CARL HIAASEN: I think pacing depends, to a large degree, on what's happening in your story at the time. Obviously, if there's a pursuit going on, or obviously, if there's action taking place, you're going to want it to move crisply, quickly, because your readers are dying for that to happen. If you're in a car chase, don't spend five paragraphs telling me about the cigarette butts in the car after it. Nobody gives a rat's ass about that. Get to the chase, as they say. I think that, on the other hand, when you're getting to know a character, and the character himself becomes a mystery, and you have to step step out of the story for a few minutes and talk about that character, then it's not wasted time. And there's nothing wrong with slowing the pace, because readers are wondering the same thing. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? Who's this new person on scene, or who she? Who is this person? And then you have a way of-- then the slowing down of the pace becomes, in a way, suspenseful. Then bingo, you're back in the story again later. And what you mentioned, alternating the lengths of sentences-- that's very important. You know, there's nothing worse than having the same cadence of a sentence hit your eye, any more than you would be listening to a speech, every sentence was the same. You'd nod off and go to sleep. It's the same way when the eye is picking it up off the page. The speed at which it's being read should reflect the pace of the story at the time. You don't want someone agonizing, just staring at a paragraph trying to figure out what it meant. You screwed up as a writer if someone needs a slide rule to figure out what you were just trying to say in that sentence. You haven't done your job. And I don't mean write for the lowest common denominator. I don't mean simplify and be simplistic. There are great writers who write in very simple language, and who tell stories inf fantastic ways without condescending, patronizing readers at all. One of the things about dialogue is that it's so easy, I've found, in reading popular fiction, people don't know how to get around the problems in their story. So what they do is they all of a sudden have a character give a two or three page dissertation, just a monologue, and explain well, how did the CIA get involved? And then you have some guy sitting in a diner in Washington, DC with a trenchcoat on, saying OK, I'll tell you how. And you let this schmo tell the-- that's lazy writing. You just-- how do we get around this? I know, we'll bring this character in, and he'll tell the whole story of how the CIA involvement. I mean, that's just plain out lazy writing. And people don't talk that way. If you open a book, and you see solid two or three pages of dialogue-- not even politicians talk that way. And again, you've failed your job as a writer. Because now, you're not telling the story. Now you've got, basically, a schmuck that you brought into tell the story, because you couldn't do it yourself. Show. Show as much as you can show, and as much detail as you can possibly gather out of your notebook, or in this case, in fiction writing, out of your head. That's all it is, is a notebook. We have the advantage in the newsroom of we come in from a story assignment, you flip open the notebook, and there's all the stuff that goes into the story. You've written it down. In fiction, the stuff is in your head. And you're really just sort of opening this invisible notebook in your head, and you're hoping everything's in there that you need. And it is, but you just have to work harder at it, and get it out. But it can be just as vivid, just as dramatic, and just as moving as the most sensational piece of journalism you've ever seen-- sensational in the good sense of the word. And I think that's the duty, is to bring all the senses of the reader-- everything that you put into the writing of that piece should be there for him or her when he's reading it.