happen in case they lost their audience. This is especially true of the beginnings of most things recently. They feel the need to start in media res, or with some big setpiece, because god forbid you build tension over time.
I mean, when I talk about pacing, I'm absolutely thinking about it from the perspective of the audience because, honestly? It's not my show. If I only have 180 characters in which to give my opinion, I'm not going to comb over every single wasted line or point out every unnecessary scene. I'm just gonna say 'pacing bad' and move on.
The show's already out at that point. They aren't gonna change it. Unless I'm trying to teach a friend how not to write, further detail isn't warranted.
Maybe I'd feel different if I was someone's beta reader, but I'm just not in that space.
I feel like I already knew this advice but, real talk, that just means I know you're right. Subbed.
i’ve been a storyteller all my life, but your videos make me feel like i’m a capable of being a Writer. thanks for sharing!
I have truly experienced the "tone" comment when i was trying for comedy
There were times when i tried to "write" funny and times were i had no intention of humor
Interestingly no one saw the effort, the only parts my readers found funny was when the characters were genuinely being themselves, mocking each other, being confused or just saying weird sh!t in character
I have one strong comdey work wich i did not once try to be funny in it
My character was just enough amount of stupid and i let him make his own decisions
As much as tips and tools can help us in the process of improvement - which we need while we are not experienced enough to convey our characters perfectly - in the end a good story is when we put our characters in different situations and let them run around, whatever "mood", "vibe" or "tone" those scenes give, is fully on the readers
And trust them a little
They will feel it when the time comes, no effort needed
I still do have bad pacing though it goes with my mental health effecting my plots and writing
Can't believe I'm finding this channel almost immediately after a personal epiphany on storytelling. This is exactly what I needed to reinforce my understanding.
I love when this man gives us great writing/editing advice and then rizzes us up at the end (6:44)
Man, I just love these videos so much. They're indescribably helpful, and hold my attention so well. It's just great advice every time.
For this one, I'm DEFINITELY one of those audience members who complains about pacing. In a lot of my reviews on letterboxd - especially superhero films - I talk about bad pacing. So this video was very eye-opening into why those things happen and what it really means, both for me as an audience member and an amateur writer
you saying the words "attention span" while my eyes were getting dizzy from starring at that background had the same vibe as if you had said my name
Thanks for putting that screensaver on the background for my broken attention span
Gosh you are a fucking genius. Also, that screensaver was great. It kept me on the video rather thsn finding constant stimulation somewhere else.
Also you're ridiculously funny. Thanks for the awesome video.
Good point. Its important to remember people also have different taste, so no matter how you write a story its not gonna fit for everyone. But there could still be someone else that loves the way its written. One needs a good balance between researching and listen to critizism, and NOT listening to critizism too blindly, and actually make your own choices. It also dont need to be perfect to be good
Great advice! Pursuing efficiency helped me to pull off the first draft of my second theater play in a matter of days. Now, I'm at the "it's too fast!" end of the pacing spectrum, but I've got material to cover maybe an hour or so (don't have enough experience to really tell), and it tells EVERYTHING.
Like, literally... The driving question of the main narrative is "what if contradiction and tension is the driving principle of the universe?" and the side narrative's question is "are things basically always the same or do they change?", and I narrate them through Eve's temptation in paradise, except that god and the serpent are bad cop and good cop, the serpent being the good cop trying to get Eve out of her abusive relationship with god who does bad things to her until she runs out of excuses for him. Oh and yeah, good cop, bad cop means that they're actually playing for the same team. In fact, they turn out to be identical.
My hot take is that Dune 2, a very cool and great movie, had actual pacing issues. I didn't think that the beginning was too slow objectively, and I enjoyed feeling the tension of every important plot point, and the sense that nothing was cheap or easy.
I also didn't think that act 3 and the "final battle(s)" were too fast objectively. But SUBjectively, It felt like things suddenly sped up a lot near the end of the film and it felt dissonant compared to everything else. Kind of like 2 miles were covered in the movie, but one of them took twice as long as the other.
