The Secret to a Well Paced Plot (and it's ridiculously easy) | Writing Tips
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Awesome! Another thing that really helped me with pacing was when I was told, "Your reader will see it like a movie." So if your characters are in a fight scene, it wouldn't make sense to describe their surroundings or have a ton of introspection because they have to act fast, meaning you need short, snappy sentences to see how fast the movement is. I don't know if I explained that well enough, but I think I learned it from Abbie Emmons. Thanks for the vid! I really liked how you described the chapters as heart rate.
Yeah, you did justice to it. And Abbie Emmons is amazing. I think she was the one who said that too
This one always seemed a little obvious to me, but it's one of the reasons it's hard for me not to just write a talking heads story. Despite the admirable efforts of seeing impaired dubs most movies don't give you enough time between lines of dialogue to describe new details, so it doesn't help so much that it flows like a movie in my head too
You explained it so well and simple. I will keep this comment screenshotted for later
You can describe speed in slow motion. Remember that. When writing you're absolutely right but also you can bend the rules of time perception don't forget that. You can write a millisecond in 10. Sometimes fast doesn't always mean short winded.
@@futurestoryteller I'm writing my story in the form of a script, because it will be a comic. Maybe instead of thinking of a movie, a comic would make more sense. Each part you describe is like describing the illustration of a panel. More panels will literally take more space, and therefore longer to read. In high action scenes you'd typically use 4 or less panels, and when writing in summary, you'd use 6 or more panels.
Okay, I think I get it: So you decide what a chapter is: Inciting Incident, Buildup, Main Event, Wind Down, and that is usually what your chapter is. However, in sections when you want to slow down, you may spread this across chapters. In chapters you want to speed up you have them all in one and maybe with fewer pages than you otherwise would. Did I get that right? Interesting!
You summarized that so well I screenshot it
Thank you both!
4:58
a chapter is not an arc 😅
a buildup arc, can consists of like.. 3 chapters maybe. or something.
Thank you so much. I have really bad adhd and I could NOT follow this video to save my life. No shade on the creator! Their work is lovely.
I just do poorly with fast talkers and info-heavy dialogue. I'm not exactly the smartest and need a lot of time to process things. So I appreciate you breaking it down like this.
Thanks, amigo. ❤
Making a choice that affects the plot in every chapter is a great rule!
And the end of each chapter being marked by the protagonist's emotional shift omg
Struggling with this so much right now… I wanted each chapter to be an “episode” in my character’s life, but now my first chapter is literally 30,000 words. I’ll be keeping your insights in mind as I try to break it up!
I've conpared the mushoku tensei WEBnovel (not light), which averages at around 5k words / chapter. as we both may know, it is adapted, and from my observstions, 2-3 or rarely 4 or 1 chapter made up like 1 episode... on average
edit: there's also a light novel, but I have no clue on how long their chapters are. there is a list somewhere on google that shows which chapter of the light, web, and anime belong together. might be interesting to look at
you could separate the book into parts with chapters within!
I sympathize as someone who tends to write long myself. The first novel I ever drafted was waaaay long. I would recommend researching the concept of "kill your darlings." Allowable length for a book does depend a lot on your specific genre, but generally novels are around 70,000 words to 120,000 words total. In future drafts, keeping the story down to the most crucial points is so important to keeping the readers' attention. I know it's hard and it sucks. Best of luck.
I’ve heard that “bad pacing” only happens as the symptom of a larger problem. For example, a fight scene that has too much build up and not enough payoff feeling too slow/fast at moments. The idea that each chapter should be clean and semi-isolated definitely helps identify those problems and fix them. (Source: just did it, worked wonders)
your timing is immaculate! i've been struggling so hard with the pacing of my book (currently stuck at the 20k words mark as ALWAYS). at the beginning, i already thought about what i wanted to do with each chapter but i didn't make the connection that i could use that guide to pace my story.
my book is about a divorced protagonist with trust issues and each chapter represents an important step of opening up to their love interest but also potential friends. so the pacing revolves around the development of relationships and now that i have that clearly in mind, it'll be so much easier to arrange the events i want to implement. thank you so much.
the 20k mark is literally the ✨hardest part to get through✨ good luck, you've got this!!
