How to pace your book
(If sharing on Instagram please tag @irbelletti)
During the last months, I wrote the first draft of my new book and re-read the last one. I learned more about rhythm, and noticed some issues and how to solve them.
So, here are some tips for how to pace your book!
1. Sections
The first thing you should do to pace your book if you’re an outliner is get an overview of how it is going to feel to the reader.
Where are the big moments, those parts where the plot really unfolds and important things happen?
Those are the stones you should start building from!
I suggest not putting two of those plot points too close together, or the pace is going to feel a lot faster than it should be.
I used a three-act structure for HASTAR and each act starts or ends with a big plot point. In the middle, I have smaller events and then fillers (like little chats between the characters where relationships are built, reflexive parts, and any kind of moment where their personality can be exposed without crashing against the plot).
2. Chapter length
A chapter should be 3000-5000 words long, or so the writing community says, even though it’s okay to think that your chapters can be as long as you need them to be.
At the same time, though, consider that a chapter that is 500 words long is a VERY fast chapter and is probably going to make your reader go “So? What happened here?”, which is something that my beta readers told me about my old book.
For TALE OF SPACE AND TAROT, before changing my POVs and shrinking them from 9 (nine!) to 6, I had many chapters that were really too short, and cut the breathing pace of the book way too much.
Being an underwriter I never struggled with caper being too long, but as a reader I can’t stand when a book has chapters that never end. They exhaust me, and even if the story is interesting, I have a really hard time understanding when it’s okay to put down the book and be sure to pick it back up again.
So, in conclusion:
In my opinion, the best books have an average chapter length of 4000 words max. Some chapters can be as short as 500 (these will give your reader a breather) and some can be a little longer (these are the chapters where big, long events happen, like a final battle or the ending, where you solve all conflicts).
3. Chapter openings
You can start your chapter in medias res (in the middle of the action), by describing something (the weather, a character, a landscape, a feeling), with dialogue, with shock, with a dream… The ways to start a chapter are many! The only thing you should consider is this:
If the chapter has a plot twist in it, the kind of plot twist that will leave your readers in tears, start it slow. Your character wakes up to have breakfast, the weather is nice, everything is nice and slow and familiar. Build up the rhythm and give the reader a big shock.
If the chapter is the cont’d of a very anxiety-inducing chapter that you ended with a cliffhanger, then, immediately dive into the action.
3. Chapter middle
I’ve seen a lot of bestseller authors doing this (including visual media), but I just can’t stand it. [keep reading]