Yeah, Obviously it makes sense for a fight itself to feel fast and violent, but even all of the leadup and connective tissue just seemed rushed.
that ending gave me secondhand embarrasment through the monitor
I love the rebrand, tbh “local” was kinda hard to remember and hard to find in the search bar but “LocalScriptMan” is soo much more memorable. Love the new style.
Damn this is a very interesting take on pacing that I haven't anywhere. Great work as usual.
I think it's a pretty common view. Personally, I always translate "poor pacing" in reviews to movies, novels and other narrative-focused fiction to "the person who is saying this wasn't invested into the scene/character/work for whatever reason or a multitude of reason, they were taken out of the story and thought that it or some parts of it were boring, bland, uninspiring".
Bill Hader said something along the line of -- "Listen to people when they tell you they feel something is wrong. Do not listen to their suggestions."
What I have seen is that if the pacing feels slow - it is often a sign to slow significantly down. A book where then that happened, then that, then that... can easily feel slow. But a book that dares to stop and smell the flowers can feel so much richer that we don't notice that the pacing is slower
Was not expecting the peptalk at the end lol, gonna go get it done I guess 😂
i love how you articulate the shit that floats around in my brain that i don't have the words to articulate myself
God yeah, like when the audience instantly jumps to criticise a scene for being 'slow' or 'boring', and never once stopping to consider that perhaps that's what the writer is fully intending for. Like the pie scene in A Ghost Story. I believe it is down to this pre-conceived notion that anything out there, or potentially boring won't sell. But surely the opposite is true? Radical authenticity is far more valuable than merely following in the footsteps of everyone who preceded them.
Ah yes, the writer is fully intending a shit ass scene...
Idk why I clicked on this video, but yikes. A bunch of smarmy wannabe writers here.
everytime i felt something was wrong with my own writing I kinda just assumed it was pacing, and most of my friends couldn't see it, this kinda puts it in perspective on why I'm arriving there, its just weird that I'm doing it for my own writing
It feels odd being this early, but hey! The screensavers make for such a distinctive feel - somehow, you’ve managed to keep that balance of laid-back old-school nostalgia and a no-nonsense present moment, even after this transition to mostly filming yourself rather than collecting clips to edit together.
I like the way you approached this one, just as delightfully information dense as ever. The symptom-vs-problem point is really sharp, and it could apply to a lot of other situations. Really, everything here fits together smoothly. You also do a lot of good describing these storytelling features and concepts without too much jargon - which may be partly from the way you learned, or the specific way you’re trying to help us as viewers and fellow writers, or both. It’s a real sign of competence when you can explain a concept well enough to not just teach one-on-one but also give advice in a video like this.
Oh, one last thing, I do 100% agree that feelings are always inexact, and it’s never going to help arguing with feelings (this applies even in the rest of life). It’s amazing what a little extra care can do for problem-solving.
Now, I need to sleep, so I won’t ramble any longer.
Much love to you too, brother!
I just earlier today had this talk with one of my friends who said that Oppenheimer's biggest flaw was the Pacing, thank you for putting this into such clear vernacular.
As someone else said in the comments, pacing is subjective. For people with low attention spans, the movie was too slow. For people who wanted to take in every information from every scene, it was too fast. You can't please everyone, you can just find what works best for your story.
Thank you for this video @LocalScriptMan I'm writing a novel and I have been really struggling with its pacing every chapter is divided into five sections with a for ten chapters what you said about pacing and flow being like a fever and the problem is about getting the storytelling down really helped me see where I went wrong.
Also I feel I need to mention my novel is about someone with Cerebral Palsy who goes into his imagination when he is alone as a child and even though he is on his own he feels completely in control so his environment bends to his imagination, if he wants to go into a castle under siege from Monsters he can, if he wants to go into an enchanted Forest with his teddy bear Junior he can. But when he goes to school he finds he's afraid of being away from home and his family.
