Scene pace, urgency, momentum and tension: Why they’re different

Learn what pace, urgency, momentum and tension are and why they’re distinct elements of crime, mystery and thriller scenes, even though they often work together.

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In this post

• What scene pace is
• What urgency is
• What momentum is
• What tension is
• Why understanding the difference matters

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What is scene pace?

Pace is the speed at which readers move through the scene’s narrative. It can be fast, slow or somewhere in between.

A fast-paced scene doesn’t necessarily mean it’s full of action or full of movement at speed. For example:

• One fight scene might include lots of short, choppy movements like jabs, punches and kicks that each happen in less than a second, and yet the reader’s attention is drawn to each of those precise and specific actions. The drama is therefore high, the scene action-packed, but the pace is slower because readers have to move through the details of the narrative.

• Another fight scene might have a faster pace. Just a couple of blows land before one of the characters is out for the count. Readers therefore move quickly through the fight.

Nor does a slow-paced scene have to involve events that take place over a long passage of time. For example:

• Several hours, or even days or weeks, might be summarized in a sentence or two, so that readers move through the passage of time quickly.

• Equally, a character’s reflection on how upset they’re feeling and why might plausibly occur in their brain in a matter of seconds, but the space given to it on the page will be greater, and the reader will move at a slower pace through that narrative.

Tip for writers and editors
What matters is that the amount of description appropriately slows or speeds up how quickly readers move through the details.

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What is urgency?

Urgency is often confused with fast pacing, but I like to think of it in more specific terms – not in terms of speed, but in terms of a narrowing window of opportunity and the cost or stakes if a character fails to act in time.

​That doesn’t mean urgency won’t require speed on the character’s part. It might very well, but it’s not automatic. Speedy action could therefore be a consequence of an urgent deadline, but it might not be. It depends when the deadline is. For example:

• A character might need to evacuate a building within nine minutes because a bomb is timed to explode, threatening the lives of hundreds of people. The urgency is born from the nine-minute deadline and threat, not how fast the occupants hurtle out of the building or how panicked they are. 

• If the bomb-disposal crew arrive, the scene’s pace may slow so that readers home in and experience the clock counting down as the protagonist traces and snips multiple wires in a bid to deactivate the device. However, the urgency is still in play, because if they fail, they’ll die.

Tip for writers and editors
What matters is that readers understand what the cost will be if the character doesn’t achieve their goal in time.

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Want to explore further?
If you’re working on a scene's pace, urgency, momentum or tension in crime, mystery or thriller fiction, Line Editing for Crime, Mystery and Thriller Writers explores these topics in even more detail.

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What is momentum?

Momentum is another element that sometimes gets mixed up with speed. In fact, momentum is about forward direction, not how fast an action is being carried out.
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Key to momentum is cause and effect – something happens that causes another thing to happen. We experience momentum in our daily lives even in the most mundane of tasks. For example:

• I’m thirsty and cold.
• So I put my stove-top kettle on the hob.
• But the doorbell rings so I head down the hall and open the door.
• Because the kettle’s been left unattended, it begins to whistle shrilly, which makes the dog go bonkers.
• So I hurtle back up the hallway to the kitchen, trip over the dog and sprain my ankle.

And so, an initial pressure point – me being thirsty and cold – leads to a seven-hour wait in A&E. That’s momentum in action. (And a reason to get an electric kettle that switches itself off.)

The example above has lots of drama going on, just as there might be in a chase or escape scene, or during a fraught evacuation or interrogation. But momentum is key in even the quietest of scenes because it ensures that the scene’s changing and developing rather than remaining static.

Here’s a summary of a far gentler scene on pp. 72–3 of Tim Weaver’s No One Home (Penguin, 2019).

