Pacing

Pacing is vital in writing as it makes the difference between something that will captivate the audience and something that will bore them enough to stop reading. In this day of on demand everything, pacing is even more important as attentions spans grow smaller and smaller. Author Elmore Leonard says on this "cut(ting) out everything but the good parts", which is close to the mark.

The most important part to remember is to keep everything snappy and constantly have new elements or developments occurring in order to keep the attention of your reader. This is a culmination of all the other elements of writing into one, remembering you are writing for someone else to read and not yourself and that is one of the most important things to remember with regards to pacing.

Slowing the pacing when you want to place emphasis on a location, character, particular scene is fine and in fact, even recommended as it can easily make the importance of a particular story element seem more significant.

Having too many emotionally charged scenes, one after the other, is too much for a reader to take as no one can sustain these kind of levels of emotion indefinitely. Have these scenes interspersed with something slower paced, like descriptions or characterising conversations.

Slowing pacing for important events, is always acceptable, it adds emphasis to what is happening and makes the reader feel and think more about the scene.

Things like flashbacks slow the pacing of a story, but can add important information about a character, place or time in the stories past which can enhance the story. Don't spend too long on flashbacks though, as nothing that can happen in them can truly be a big surprise to the reader and it breaks the momentum of the story in its "present" time.