Every writer knows, or should know, how to pace an action scene in their story. Easy. It just takes impact words, short sentences, short paragraphs, and rapid-fire dialogue. It’s a piece of cake.

What about the transitional scenes? You know, the boring stuff.

First of all, if the characters are walking through the forest, do not examine each cricket, each leaf, each crack of a twig stepped on during the trek. Unless the snapping twig is important or the forest sounds suddenly stopping is an alert to the reader that something looms…

A little of that goes a long ways, and it is primed for that to be a stopping point for the reader to lay down the book. The reader probably isn’t that eager to get back to the story. There it sits for days, and days.

Oh no, no, no, no. After the setup that they are going into the forest, one can write that they disappeared into the underbrush and the canopy above blocked out the sunlight. Follow with something like, after walking for several hours they came to a clearing where they could set up camp.

I don’t care how many hours they walked, unless it is important to the story. Skip the minute details.

Embrace the transitions, but do not describe the dew on every. single. leaf. In classical music, for example, because the pieces are longer than modern music, listen to the transitions from fast and furious, to melodic interludes, then back to more robust, dynamic music.

The whole while, the conductor continues to move their wand and move the musicians to move the score forward. That’s what writers do, move the story forward.

Go for it. Move it.