Of the lessons in writing I picked up along the way, the one that comes first to mind is omission of scenes and information. There are some scenes that, while you'd like to see as a reader, don't need to be shown, i.e. Valentine and Ender's reunion. You can pretty much guess how that goes, based on what you know of them, what their feelings are going into it, and then how it is with them afterwards. So sometimes omitting key scenes due to their predictability can help improve the pacing. But of course you have to keep the reader engaged enough with everything else that they're willing to forgive the omitted scene.
There is also omission of information, such as the thoughts and plans of various characters. This can be pretty obvious, but there is the pleasure of surprise or confirmation when you don't know exactly what the characters are plotting until they go through with it.
Along those lines, OSC also makes free use of POV, switching from chapter to chapter or even scene to scene. It works not only to remove you from (and thereby hide) a central character's thoughts and plans, but also to place you in someone else's head so that you can see the story from their POV, with their different set of expectations in mind. Switching to Morgan's POV as their ship arrives on the colony works with entertaining results, as the reader is both laughing at Morgan's delusions of grandeur and relishing his eventual defeat. There are even many cases of using a certain character's POV just for one scene, or one chapter. Whatever works. There's no reason to be tied down simply for the sake of uniformity in narrative structure or whatnot.
One other thing that stands out upon reflection are scenes of primarily dialogue, with very little physical setting described to ground them in. Oftentimes I'm concerned with grounding everything in a physical setting--describing exactly where the characters are, what they're doing, how they're sitting or standing or feeling, as they talk. Perhaps this is because physical descriptions were once one of my greatest weaknesses, at least in writing a scene. Of course it's important to ground things in a physical setting and to describe things clearly. But only if it's important. That is, when the key point of a certain scene is the content of the dialogue, perhaps the setting is not so important then. Quick, back-and-forth dialogue without awkward insertions of, "He looked at the ground," or "She bit her lip," (although those kinds of lines have their place, if used correctly) can be far more effective and entertaining, as the pace picks up with the reader concentrating on the words exchanged. Also, while a description of a physical setting can be minimized, it can still be mentioned within the dialogue--a quick, clever way to set a cursory image within the reader's mind.
Next on the reading list are some of Ursula LeGuin's books, Wicked, and Poe's tales.