@@ShaelinWrites That's awfully nice to hear, since I'm in the same boat!
You are so close to 100k!
I keep checking to see if she's hit it yet! It's refreshing though that she's not obsessing over it but I still think she deserves it
So exciting!!
Omg yes
I love the insight of ensuring that each chapter includes a choice for the protagonist!
It's been one of the most helpful things for me!
@@ShaelinWrites Shaelin, do you have a choice for the protagonist per scene or per chapter?
@@thenovicewriter3196 It's up to you to define what you want each chapter to be in your book! For me, I aimed for once a chapter, since that suited the pacing I wanted.
I'm currently writing a multiple POV story, and I think I kinda applied this advice unconsciously. I write each chapter by scenes, and whenever I look at it after I've finished, I always realize how much it looked like a short story. It's much easier and would really make your pacing good.
I like how Agatha Christie uses a "humming and hawing" chapter to slow the pace and give the reader a break - Poirot, his sidekick and the police musing about who might be the murderer and outlining their next moves and that's all.
Great tip! Another great way to use scene breaks that I've seen a lot in Terry Pratchett's work is he'll transition from one scene to another at exactly the moment where Character A in one part of the world is experiencing the same thematic conflict type as Character B over in another part of the world, which moves multiple plot lines along really well without losing readers in stories with a big cast.
There's this book by Peter Hessler, I think it's Rivertown and there's another one I forgot the title. But what I noticed and what I like about his writing is his chapters will express one main idea and he would depict it clearly. As you say, they're like short stories focusing on one event. But at the end of the chapter there would always be a hook or a statement that would make you ponder only about the scenes happening in that chapter. And by the end of the book you just consolidate all these experiences you had for every chapter and realize that they're all leading to one main concept. I like that.
I've naturally ended each of my chapters with some kind of realisation or turning point for my character/plot. At the end, SOMETHING always happens and the chapter builds up to that moment.
I just imagine mine as episodes in a show and leave them on little cliffhangers like it would work in a show.
Saw this and immediately sent it to my author friend. I’m with the others, you are reading our minds!
Edit: my chapters usually just end up being turning points, reveals or emotional shifts. It just occurs and I know.
I just find all the advice you give to be so practical and helpful. Thanks as always, Shaelin! Keep going; you understand the beats of a good-hearted plot with the characters.
Shaelin, I know you didn't go anywhere, but I've been dealing with a lot of stuff and been too busy to write. Now I'm getting back to writing and it's so good to watch your writing tips again, thanks
Oooooo... Not only is that a good pacing tip, it's also a good plotting tip for discovery writers. Now that I've identified what a chapter "means" in my novel, I suddenly have a bunch of ideas for chapters! Thanks :)
One thing that's helped me is thinking of each chapter as accomplishing some combination of 1) plot development, 2) character development, and 3) worldbuilding (I'm trying to write fantasy). I use these to help my pacing as well, as character development and worldbuilding tend to be slower pace, while plot development tends to be faster pace, and using these combinations I can try to create the overall pace of the book. I want people to be able to say "ah yes, chapter 14 had this big plot development" or "chapter 17 was huge for the main character developing."
Your last point is what I naturally arrived at when I wrote my first/only novel: I basically asked myself in my first edit, "What is the point of this chapter? What does it accomplish?" I've heard your plot, char, world break-down before and like that as well. I encourage you to recognize that you can do ALL 3 in a single chapter (or many chapters). I'm an amateur, so I'm working on this stuff as well. Good writing!