But when he gently nudged into making friends he feels comfortable showing them his imaginary worlds, but only can make the scope of his imagination small at first bringing small figurines to life and so forth. But when he becomes a teenager he starts to experience certain physical changes that he doesn't understand, or the fondness he has for his best friend. so when he finally is on his own again he starts to regress mentally back into the imagined state of childhood but his adolescent longing becomes warped and slightly twisted versions of themselves.
I've been working on it for years and I'm still stuck in a few places is my plot dreadful or am I just lacking confidence ?
Thanks again I have subscribed to your channel and all the best
👍😊
Oh, I like you. Solid advice in a short video. I'm gonna stick around.
The Windows XP screensaver might be the one of the best background choices I've seen.
Respect for the minikit collab at 4:44
Ngl... bro is BEAUTIFUL
I like your brutal honesty
edit:
you're also inspiring
Another awesome video!! Writing my own script right now and your entire channel has been a treasure trove of advice, please keep up the great work!
You always put these so well. Thank you for this video, as always.
FIRST OF ALL! WE LOVE YOU TOO!! YOu're THE best!!
Love this video too..... good call. :)
I've been told by my players that my adventures I run are "very well paced" and I don't even know what that means.
But this definitely clears up some coinfusion. They're using a "readers" word to say that "hey, the encounters are good and not too confusing or badly done" or something like that.
Thanks again. Appreciate your great insights. :)
I have never tried to write a story but for some reason these videos are just soo interesting. Thank you cool writer dude
Alien emoji will be missed
This video felt more causal and conversational than you're other ones, and I really liked that! Great advice as always, and I appreciate that you didn't try to pull out your simple message into a thirty-minute essay like I've seen a lot of other writing channels do.
Pacing is a balancing act of weighing importance. If its empty of content it feels too fast, if you don't give things the time their weight implies they need also. If you give something to much emphasis, reiterations or over explaining or overexagerations, or even just lengthy descriptions can make it feel too slow. You want the amount of time and effort for a scene you make to match the importance it has in the narrative. The favorite color of the character would be said in passing if at all but a sentimental item they carry would be described with all the meaning to it, its history, depending on the weight it has of course. It depends. Good luck story telling!
This was extremely motivating and clarifying. Keep at it Local.
Was trying to find your Avatar video since your rebranding and all I get is other videos about why avatar is good or some shit, thank the lord I found you either way 🎉
The thing I love the most about your videos is I find that much of your advice feels close to home to me as a lot of it is things I couldn't bring to words until now. I feel its the same for a lot of people here too
Old school windows screen saver in the background, big ups. Liking the rebrand, and always enjoy listening to your takes on these topics. I don't disagree. Pacing is an interesting subject. It's something I find almost impossible to fully evaluate in my own work, because I'm never really able to read it the way I would read something I have no creative part in.
I've never really had much contact with writing stories but I love learning in all kinds of different fields, and your videos give me that terrifying yet exciting feeling of getting just far enough into a subject area that you are beginning to get a sense of the vastness of skills, tools and knowledge that is to be found and learned there. I love consuming stories but actually creating them is so enticing.
Finally seeing results, thank you so much. You have been so helpful to me and many others.
Oh Danny boy
The pipes wallpaper is calling 🥲
I've been consuming writing advice type videos for years, so it's rare that I find new perspectives that I've never thought of or seen before.
But somehow, pretty much every video you've released so far has opened up new possibilities for me and my approach to writing.
This is super useful content. Pacing is something I have received as feedback and never really understood. But as you mentioned, I had to translate what this actually meant- a symptom of a larger problem... Thank you for taking the time to create this!
This was a great video, thanks for making it. It really opened my eyes to this “disease” as your refer to it.
"I believe in you! I love YOU...............................................................................Okay, goodbye." ❤