What A Minecraft Movie taught me about pacing
Lessons learned in making pacing the heartbeat of our stories
What does my parenting fail of the week have in common with my happiest parenting moment of the week? Answer: story pacing. Here’s what happened.
The Minecraft movie debacle
Parenting fail of the week: bringing my four-year-old to see A Minecraft Movie.
I had my doubts about including our youngest on a family outing to see Steve duke it out with the Netherworld piglins. Minecraft is soooo popular at our house, especially with our first-grade son, who loves taming wolves, constructing elevators, and inventing new machines with redstone. When our eldest dreamed of watching A Minecraft Movie over Spring Break, there was no way we could refuse.
Of course, his little brother wanted to come along.
The movie was rated PG—already a stretch for our first grader—and certainly for a preschooler. I cornered a friendly family who had recently seen the movie and grilled mom and kids about the rating. Would my four-year-old be scared? Yes, there were a few tense scenes, and yes, zombies and skeletons chased people around a bit. But, overall, the scary stuff was pretty mild. Given that my four-year-old winds down for bed by running in circles in the pitch dark with a toy fire axe over his shoulder while grunting in Minecraft zombie and skeleton sounds, my fellow mom and I agreed the movie was unlikely to traumatize him.
Too bad for my little boy, asking about the movie’s fear factor was the WRONG question.
How could the same four-year-old who sat and happily munched his snack box during the Dog Man movie refuse to place his adorable butt cheeks in the movie theater seat for two consecutive seconds of A Minecraft Movie? During the opening, my child crawled around the theater on all fours. By the midpoint he was dangling straw wrappers over the heads of the unfortunate movie-goers in front of us. After the fourth time escorting him to the hallway for a reset, we sat out the rest of the movie in the car.
I was disheartened. I slumped in the front seat listening to my balling four-year-old, while my husband enjoyed the exciting conclusion to the movie and the snuggle with our first grader, who likes a comfort cuddle when the action gets intense. Too late, I realized why A Minecraft Movie had turned my beloved four-year-old into a hooligan: PG rating isn’t just about age-appropriate content, it’s about age-appropriate pacing.
I’d interpreted PG as a flag for sex or violence. I was pretty sure A Minecraft Movie would go easy on the former, so had only considered how scary it might be. In reality the PG rating was flagging how old a kid had to be to enjoy the movie. In this case PG meant a sophisticated kid on the verge of seven could handle it; a precocious four-year-old could not.
What DOES appeal to four-year-olds
My favorite parenting moment of the week: Easter morning, my son discovers Duckling, hugs him to his chest and beams with pure joy.
This spring my son’s favorite author is Mo Willems. He loves the Pigeon books and the Elephant and Piggie books. In particular, he’s thrilled when the Pigeon character makes a cameo in Elephant and Piggie, which happens at least once a book. My son loves Pigeon so much, we broke down and bought him a Pigeon stuffy. The moment Pigeon took up residence in our house, my son asked when Pigeon’s buddy, Duckling, would join us. Maybe someday, we said. He then proceeded to inquire about Duckling’s arrival at least twice a day—for about six weeks-never once losing hope that Duckling would arrive. Watching him glow when he scooped Duckling into his arms like a long-lost friend filled me with joy. Seeing him so excited over a literary character made my day.
Our little guy adores Pigeon, Duckling, Elephant, and Piggie so much because their characters and stories are aimed directly at his developmental level. I mean, come on: Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late and The Duckling Gets a Cookie? These reads are talking straight to littles who don’t want to go to bed and long for sweet treats.
Appealing to the preschool set audience involves a number of elements, including subject matter, for sure, but also: bright colors, anthropomorphism, and humor.
Now, hold on—A Minecraft Movie had all these elements: bright colors, a heroic doggy and silly pig, goofy moments galore. The subject matter, playing video games, is absolutely something our kiddo can connect with. So why was A Minecraft Move such an epic fail for holding his attention?
Answer: A Minecraft Movie. Was. Too. Darn. Slow. For a four-year-old!!!!!!!
Kidlit pacing
In adult fiction, pacing is related to the length of sentences and paragraphs. My burgeoning study of kidlit—not to mention six years of daily picture book reading—taught me kidlit pacing is governed by page turns. Mo Willems is a master at preschool pacing. His stories often have only one or two words per page. Of course his pacing is far more nuanced than just reducing the number of words per page. In The Pigeon series Willems pulses the pacing with a spread where the Pigeon expounds his wants and needs in eight small panels. Then, his frustration bursts free at the rate of one word per page. For example, the next spread might simply read: Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Willems is even a master at playing with the end pages and the title and copyright pages in a picture book. Far from seeing these fairly dull utilitarian spaces in a book as dead space, Willems enlivens them by using them to start the story, either with little pictures to set the tone for the read (which he’ll later reference at the end) OR by simply scrawling the start of his story across the title page. Believe me, A Minecraft Movie proved how little time creators have to grab a four-year-old’s attention and the impossibility of winning it back once lost. Mo Willems knows this. He’s not going to let a single page turn of the reading experience do any less than delight and entertain—whether it’s the body of the story or the copyright page.
Lessons Learned
I learned not to take my four-year-old to a PG rated movie. More importantly, I learned the enormous impact pacing has on audience. When pacing is wrong for a four-year-old, he will giggle hysterically in the movie theater. When pacing is wrong for an adult reader, they’ll close the book and probably never open it again. To a parent the giggles are fairly embarrassing; as a writer, the closed book is mortifying.
Like children hoping for brightly colored talking animals, fantasy readers come to the story with certain hopes: a sense of wonder; magic; world building; a journey which could be internal, external, or both. I’ve never before included pacing on this list, but now I know better. Fantasy readers seek pacing that allows space for an enjoyable introduction to a world of wonder. They want time to get acquainted with characters who come to feel like friends. At the same time, fantasy pacing must weave in a thread of urgency and moments of heart-pounding tension so we readers aren’t tourists, but active emotional participants in a gripping story.