Woah! I think I just had an ahha moment. This is the thing I’ve been trying to nail down for awhile but the answer only now clicked for me. I’ve been wondering how I make my books as fun and readable as some of the ones I love and I think nailing a quick pacing is what I want. Up until now I’ve been all over the map. Some scenes drag on, others are speedy and I never figured out how to control it consciously. Thanks for sharing.
Chapters: get in late, get out with momentum.
1:19 is the tip
I treat chapters like scenes in a screenplay. Every time the camera moves to a different location, time, or POV is start a new chapter. This is where a background in film comes in very handy. I've had chapters that were less than 1000 words long, and i've had chapters that were 11k words long. It all depends on the requirements of the scene.
Thank you so much to sharing! I haven’t heard this from anywhere else before, and appreciate it very much :D
Really useful video. In my last novel, I faced a big issue of pacing. At the top of the list was that the novel spanned 62 years from 1950 to 2012. I split my novel into three parts. The largest gap was between parts one and two, where the gap occurs. I tried to use the shift from Part 1 to Part 2 to get the reader from 1950 to 2012, but it was still too jarring. So, I wrote a chapter at the end of Part 1, which was a stream of consciousness chapter gliding over the major theme of the novel (kind of like a change of season or music montage in a movie) as it evolved over sixty years. This allowed me to give the reader a sense of the passage of time and inform them about the evolution of this theme without delving into the plot. At the beginning of Part 2, the plot resumes and we are no longer in the past but in the current day.
Your novel starts in 1950 the year before I was born in Glasgow, Scotland.
I can't emphasise enough that the whole fabric of society in which I was nurtured has altered beyond recognition. Another planet.
It is often said that people don't change, but they do, because culture, family life and the socio-economic moral structures change.
Right-Wing politicians privatised our public rail service but the incompetent spivs who run it get more public money than British Rail got.
The environmental friendly tramcars were replaced by polluting diesel buses, and our industrial-manufacturing base has disappeared forever.
When I go to school reunions I tell my friends that international criminal financiers have ruined our world. Poverty & hopelessness everywhere.
Some tips I can give from my “show so you can tell” advice that I picked up from recent rereads is to introduce a setting by show description, and then you can go on to world building, plot, or narrative, to indicate the passage of time. A sort of structured internal monologue, based on the idea or string of ideas related to it or wherever your thoughts lead you. Don't be afraid to write as much of the story you can; overwriting has the advantage of picking and choosing the best parts to trim down too, whereas if you're an underwriter, you haven't thought that much about the plot, everything is short story style, even if it's a complete narrative. I tried altering my style to be an underwriter, and that nearly sacrificed everything I've mentioned in favor of just “action and dialogue” move the plot. There's so much more than that to make a complete story. And chapters are just one tool to break that narrative up into smaller, digestible bits (depending on the intuition you get) that reaches a satisfying point in the story for reading.
@@jackhaggerty1066 So true. Daily life of the early 1950s would be unrecognizable, very different than the way people live and think today.
Thank you for existing. You’ve really helped me get into writing.
This was definitely super helpful! Its' so easy to fall into the trap in considering where chapter breaks should be from a readers' perspective, we forget the benefit they can have for the natural flow of the story.
As a side note, this video got me thinking, maybe you could do a video on how to balance faster pacing while still having characters that seem authentic and fleshed-out? I'm confident my characters are very good, but I don't know how to convey that without dragging the pacing down or making the novel too long.
Does Shaelin have a discord or anything? Was thinking it'd be nice to have a place for viewers to discuss writing with each other and share/critique our writing, like an informal workshop kinda thing.
I am also an improviser (discovery writer). I also improvise on guitar and other instruments; point being, I vary the length of the chapter the way I might vary the length of a musical phrase. Listen to the great jazz soloists doing this and controlling the pace. You can vary chapter length in the same way.
Ohh this is such a great analogy!!
The great jazz soloists had the great controlling pace as you say which is why Kerouac listened to them so much.
*NAIMA - John Coltrane.* TH-cam. Lonnie D Hillyer.
