Just a few posts back I posted about pacing.
Since then I remembered another fantastic example of slow pacing: the visual novel “Steins;Gate”.
In case you are not aware: a visual novel is a type of interactive fiction, meaning it’s played on a computer or console, in which the interactive elements are relatively light. It’s hard to call them games—but they’re not just stories, either. They are games in which 97% of the time you just press “next”.
Anyway. “Steins;Gate” is a visual novel, a science fiction story with time travel, which takes “slow burn pacing” to an extreme.
I can best explain by referring to the TV adaptation—which is very well done, although it loses out compared to the game version, above all because it only has one ending whereas the game has multiple alternative endings.
In the first episode, a few things happen that are remarkable and interesting; but these points are not really expanded upon or investigated.
Then, nothing much really happens for ten episodes. Characters are introduced, we discover slowly the time travel mechanics that the story is based around, and the world is explored.
Then in episode 12 everything changes, and the show ... starts.
Just thinking about the last few minutes of this episode gives me goosebumps. From the beginning of the episode one may assume that Okabe might cause the end of the world with his time machine, but what actually happens is much less extreme, but somehow shocks you even more. Saying anymore will spoil the ending so I’ll leave my review at that. Once you finish episode 12 you are finally ready for the thrill ride that is Steins;Gate. — urosjekna on IMDb
Most good stories work hard to create a backdrop for the story in as little time as possible, allowing you to spend most of the time enjoying the story—while still feeling that you know the characters, that you care about the world, that you’re invested in what happens.
With science fiction stories this is particularly challenging, because they play with the rules of the world in some way—and so your ability to appreciate the story can depend strongly on how well the setup is done.
In “Steins;Gate” they take you the long way around: you feel like you’ve lived in the world before the story itself hits. And it works really, really well.
“Steins;Gate” takes the long way around; for a time travel story that instead packs as much as sci fi as possible into as few words as possible, I recommend “All You Zombies” by Heinlein. Bizarrely—it’s bizarre that it was made at all, I mean—there is a movie adaptation called “Predestination (2014)", which is astonishingly well made. It sticks closely to the book in almost everything, adding a little more to expand the short story to a movie-sized story.
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