• David Raker, a private investigator, awakes from a dream at 2am. Because he dreams infrequently, he feels disoriented.
• So he gets up, goes to his desk and reviews photographs of nine missing people.
• But now that he’s fully awake, he decides to check the devices he’s recovered. The phones and tablets reveal little, though small details help him (and readers) understand a little more about the missing people’s lives.
• Because reviewing the information has been emotionally draining, and it’s so early in the morning, Raker retires back to bed.
• But he can’t settle, and he hears a noise in the corridor.
• So he investigates. The corridor is empty but he hears the noise again in his friend’s adjoining room.
• So he enters to discover that the noise he’d failed to identify was actually his friend crying.

It’s a gentle, slow-paced scene that moves from Raker’s initial waking and disorientation, through to professional curiosity, then alarm, then personal revelation. Each development in the scene has a causal effect on the next, so readers are always moving forward and learning something new, even if it’s a small detail or a changed emotion.  

Tip for writers and editors
What matters is that the scene progresses logically, regardless of how fast that progression occurs or whether or not there’s a deadline with a cost attached to not meeting it.

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What is tension?

Tension is apprehension or uncertainty about what might happen. Again, that tension might exist in a passage with a slow, deliberate pace that’s designed to draw readers’ attention to details, or a fast pace where a situation quickly escalates.

In the slow-paced Raker scene outlined above, there’s tension – first on account of Raker’s disorientation, then the unease he feels when he hears a noise he can’t explain. That tension resolves in the heartbreaking understanding that his friend is in emotional distress.

However, later in the book, we learn that Raker has been imprisoned underground for several weeks. The pace is fast – we learn how he’s used this time in the darkness to put the evidence together. Though his situation is grim, the tension is low because it’s evidential piecing-together.

But then a sliver of light appears, along with a rope. The pace slows as Raker, now out of reflective mode, focuses on his present dilemma – the rope might be a trap. He decides to climb anyway,  and readers experience his terror and disorientation as he discovers he’s in the middle of nowhere and someone is trying to shoot him. A game of cat-and-mouse ensues, followed by a fight scene.

​Throughout this extended sequence that covers several chapters, the tension is thick enough to cut, as a terrified Raker tries to thwart his attacker and stay alive.

Tip for writers and editors
What matters is that any certainty about the outcome is delayed. That keeps readers rooting for the protagonist and turning the page to find out what happens.

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Why understanding the differences matters

Understanding the differences helps writers diagnose why a scene feels rushed, static, flat or slow in the wrong places.

Details might need to be summarized quickly (fast pace) because they’re important for reader orientation, but that’s all. Equally, they might matter and the pace might need to slow, because without them, the issue is resolved too quickly and there’s no tension.

Details that don’t affect what happens next – that seem to arrive in a void – can leave readers feeling stranded, unsure why they’re accessing an important moment of reflection or backstory at this point in the scene. Whether the information is whizzed through or described with precision, there still needs to be cause and effect so that the reader moves forward logically (momentum).

Narrowing windows of opportunity (urgency) will determine the actions a character takes and when they take them, and while momentum needs to be intact, the pace and tension may ebb and flow.
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And uncertainty might last for only a short moment in a passage (as is the case in the first Raker example), or stretch out over separate chapters (as in the second Raker example).

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Summing up

Pace, urgency, momentum and tension can all work together, but they do different things.

Pace controls how quickly readers move through a scene, urgency narrows the characters’ window of opportunity, momentum keeps the scene moving forward through cause and effect, and tension creates uncertainty about what will happen.
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Use them together, but don’t treat them as interchangeable.

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Related resource

​Line Editing for Crime, Mystery and Thriller Writers
This practical handbook is for every writer and professional editor who wants to craft page-turning moments in crime, mystery, suspense and thriller fiction.

FIND OUT MORE

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About Louise Harnby

Louise Harnby is a line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in working with crime, mystery, suspense and thriller writers.

She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) and co-hosts The Editing Podcast.

• Get in touch: Louise Harnby | Crime Fiction & Thriller Editor
• Connect: X @LouiseHarnby, Facebook and LinkedIn
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• Discover: Resources for authors and editors

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