*Bill Evans - My Foolish Heart.* TH-cam. jane8948.
Bill Evans took a year off just to develop his playing. He was friends with Glenn Gould and loved his Goldberg Variations.
There is a sadness to the music of Bill Evans that haunts as much as Coltrane's Naima.
I kinda feel like I already knew to use chapters for pacing because one of my favorite trilogies (The Ashes Trilogy by Ilsa J Bick--definitely a must-read if you like subverted apocalypse stories) uses that sh!t amazingly
Dang Ashes was riveting!!!
man, shaelin always has our backs huh. i feel like you have the ability to read our minds somehow
she probably does
I'm so glad you mentioned people who want slow pacing. For the longest time I didn't understand why I wanted to write the book I am writing now. It is a Camp thriller but I want it to be slow, there is romance and a lot of drama. But I wanted it to be a learning opportunity of self reflection and faith as well. I love books that make you think and I was so worried I was the only one because I don't see books that are purposefully slow and kind of feel like you are binging a series in a stand alone. But now that you explained this pacing hack I can never look back lol it makes so much sense but I never thought of it that way. Thank you
Thank you so much. This was incredibly helpful.
Here's a chapter for me:
I have 3 character POVs, so each chapter is organized around a central event in their world and expresses this event from each relevant character's POV. (This may take multiple hits per POV, depending on the depth of the event). So for instance, one chapter may have Character A and Character B's POV. Another may have Character A, Character C and Character B. While one other might have A, B, C, and then A again.
I also have seperate "sections" outside the normal chapters that contain the content of the social media posts which are a part of my plot.
OMG such a good question! When I started writing my novel, I tried to learn about what a chapter should be, but I was misled by marketers and agents to believe that my chapters should be, wait for it... ~2,500 words. Profound. Advice. So I think I shot myself in the foot trying to conform to a "standard" length.
All that said, I've made a lot of improvements on my story, but this is still a difficult question to answer. My novel is the first in a series, and its main goal is to deconstruct the world our MC lives in, revealing that the Magi are no better than him, and in fact they've deceived and created control structures to maintain class structure that results in extreme inequality (sound familiar?). I think this means I should look at my chapters as uncovering some truth, secret, or reality that moves my MC from worker bee to magical revolutionary. I hit on subplots and other characters as well, so I'll think about how those chapters fit into this goal.
Great video, thanks!
I divided my current novel into three acts. My main character has trust issues and in each act learns to deal with a part of it. I just hope it does not mess up the action too much. I'm writing Adult Fantasy .
Yeah, but what about the pacing within each chapter?
I was writing and got to a point where i said "yea this is a chapter"
For me, my chapters are just a scene. They usually end up being between 4 and 8 pages long. They are also not numbered, because my novel is split into dual timelines (ex: 6 days before the murder or 7 minutes after the murder, etc) that reveals more information about what’s going on and allows readers to connect the puzzle pieces as they read!
Same. My chapters are each scene and at first I thought I was “doing chapters wrong”… but each scene ends on an element that causes the next and I’m going for something very fast paced, so I think it works. Also when I created an outline retroactively, I intuitively separated my book into twelve or thirteen parts and I’m wondering if it might be a good idea to include those divisions in the manuscript…
@@andreannelavoie660
Amina Cain's novel *Indelicacy* is only 150 pages so the chapters are short and revelatory. The structure is part of the revelation.
Yiyun Li's *Must I Go* is about 350 pages, the unnumbered chapters are interspersed with diary entries. Again it is all structure.
A reviewer from the Irish Times said she missed the two main characters when she finished the book - the ultimate compliment.
Shaelin, do you have any tips or "tricks" for simply getting information to the reader more efficiently?
