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Writing Tips: Variety, White Space, Pacing, Conflict and PONR

Written by: Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Article Overview: Learn about five structural devices used in writing--variety, white space, pacing, conflict and point of no return. Using these elements will make your work easier to read and more exciting.

Writing Tips: Variety, White Space, Pacing, Conflict and PONR

There are five structural devices in writing a piece of fiction or nonfiction that are sometimes overlooked. If you keep them in mind, your work will flow with ease.

1. Variety of style is necessary in any work. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, there must be a variety of information told in different ways to keep the reader interested.

In non-fiction, variety might be created by using narrative, description, facts or stories and then bullets to separate other information.

In fiction, variety is used by adding description, setting, dialogue (interior and exterior) and action. Readers need a change to keep them interested. Longwinded narrative causes the average reader to skip, scan and be bored. Using too much narrative means you are telling the story.

You want to show the story. Better yet, you want your characters to tell the story through their actions, words and thoughts.

2. Using white space helps the reader process the information in the story/work, gives their eyes a break and keeps them interested. Look at each page as if it were a work of art.

Some sentences will have more impact on their own.

Other sentences need more information and will evolve into a long paragraph of vital information. Remember that anything non-vital should be cut out. Vary sentence structure and length. And keep in mind that the longer the paragraph, the more chance that someone will skip it. Our eyes tend to naturally look for white space.

And the sentences closest to the white space are the ones most remembered.

You can also gain white space by interspersing narrative with dialogue. Dialogue is a way for your characters to tell the story and for the reader to see the character. It is also a form of action, and action not only moves the story along but makes the reader want to keep reading.

3. Pacing is also very important. If something is happening in a leisurely pace, you can emphasize this by having long, drawn out sentences in a lyrical prose.

If something is happening quickly, then run! Let your sentences punctuate. Short and choppy. But don’t overuse fragmented sentences in a row, or punctuation like exclamation marks. Keep colons and semi-colons for non-fiction, or if used in fiction, use very sparingly.

Pace your events so that something important happens in every chapter. A good test is to read the first chapter, then skip the next and read the third. If you don’t need the information in the second chapter, if it doesn’t reveal something important, then cut it.

4. If possible, include a conflict in every chapter. And you don’t have to resolve it in the same chapter. Conflict helps to increase tension, and that increases the pacing.

5. Use the ‘point of no return’ as a hook. ‘Point of no return’ (PONR) is a twist, where something happens to a character and they make a decision that you (the reader) knows will affect the outcome of the story. If we removed that element, the story would be flat and would not move in the same direction. There are often many of these in one story. And they work exceptionally well if used at the end of a chapter as a hook to make the reader keep reading.

Think of the movie The Brave One with Jodie Foster. Even if you haven’t seen it, you probably know the general gist. A woman and man are beaten in a park. The man dies and the woman goes on a rampage of revenge.

The first point of no return is where they decide to walk in a dark park and go through a tunnel, even when something suggests that all is not right.

The next PONR occurs when the woman buys a gun. What do we know will happen? We know she’s going to try to shoot someone.

The next PONR is when she shoots the first person. Now we know that someone will be looking for her. Will she be caught? Will she be locked away? Will she die?

In every work of fiction there is at least one episode of PONR. It can be used in comedy, romance, mystery, horror, sci-fi, etc.

Using these 5 structural elements will keep your work interesting and keep those pages turning, and that is what a writer wants most of all. When writing fiction, there are some elements that most writers find confusing. One is POV (point of view) and another is dialogue and the proper use of dialogue tags and beats. If you’re writing fiction, you need to understand these. Read about them online or in books like Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. 

©2007 Cheryl Kaye Tardif

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Article Tags: bullets, dialogue, different ways, leisurely pace, lyrical prose, narrative description, non fiction, nonfiction, paragraph, sentence structure, sentences, vital information, white space, work of art, writing fiction



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