Writing Meditations: Chapters and Pace

This one is an interesting one for me because I haven't found anything particularly useful that explains what ought to be done. I mention it in the same breath as pacing because I think there are two major tools for helping a writer create a sense of pace. First and foremost, an outline to measure out the story beats, which you now know, if you've read my other post, is not your master. The second is chapters. When I outlined the Healer I initially thought I was going to write a short ten chapter story, but it has since turned into a twenty-one chapter story.

This isn't to say that my story has gotten much longer, though it has gotten a bit longer. In fact, as I have written the book I have been surprised to find that, intuitively, I have needed places to stop the current beat of the story. What's strange, for me, about this is that I have never written anything with chapters before. I obviously don't mean to say that I've knocked it out of the park and totally have it now. I am just surprised to see that there is some understanding within me when I need to context shift.

I bring this up because it's a question I see get brought up frequently and often gets brought up in my group. The main question is: "How many chapters should my book have?" It's a good question and it is hard to answer since it appears to be rather subjective. For example, when I was a kid, I found that most books I read had anywhere from fifteen to twenty chapters in them. These were short novels, though at the time they seemed long to me. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen has nineteen chapters, but the Transall Saga book, by the same author, has well over forty chapters.

I bring up these two examples because the stories, in many ways, though very different in genre, hit some similar beats. A kid gets lost, has to rely on his skills and limited resources to survive, and basically conquers their environment. Yet, the two have different chapter lengths. I noticed this even when I was young though I didn't really conceive of an answer. However, now that I have read a few books, and am almost done writing my own book, I have found that it's all about pace. It may be one of the best tools for pace.

What do I mean about pace as I mention it here? This might mean something different to others, but to me, it's basically the tempo at which your novel moves. Some books have a slow pace where plots burn slowly, others have very fast paces that move at breakneck speeds, and yet others move at a jog. To have a command over your pace doesn't mean that a book has to always be fast-paced. To me, it's more about knowing when to pick things up and when to linger. If a book has sections that feel like a slog, then that author doesn't have a command of their pace. In my opinion, you can have a command of your story and still not have a command of your pace. Ahem... Robert Jordan.

Actually, let's compare Robert Jordan to someone who I believe has an intense command of their pace, Brandon Sanderson. Obviously it's apt because Brandon Sanderson wrote the last three books in the Wheel of Time series. They both have ginormous books in ginormous series. Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives series is still mostly planned, though it is picking of steam with the fourth book coming out soon. I point this out because I have to admit that some unfair comparisons may come from this. Once the fourth book is released, it will be more telling how directly comparable they are since I felt like during and after Robert Jordan's fourth book was when the series started to slog more than it ought to.

I'm not going to get too nitty-gritty with the details. Both premier novels in both author's series were a great debut, hence the incredible response. I personally thought that Robert Jordan's third book was his best of the series and then after the fourth it started to feel unnecessarily long. I started Jordan's series when I was a teenager and followed each release. At the time, I started to formulate a theory that anything over seven hundred pages was just too much. I created a blanket rule in my head. Then Stormlight Archives comes along at more than a thousand pages each, and I didn't get the same sense of lulls as I did in Wheel of time.

I started to wonder what was the difference. Both have amazing highs in their books, and have characters that I care a great deal about. Why was it that my mind learned how to skip whole paragraphs of Jordan's books? With some analysis, I realized that Jordan would often interrupt the tempo of his book to describe things in great length. It's probably the most common joke of his series that he describes, at length, what a person is wearing, especially women. But, the reason this is so notable isn't just the frequency with which it happens but when it happens. Also, what it's associated with his book. Often, Jordan will introduce new characters; for example a villain. This person is introduced as a major obstacle to the story, only for us to pause for a whole paragraph to understand what they are wearing, and what they look like. There's nothing inherently wrong with explaining what a person looks like, but when it pulls a reader out of the action, the story, or even the world you are creating, then it's bad.

Brandon Sanderson, on the other hand, creates engaging books from start to finish. He's not perfect of course, but for the most part he clearly tries to maintain a tight pace to his novels, with every scene, description, and plot point contributing to the development of the story. I guess I should also qualify the word engaging as used here since I don't mean it expressly as good. When I say engaging I mean that most of Brandon Sanderson's books have a tight and mostly quick pace. Especially his YA novels like Steelheart, but even Way of Kings has a quick tempo to it. This causes most of his books to have an urgent feel to them. There's pretty much no casual walk with a character or many intimate moments like you are in the room with the character. This may not be to other's tastes, but I personally like an exciting book for escape.

In summation, Chapters can be a great tool to you, and they aren't dependent on any steadfast rule. They can also be great for creating the pace that you are looking to provide in your book though there are many other tools for pacing as well. Pacing can be quick, slow, but never plodding. Your readers should never feel bored when they read your book and boredom doesn't just mean that your book is slow. In fact, some books are so quick paced you can't make sense of everything that is going on and that makes the book boring as well.