It made a lot of sense to me when you pointed out that the basic unit of a story is not words or sentences, but information. The trouble is that I feel like I have no tools for sifting the important information from the unimportant info. Also, when I do have important or interesting info it sometimes takes me nearly a hundred words just to get it across. How can I practice economizing?
thank u so much ive literally been asking myself this for days
As an outlining author, I used to discovery write because that was kind of the gold standard writing advice when I was younger so once I realized you can outline your novels, that was a game changer. For me, I like to outline the big plot of the novel and then I like to outline each chapter with its purpose and its addition to the climax (like how it relates to the character getting what they need at the end of the book). Knowing the purpose of each chapter beforehand allows me to write the chapter in a way that furthers the point of the novel which helps my pacing significantly. If I discovery write, my pacing suffers as a result because I can write too much or too little because I don't know what I should be writing there. I'm using the chapters as a way to measure my pacing as well, albeit in a different manner lol
yeah i noticed this problem in my draft, but nothing can take me away from discovery writing.. it just makes writing more fun for me (although its not like I'm going in totally blind).
@marandaed4335
Same. Plotting just makes me paralysed when it comes to writing. The expectation of what the scene should be like just triggers overthinking and perfectionism and inner criticism so badly that my creativitiy just goes out the window. Sometimes things just don't work out the way you imagined during plotting. And if you try to force it anyway, it will feel just like that, forced.
So I'm just losely plotting the MC(s) and their arc, knowing that things might not work out. So I just losely plot act by act. So I plot act 1, write it, then plot act 2, write act 2 and so on. Plotting it beforehand will just be frustrating because I'm gonna need to re-plot after having written the act that comes before and half my ideas come to me not when I sit down to plot but at random times, maybe weeks after I've written that part.
I'm trying to use the plotted stuff as a rough roadmap that prevents me from writing myself into a corner and that makes the writing go somewhere and that prevents sidequests that don't add anything from happening.
yup, outlining/plotting takes patience to get right especially when 'expert' writers tell you theres a right/wrong way to do it. Do not let that paralyze your creativity, do what works for you, take some advice, twist it up a bit and have fun. Yes i agree, plotting can make shit feel forced as well, which is why i love to discovery write in the first place, having the characters take control of the story instead of me is so much fun to see.@@hannahl.4494
@@marandaed4335My soul would wither and die if I couldn't discovery write. That said, I am now in revisions and I've added a character so it's down to finding where to put that storyline and what to chop because it changes everything...it'll be worth it, but gahhhhh!
boy oh boy i know i need my lazy ass to start my outline, and oh dont get me started with not knowing where to put the characters, the pain of pantsing 😓 @@5Gburn
My chapters are only a scene or two long. I understand the struggle so well; I used to be paralyzed in fear that I rambled too much in a chapter just to make it a certain length. Now, I try to be much more concise.
And another thing about seeing books like movies is in that fact that I am 21 books into the Erle Stanley Gardner Perry Mason novel series, and the way this applies to that is that I imagine the voices of Mason, Della Street, Paul Drake, Hamilton Burger et al. to be the actual voices of the portrayers, even on the earliest novels (Burr, Hale, Hopper, Talman, et al.); when Hamilton Burger is not there, I imagine the guest prosecutors to be various other actors, and the same with the judges in the courtroom.
CONGRATS ON 100K SHAELIN 🎉😁
I have also stumbled upon an idea that seems too simple to be worth mentioning but it seems no-one's mentioned it. I don't believe that outliners and discovery writers are especially different. A pantser will write an outline in the form of a draft. The first draft will serve the role of an outline and a key part of the revisions of that draft will be tighten up the plot. The Pratchett quote "the first draft is just you telling yourself the story" and the Gaiman quote "The key to the second draft is to make it look as if you know what you were doing from the beginning" sum this up very neatly.
Meanwhile a plotter writes the first draft in outline form, saving the actual prose and dialogue for a subsequent full draft, which the plotter will designate as the first draft, although it's not the first version of the story because the outline takes that title.
Both types of writer basically do the same thing and since a novel goes through so many drafts before it even gets read by someone other than the author, never mind reaching the eyes of a publisher, a difference of one draft doesn't seem to be very significant.
