By 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize Shortlisted Authors
Self-editing is where a draft becomes a novel, and every great novel depends not just on what happens, but how it happens. It’s at this stage that writers shape not just the words on the page, but the experience of reading them, fine-tuning the pace, deciding what to reveal when, and building the scaffolding that holds the whole story together.
In this Mini Masterclass on self-editing, two authors shortlisted for the 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize share their advice on mastering pacing and structure. Nydia Hetherington explores pace as the music of a novel and how reading aloud can reveal its hidden rhythm, while Diana McCaulay reflects on the framework that underpins a story and the messy, essential process of shaping it into place.
Whether you’re revising your first draft or tightening a final manuscript, we hope you’ll find these insights both practical and inspiring.
Nydia Hetherington: Pacing
I think of pace and pacing as the musicality of a novel. And, like most things with writing, I’m firmly of the belief that this essential tuning can only be achieved once the story is on the page. After all, ‘all writing is editing’ as a wise author once said. For me, writing a first draft is like getting an orchestra together. I make sure the sheet music is in the correct time signature, properly distributed and that the instruments are in the right key. Finally, when the last full stop is typed (meaning the musicians are ready, comfy in their seats), we play. Now all those sentences and paragraphs can be fine-tuned and made to sing. It’s time to set the pace.
Sycorax was inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play full of poetry and actual songs, so I was very aware of pacing. The novel is purposefully lyrical. Still, like any good five-act drama or adventure story, the rhythm of the tale – the way it moves, swoops, pauses, hops and skips along – is all-important. Perhaps it’s due to my background in theatre and performance, but my top tip for getting pacing right is simple: Read Your Draft Aloud. It works! When the words on the page are in your mouth and you’re voicing them, mis-steps with pace become glaringly obvious. Again, this is the music of your book. The story won’t ‘sing’ if the pace is off.
Sycorax starts with a prologue. Unlike the main body of the novel, this prelude takes place on Shakespeare’s enchanted island. As such, I wanted the reader to ‘be’ in that place, immediately immersed. So the book starts quickly, with short simple sentences: It is cold. The island hums. It knows I cannot sleep and tries only to soothe me. Moonlight touches my face.
After these first introductions, the sentences become longer and more flowing so that, as Sycorax describes her emotional state, the pace slows. There’s no action here as such, so no need for the almost staccato skip through sentences. Longer phrasing lets the reader linger on the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings. Allowing them space to get to know her and her voice: Spindle-limbed and chubby-faced, tucked into his bed of leaves and moss, of spider silk and crow feathers, he is safe. The moon’s light pools about him while the steady flicker of my everlasting candle, the eternal flame I brought to this place when he was but a fish in my belly, dances beside him.
I use this rule throughout the book. When the action picks up, the syntax follows pace. Short sentences and paragraphs gallop like an excited heartbeat, designed to make the reader’s pulse race as they hold their breath. Reading isn’t passive. Words on a page engage with a reader’s physicality. A quickening heart and sweating palms as pages are turned are all part of the pact the adventure writer makes with the reader when they first pick up their book. We achieve this truly physical connection in the same way an orchestra does (Ah! music again): through crescendo and timing, allegro (getting faster) and allargando (widening and slowing). The musician does this through interpreting printed notes and mastering their instruments. Writers, especially adventure writers, do it through understanding how to perfectly pace each sentence, paragraph and chapter. To put it simply, we do it with words.
Diana McCaulay: Structure
It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that writers fall into two categories: pantsers and plotters. In case you are unfamiliar with these terms (I don’t know who coined them but they’re brilliant), a pantser writes by the seat of their pants, a plotter makes charts and spreadsheets and puts up posters on walls. I admire the plotters and wish I was one.
Me, I am a pantser. Paraphrasing Stephen King, I put my characters in a situation to see what they will do. If I already knew, I’d be bored. Sometimes I’m sitting in front of my laptop, saying out loud: “You sure you want to do that?”
Now, a proper writing teacher (which I am not) will tell you there is a difference between plot and structure. Structure is the framework of your story, the architecture, the scaffolding, and plot are the events which unfold within it. Plot is: This happens, then this. Structure is: How what happens is revealed to the reader, how the reader’s attention is grabbed right at the beginning, what’s at stake, what are the obstacles and when does the reader get to appreciate them, how character is revealed and how the story is resolved, often with something the reader doesn’t necessarily see coming.
When I explain that I don’t know what’s going to happen in any of my books, non-writers don’t believe me. “But you must know,” they say. “You’re the one making it up. You’re in charge. And if you don’t know, who does?” But I write to discover what’s going to happen to my characters, who take up residence in my mind long before they show me what they’re going to do.
Of course, this approach means that, when I get to the end of that shaky first draft, ‘the end’ arrived at by nothing more scientific than an approximate word count, what I have is a mess. Now I must impose some structure, and it is only then that I begin to be in charge. I go through what I’ve written, looking for the place to start the story: What’s the triggering event? How do I reveal what my characters want, who they are as people? Which events make dramatic scenes, and which ones are just me showing off that I like to write description? (Delete, delete, well, maybe I’ll keep this lovely bit, no, it’s a darling, kill it…) Is there a secret in the story? How and when will the reader know what it is? Which scenes build tension and interest, and which are unnecessary eddies? And then, in the end, how will the story be resolved? I drop chunks of text into those broad categories of structure: initiating event, journey, tension, reflection, trough, peak and, finally, what’s it all about? And it is only at this point that I begin to see the scaffolding of my story.
I’m not recommending this approach, which does result in wails of despair and a certain amount of flinging things around; I’m just saying it’s mine. And if you’re a pantser too, I hope it helps.
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Originally from Leeds, Nydia Hetherington moved to London in her twenties to embark on an acting career. Later, she moved to Paris where she studied at the Jacques Lecoq theatre school before creating her own theatre company. When she returned to London, she completed a creative writing degree at Birkbeck.
Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican environmental activist and the award-winning author of five novels. Winner of the Gold Musgrave Medal, Jamaica’s highest award for lifetime achievement across the arts and sciences, and twice Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region (in 2022 and in 2012), she has also been shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award, among other nominations, and is the winner of the Watson, Little 50 Prize for unrepresented writers age 50+.
Nydia and Diana were shortlisted for the £10,000 2025 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Find out more here.
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