Thank you for the feedback.
The pauses in dialogue are actually intentionally; but after having a break from it and trying to play it again - it actually doesn't make much sense. I was doing it to give people time to catch up; but maybe I should just have just slowed it down so the experience is "paused"!
I struggled with using Text-Mesh-Pro as I was modifying the vertices directly; and I came across a few quirks that I understand better now, so I had spent most of my time trying to problem solve.