In the book I'm writing I try to think of chapters as mini-stories, each with its own promises, progress and payoff, while still contributing to the large picture structure.
I only switch POVs in between in chapters, never in the middle of one, and I try to only do larger timejumps in the in betweens as well.
I also use Parts. Each part follows a different set of POV characters.
Part 1 alternates between characters A and B,
Part 2 alternatates between A, C and D (who we met in part 1)
Part 3 is just B and C
Part 4 is A and D
And part 5 is A, B and C
I just combined two chapters into one and was told my pacing has picked up quite a bit.
I got stuck on chapter lengths when I started writing my novel. I'm writing m/m romance and kept getting told "you chapters need to be close to 3000 words, if you're under 2,500 it's too short." And my first chapter ended at 2250. But I felt it ended where it needed to. If I tried to combine it with the next chapter from this POV, it would have been too long. I was also told if my debut novel is over 55k words in the romance genre, it would be hard for to sell. Well, I found that a lie as well. Many debut novels in Romance are between 70-90k. Which mine is planned to hit around 80k, depending on how much I need to edit out after my rewrites and the beta readers. Some rules are useful, don't try to write a 200k YA romance as a debut author. But others seem petty.
Yeah, I think assigning a plot beat to a chapter is a safe bet. I personally model out chapters to the general heroes journey style event outlines. Whether they ACTUALLY happen in the writing or something else? That's fine, it just keeps the "point" on my mind. Pinch point, New obstacle, overcoming the odds, picking up the sword, etc. Making sure I hit one in the general arc location that I'm in, being aware of the ones I need to hit in the area while Im in the chapter to be aware to produce that conflict in the segment and the outcome.
However for me, chapter length is also "pacing".
Shorter chapters make the plot feel like it is moving faster even if less is happening in the chapters, at least to me. So when I want the pacing to feel "faster" I tend to break up chapters into smaller parts, sometimes even cutting up a large chapter into smaller ones and spreading it out. Having a few successive small burst chapters in a row can make it feel almost like faster cuts in a movie. Simulating this idea that you are "plowing" through this book all of a sudden when in reality its the same amount of pages.
Having faster cutaways between povs can make it feel like more is happening, especially if they are fairly short (a few pages). As long as something compelling is happening in that small segment it can feel, to me, like something is building in the background between the other POVs that have more normal chapter lengths that gets me excited.
Like as an example in my current book I have a "darkest hour" for a character that is really a sequence of events all in a row. The chapter was long, but because it's supposed to feel rather like the character is being tortured and it's fairly heavy I broke it up, not really changing the length of the event but making it "feel" longer by spreading it out while making each chapter a burst of torture between the other POV chapters so it felt like the plot was moving quickly even when she in all reality is stuck in the same rut. This both made it feel like she was in her darkest hour longer (which helps with the rising out of it into the climax feeling) and also makes the plot feel like its churning and becomes more disorienting which was the feeling I wanted in the climax...and really all that was done there was formating and structure while the words and length stayed the same.
I'm a new writer, and in my light novel, I'm working on my chapters, which are 20 to 25 pages, and the feedback I get is my pacing. I have an overall idea of what it's about in each chapter, and it generally falls in the 20-ish pages. Should I go longer to let some ideas breathe? Any suggestions would be helpful, as I suck at pacing and would like to get better at it.
Thank you so much, this was very helpful!
I've been trying to recommend you to everyone I know to help you get to 100 K!!
I have newer thought of that! my mind is blown. It makes so much more sense now. This might be the key to unlocking writing a series...
Same as me, I always saw it as the place the reaader takes a break, but instictively I knew it wasn’t very effective. But I couldn’t see what else to do! Now I know. For this story, the emotions are the key. Thank you, sometimes it’s the simple things that aren’t obvious, a forest/trees situation.
