Bookreporter.com interviewed thriller writer Joseph Finder (“Buried Secrets”) and I wanted to share with you his thoughts on pacing:
Raymond Chandler's famous advice was, "When in doubt, send in a man with a gun." On my own computer monitor, I have a note that reads: "Surprise, reverse, reveal." Thrillers are like sharks: they have to keep moving, or they die. And I think pacing is the essential distinction between thrillers and other types of crime fiction. So I'm constantly asking myself, as I write and rewrite, "Is this moving fast enough?" A fatal error that many thrillers make, especially in exotic settings, is over-explaining. You have to learn how to relax and trust your reader, because part of the fun of reading a thriller is that effort to figure out what's going on when you don't have all the information. I do a lot of research for my books --- a lot --- and I figure research is like an iceberg: only 10 percent of what you know should ever be visible to the reader.
He also mentions relying on some early readers for feedback about problems with pace and admits it takes a fair amount of tweaking.
Another thing he does well is to ensure that you don’t need to have read the first book in the series in order to understand what’s going on and who’s who in the later volumes. At the same time he offers “cookies” (little revelations that make sense to people who have read the previous books) to reward loyal readers.
