A barista's throwaway line about pacing fixed my short story drafts

She said 'you're pouring too fast, let the cup fill slow' while I watched her pull a 4 minute espresso shot in Portland, and I rewrote my opening scene with that same patience, so has anyone else found writing advice hiding in completely unrelated jobs?

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milam423d ago

Whoa, hold on. I gotta push back on this. That barista line is cute but it's honestly terrible writing advice. Pacing in a story is not like pouring espresso, because readers don't have four minutes to sit and enjoy your slow drip. If I took that advice literally, my first chapter would be three pages of a character blinking and breathing and nobody would get past page one. I tried the whole "slow and patient" thing once for a thriller and it read like a nap, I ended up cutting the entire opening scene and starting mid-action just to get any tension going. Sometimes you gotta dump the whole cup on the floor and pour a new one fast, that's just how drafts work.