Course Overview

Overview

You’re mid-draft. The pacing is off. You can feel it — the chapters drag, the scenes overstay, the energy collapses somewhere in act two. Six weeks of practical pacing work at three scales: scene-level (within scenes), chapter-level (across scenes), and act-level (across the whole draft). We give you tools to FEEL pace in your own draft — the read-aloud test, the scene economy audit, the cut-line drill — and the mechanics to fix what you find. By the end your draft moves. Six weeks. Thirty lessons. The deliverable is a faster draft. The reader’s pulse is the metric.

What’s inside

• 6 modules, 30 lessons + pacing templates — practical, three-scale, draft-applicable immediately
• Mindset Maven Test that names YOUR specific pace-flattening pattern
• 6 guided meditations averaging 10 minutes — paired to read-aloud and audit sessions
• Toolkit: the Three-Scale Pacing Audit + the Scene Economy Worksheet
• Lifetime access, unlimited retakes — every draft has new pacing problems
• Companion blog post per module — public, perfect for the writer at 60% with the pacing dying

Who this is for

• The screenwriter whose act two reads twice as long as it actually is
• The playwright whose scenes all hit the same length and same energy
• The novelist whose chapters are ‘fine individually’ and ‘somehow drag in sequence’
• The short story writer whose pieces are technically tight but feel slow at the read-aloud test

FAQs

Will this work for short fiction?
Mostly. The first two modules are directly applicable to short forms. Modules 3-5 are weighted toward longer forms; you can adapt them for short fiction with some thinking. If you’re a short fiction writer specifically, expect to do that adaptation work.

Is this the same pacing covered in BM-106 (Sagging Middle Rescue)?
Same principles, expanded. BM-106 covers pacing as part of a broader middle-rescue course; this course is six weeks specifically on pacing at three scales.

Does this work for interactive / non-linear narrative?
Yes — Module 2 covers the IF / game adaptation explicitly. The three-scale framework maps cleanly to scene-level, branch-level, and route-level pacing.

How will I know my pace is better?
Module 6 covers the reader’s-pulse test — a specific protocol for measuring whether the draft’s pace lands. The test is the metric.

What’s the ‘cut-line drill’?
A practice in module 3 where you cut every line that doesn’t earn its place in a scene. Most writers cut 30-40% of a scene on first pass. The drill is the load-bearing skill of pacing work.

Can I retake?
Yes. Unlimited. Every draft develops new pacing problems.

What one student said

★★★★☆

“Honest review: I bought this for short story pacing and the course material is weighted toward novel-and-screenplay pacing. The first two modules are still useful for short form (the read-aloud test, the scene economy audit), but I had to adapt modules 3-5 for stories under 8,000 words. Worked, but it took some thinking. Four stars because I want short-story-specific writers to know what to expect. The core pacing skills are still the best material I’ve found on this craft level.”

— Hilde N., short story writer (took it for short fiction)