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The Great Tension in Pacing

Halloween Movie Poster by Global Panomara/Flickr

Writers, you probably don’t pay attention to this aspect much, but it is important, especially to my fellow horror companions. This aspect is pacing.

When you edit the story, you usually focus on the prose, the characters, and the plot, but a vital element which makes how all of these parts of the story move well with each other is the speed: character development must catch up with the plot to not let the readers get lost, and the prose needs to be in a specific speed to evoke particular emotions.

In my reflection of the flow in time, my mind recalled the horror and thriller movies of the old age and the modern age. I then noticed that some storytellers blindly tended to rely on the fast pacing to create the sense of thrilling, while the slow pacing was deeply underrated in the genre. This fact was understandable because fear accompanied terrifying reactions like fast heartbeats, quick breaths, or overwhelming caution. However, as proved by the innovative works of the horror genre, the slow pacing could be utilized to generate fear. This slow pacing might not generate a sudden execution of horror but could inflict the nightmare into the audience’s minds effectively.

Overused Thrilling Scenes

In the old eras of movies, before the technique of jump scarce was invented, horror movies ejected no true fear into only audience; the word “horror” only accompanied movies with goofy werewolves and playful skeletons, instead of the horrified enemy. Then, a short film, with no budget for expensive makeups or costumes, used the slow pacing and haunting atmosphere to create fear; compared to other movies of its era, it was much scarier.

Now, in the present day, the fast pacing aspect gets corrupted and loses its value as a tool to scarce the audience. Evidence could be seen in famous but terrible movies like Saws V, The Haunting in Connecticut, The Nun, and many other horror movies. The major reason why these movies are terrible is because they only depend on many jump scarces. Jump scarces are not terrible, but the problem is that the film producers only forget about plot, characters, settings, and other essential elements of a story. However, many people still watch these movies despite knowing that they’re terrible because the purpose of horror is to scarce the audience, not to create an impactful story. For that reason, modern audience should be more selective of their choices to improve the horror genre.

Good Ones

Jump scarces and fast pacing can be in good use, and their purpose must be clear, which is to create tension in critical moments of the story, instead of everywhere from start to finish. An example is Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell Tale Heart, which uses the fast pacing to dive deep into the narrator’s madness. The readers must notice that although the short story could be summarized within in a few sentences, it still consist of long descriptive writing to feature the madness clearly with the fast pacing; Poe’s unique style is shown in this passage, fast, quick, and maddening:

“No! They heard! I was certain of it. They knew! Now it was they who were playing a game with me. I was suffering more than I could bear, from their smiles, and from that sound. Louder, louder, louder!”

For films, we have The Conjuring. This movie contains a lot of jump scarces(most of them are pseudo jump scarces). Despite this large quantity, the director and screenwriter manage to keep the plot consistent because as seen throughout the movie, the jump scarces are temporarily displayed while focusing on the relationship of the victim’s family. The contrast successfully creates a satisfied plot for the audience. While writing a horror story, the author must always remember to keep the important storytelling aspects such as characters and plot before paying attention to the ability to scarce the audience, and the best question that they could ask is: “Why am I writing this as a horror story?”—fear must remain with a clear purpose to improve the story.

Do It Slowly

There are many benefits of slow pacing in a thrilling or horror story. First, it generates feeling for the execution of fear maliciously. In Midsommar, the executoin is only foreshadowed slowly by the weird activities of villagers and is completed in the ending scene. This process of inflicting fear, despite being long, creates a haunted feeling within the audience after the ending. As shown by this example, putting fear everywhere around the story is not always the best method because it can be repetitive and finally becomes boring. Building the fear slowly would create anticipation within the audience to read more of the story and keep them in excitement until the execution. When it is completed in the ending, the feeling of satisfaction is granted for those who faithfully stick to the story, making it memorable.

Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw is another case. The story is about a mistress who has the job of caring for two children. Throughout the middle and the introduction of the plot, haunted visions are shown to build a mysterious atmosphere, haunting at the same time. The readers then feel the excitement of discovering the truth and the outcome of the protagonist’s character development despite the slow pacing. The ending then comes when the mistress makes a terrible mistake as a result of the pain, stroke down by the human’s vulnerable nature.