Omg wow lmao I’ve never heard of the word pantsing IN MY WHOLEEEE life it truly is a writers terminology. I ever studied and worked on some short manga for fun and never didn’t hear this word. It’s how my brain tends to structure my entire life and for me it never made sense to plan everything out to a definitive level of execution.
Now I finally have A WORD that lets me feel confident in my writing ability to make magic happen as it comes up.
I feel like very witty and creative people tend to have a better time with this “pantsing” formula 😂
I think it’s cause I’m young but could someone explain these tips in a more…simplistic way? Maybe using elaborations? I’m trying to write a fairytale retelling (or an organized idea for it) but I fear I will get ahead of myself and the book we reach it’s end in 50 pages
Yes, I see what you mean. I had a similar revelation with scenes. I think my pacing has improved the most since I watch where I put my scene breaks. Slower pacing: start with 1-2 sentences to set the scene and end with a wind down/conclusive sentence. Faster pacing: start with a line of dialogue or an action, end with an action. The difference is only a few sentences, but I think it reads very differently.
I swear, your videos always drop at the perfect time for me (and, it seems like, many others!). How do you do it??
I've always thought of it along the lines of what Robert McKee suggests in his book Story. A scene needs to have a change of charge in some relevant property. That could be emotional, e.g. love->hate, brave->cowardly, happy->sad, confident->uncertain, etc. It could also be a more concrete change -- employed->unemployed, free->enslaved, above ground->below ground, etc. McKee was talking mostly about movies, but this way of thinking about it works really well for book chapters as well. Obviously, chapters don't have to be written this way, but it's been helpful for me.
I know this is a year old...but this is great advice for a dm making a good story...especially the concept of making the main character get a choice that effects the plot in each chapter (I called arc)...anyway great video I am misappropriating for dnd use.
I have to wonder if I ended chapter 1 on my current manuscript as too long….it was supposed to be a glimpse into the life of the character and ending it with a shocking moment to get the ball rolling into chapter 2. I hope it turns out alright
Thanks! Appreciate all your content!
So happy to discover your channel. Thank you. Very interesting information. xx
99.9k subscribers ... I WAS HERE WHEN! Thanks for all your great videos, Shaelin!
ooh, something I've been thinking a bit too hard on for my novel (series?)
i think for one of the novels i've started writing, with three points of view for three different characters, a chapter is probably going to be two or three scenes that revolve around sort-of smaller action events that build up an overarching (emotional/thematic) event. so the pacing would probably end up being rather snappy, as each chapter would have multiple events to push the plots along ...
Recently came to this realization after I finished the last book I read. It changed the way I viewed chapters as a writer! Thanks for this video
What outliner's don't want to admit is their also discovery writers.
Outlining how you can look at is simliar to chapters. If you know how chapters work you know how outlines work.
Shaelin videos are the best videos!
That was a nice confirmation bias for me as I was already intuitively doing that 😅
I always thought chapters had to be a certain length til I read House of Leaves. One chapter was like a word or two on the page and it fit the book so well.
Fun! This is how Story Grid recommends to write. Except they're big on outlines
My chapters tend to be numerous but short. I'm not sure what the standard is, but I usually do around 2000 words a chapter. From the people that have read my work, it seems to work so far.
Consistent Chaptering. OK.
Congratulations on 100k subscribers!
This is a genius way of approaching chapters
Just kinda hard to do when you have more than one POV. Cause if there is something happening to another character before the mini arc of another character is over, I literally need to switch. Maybe I can get away with starting with the aftermath and then retelling it after it actually happened for the character. So more as a reflection of what changed followed by I a "what the hell do I do now" of the character.
Nothing to do with anything, but you looked vaguely like Tom Holland in the thumbnail. And I mean that in the best way possible.
each chapter can also be about a element of the story, instead of being purely chronological. aka one subject in the theme can have a good example, a harmful example, and a final comparison of the topics and how they affect the theme through the character.
