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Pacing: The Invisible Engine

  • Saturday, March 07, 2026
  • 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM
  • The Mizell Center, 480 S Sunrise Way, Palm Springs, CA 92262

Registration

  • Premium Membership includes free entry to all General Speaker Meetings, Insider Workshops and Writing Labs for the year. You must be logged in to select this option.
  • Standard or Student members who register on or before the date of the preceding month’s Insider Workshop will receive an early registration discount of $25 off the regular $80 fee. You must be logged in to select this option.
  • Standard and Student members are provided a la carte access to Insider Workshops at the Member rate of $80. You must be logged in to select this option.
  • Non-Members pay $155 for each Insider Workshop. Please note that if you choose to join the Guild before registering for this event you will pay a $75 Membership fee, and then the Member rate of $80 for the event—the same $155 total, but you’ll then gain all the benefits of membership in the Guild (including the Membership rate of $80 at any future Workshop).
  • Reserved for facilitators only.

Register


Announcing our next In-Person Workshop

Pacing: The Invisible Engine
Dete Meserve


Dete Meserve is a bestselling novelist and award-winning film and television producer. Her latest novel, The Memory Collectors—about four people who get the chance to spend one hour in their past—is an Amazon bestseller and Goodreads Choice Award nominee, currently in development as a TV series with Meserve as showrunner. She adapted her novel Good Sam into a Netflix film, which she also produced. She is also the author of Perfectly Good CrimeThe Good Stranger, and The Space Between.


Presentation Overview:

Pacing is what keeps readers turning pages—but it's not about speed. It's about controlling their experience of time, tension, and momentum. In this workshop, bestselling novelist Dete Meserve breaks down pacing techniques at the sentence, scene, and structural level, with examples from her novel The Memory Collectors and other works. You'll leave with practical tools to make your book unputdownable.

Takeaways:

  1. Uncover the kind of pacing that keeps readers interested.
  2. Discuss ways to control the reader's experience, tension, and momentum.
  3. Explore techniques to keep the pacing at the sentence, scene, and structural levels.
  4. Review writing examples from Dete Meserve’s bestselling novel

REGISTER

To receive a full refund minus a $25 cancellation processing fee, attendees must cancel their registration 5 days before the event. No refunds will be given after that time. To cancel your registration, go to palmspringswritersguild.org and click on the blue icon at the top right of any page. Enter user name and password and click "LOG IN". On the next screen click "My event registrations". Select event and cancel registration. 

We may take photos and/or videos at any of our events for promotional purposes.

Meeting begins at 12:30 p.m. and ends at 2:30 p.m. 

Ready to become a member of the Palm Springs Writers Guild? Please click here.

Event Contact: Dak Kopec

Email: DakKopec@mac.com