Momentum in Writing

One of my co-workers invited me to a screening at "The Loft" this evening for the movie Serenity. Given that it's one of my favorite movies, I said yes. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to the Loft (I haven't, prior to this showing) but it's a little bit different from your normal theater experience. For one thing, there's a whole lot of "other stuff" that goes into the show, aside from just the movie, like a costume contest and a raffle. Initially I didn't mind, because, hey, whatever, it's an event, might be interesting.

Let me just say that if I didn't absolutely love Serenity and I mean, really, really love Serenity, I would have gotten up and walked out of the theater, which, incidentally, is why I'm writing about the experience on my writer's blog.
As I said, before the movie began, there was a costume contest and a raffle for some prizes. Proceeds went to charity, so okay, fine, whatever. The problem, however, is that while the event got off to a great start, the raffle went on far too long. It was unorganized, incoherent, and I swear I'm not exaggerating, they must have given away forty prizes.

The reason I'm talking about it is because the entire experience showed me how important it is for you to always have a grasp of momentum and how it affects your audience. As I said, the show started off well and going into the raffle, there was a lot of energy in the crowd. Had they kept it down to a short five or ten minutes, I don't think there would have been a problem. But it wasn't short and as we watched the same three people trudge up to the stage again and again to claim another poster, I began to reflect on just how important it is to know your audience's momentum. People were calling out to "start the damn movie" by the end of it, something I've never before witnessed.

As writers, we often run the risk of getting lost in doing something that we feel is important that, in reality, is detrimental to the momentum of the composition. One of the things that I constantly talk about both in my reflections and in my peer critiques is cadence, which I feel is one of, perhaps even the, most important aspects of good writing. However, cadence often refers more to the feel of your prose, the voice inherent to it; there's an almost musical connotation when we discuss cadence.

Momentum, on the other hand, is literally how interested your reader is at any given time. As you can imagine, it's critical to understand and develop a good pace to maintain momentum throughout your work. You don't want to have a great start get bogged down by meaningless details that are only important to you; you'll lose your reader before he or she makes it to the end.

Momentum is a tricky concept, because different people are going to react differently to your pace. Some will enjoy a quick leap at the beginning, while others prefer a build-up, a sort of gentle acceleration. Regardless of reader preference, however, one thing that's true in all cases is that any time you ignore momentum, any time you write in complete disregard to how the momentum is going, you run the risk of losing your reader. The peril of this situation was illustrated quite clearly as I saw people getting up and leaving the theater before the movie had even started, and I think that most of the ones who stayed, liked me, only did so because we knew the ending (the movie, in this case) was going to be enjoyable. That's problematic for one's writing, because chances are, the reader doesn't have the same guarantee that the ending will be worth slogging through, and if there's no promise of a pay-off, there's very little change you'll manage to get anybody to read your composition through to its conclusion.

In other words, momentum in writing is like gravity. It's the law and you have to obey it.