I recently read a book called "Identity Crisis" By Ben Elton, and I was absolutely amazed by his use of chapter´s length. They are mostly very short, like 2 or 3 pages long, and I think that the author´s use of chapters like that made me realize that the length of chapters and the moment in which you "cut" the story are an incredible tool to make the story more alive and interesting.
For me a chapter is any change of POV. Irrespective of length. And the chapters do not have to the same length,
First of all, thank you Shaelin, for being so generous with all your discoveries/epiphanies.
I'm struggling a bit to understand what you mean by treat a chapter like a short story. Can you compare and contrast that with the more traditional advice of securing your chapter's GMC (goal, motivation, conflict)?
In other words, how would treating a chapter like a short story be similar to GMC and how would it differ? I'm just really want to understand what you mean but I don't quite get it, simple as it may be, for you, it's a bit vague to me because I don't read a lot of short stories.
Thank you so much this seems potentially game changing. And I also struggle with pacing! 😅😊
If you don't read/write a lot of short stories it's probably not the easiest way to see a short story, and your GMC model might be better for you!! For me it works because I write/read a lot of short fiction so it's a very intuitive way to see things, so treating each chapter like a short story where I focus it around a specific, revelatory event helps me know how to pace information. There's no one way to way to write a chapter so use the model that works for you!
@@ShaelinWrites Thank you, Shaelin. I was just wondering, what are the "parts" to a short story? Like when you think about a chapter as a short story, what does that mean to you if you would describe it to someone like me. I have read short stories, just not a lot. 😆
@@thenovicewriter3196 I'm not Shaelin but basically, a short story will often have a similar structure to a single scene. There's build-up, there's the character's goal in that scene, there's whether or not it succeeds, and the consequences, etc.
How can I apply this to my TH-cam videos?
For me, a chapter has a goal and ends when the goal is accomplished or failed.
babe wake up new shaelinwrites just dropped
I write my chapters as scenes and usually with just one location for setting. It worked from my debut self-published novel Baltimore City. Each chapter was a different location for the detective. I've been doing tot same for the young adult fantasy adventure story that I'm working on.
I come up with main plot points, and create the scenes around them. Then I create other scenes to connect the main ones together. The scenes become chapters.
Chaptering is the very last thing I do. There's no point when the scene order may (will!) change.
this is some thing I learned when I started writing, but I have weaknesses in character writing, so I wonder if there are any simple hacks for that
didnt realise i already did this lol, having different chapters from different perspectives really helps
Chapter 21 -1 word
Fuck
Chapter22 - 50k words
Jane Eyre is a good example, some chapters are very short and some chapters are very long.
Also nice video 👍
I increased the likes from 666 to 667 sorry, not sorry.
i absolutely know what you mean when you say this is almost "too obvious to realise" because it's mindblowing???? but also DUH but also 🤯
thank you so much once again for changing my LIFE (or at least my writing!)
literally before I posted this video I was like "hmm maybe everyone is just going to be like 'duh shaelin...everyone knows this'" but literally sometimes things are so obvious that you don't notice them lmaooo
Writing novels in script form first helps your pacing
Sometimes we watch 10 videos and don't get any real lesson, sometimes a video can give us 10 answers to questions we did not know we have! thanks for this video
although my pacing is fairly decent, i always felt something was off, this video clarified it, thank uou!
Chapters can be broken down into Scenes, and scenes can be broken down into beats.
These were really good tips, thank you.
Thanks for this advice! I've long struggled with pacing.
This is the best thing since sliced bread, but it also made me feel like an idiot to not have considered it before.
This is some of the best writing advice I've ever come across!
I don't understand why people write in chapters.
A way I got around the chapter problem was to think of them as scenes in a play, dead stops and cliff-hangers fine in theatre. I’m also a plantser both planning and pantsing, making a bullet list of things to happen in a chapter/scene and then see what happens within those loose parameters.
Great advice and to answer your question I've based my chapter's into finding a piece of the "puzzle" being solved. I did it after your advice on keeping our causality consistent and it's really helped the pace 💗