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The music and environment changes definitely helped build on what I mean (which I appreciated), the outfits to a far lesser extent as they help with visual storytelling but don't add anything for movement/pacing. I think providing you with some examples is a great idea, so here's what I got:

The idea of movement is summarized well in this part of Visual Novel Design's Video on Youtube. This can make your game feel more alive and can also contribute to the pacing depending on how its implemented. (In your game when the character trips, that was a great moment because the movement added needed visual stimulation, along with reinforcing the storytelling.) He also has a longer video talking about some staging (composition + perspective) and animation here, which can help with both motion and pacing, in a broader sense. Perfect Gold has a constant repeating movement in the characters and also a few elements in the BG as one example, but honestly even a just bit of camera panning (or character/background panning) can do wonders. Coffee Talk uses a lot of small movement throughout characters, BGs, camera, and even the transitions to  create visual interest while it also switches to shots of things in the environment (eg. coffee on a table) to add variety. (It also has alternate gameplay, but that's far too much work obviously.)

There was a video I saw where it talked about how to add character to the text itself to avoid boring standard dialogue text (which would be incredibly useful in a game all about dialogue/narrative), but I cannot for the life of me find it. (It's probably in one of the many GMT videos.) The idea is that you express parts of the story/emotion through the text, visually. For example, if someone is scared of ghosts, the word "ghosts" might tremble or have a spooky distortion to it. If a character is excited about ice cream, the words "ice cream" might bounce around a bit. If a character is peeking into a scene coyly, the text might also slide coyly onto the screen. You can also use color, size, and alternate font to enhance whatever is being expressed, or differentiate between characters and/or tone. This makes the text dynamic, breaking up the monotony of constant text. You know, comics/manga might actually be a good reference too, especially the ones with sound text, as they try to add a lot of variety in how these are displayed to match the expression/action.

This video from GMT is great for working on pacing in other types of games, but you might be able to take some of the logic and translate into ways you can diversify for pacing in a visual novel.

One of the other VN submissions for this jam has some of what I'm referring to in it, if you haven't played it. It's Listen to My Song.

Considering you did this as one person (wow, that's awesome!) and there isn't enough time to add everything in a jam, I would only use this as something to consider for the future. (Hearing you have a cutscene already planned is also great!) And honestly, you have far more knowledge about VNs than I do, obviously lol. I'm just coming from a general engagement/game design point of view.

Thanks for having this discussion!