The Secret to a Well Paced Plot (and it's ridiculously easy) | Writing Tips

hey guys it's shaylyn i'm here today with another writing video today i've got a pretty quick video i wanted to talk about a pacing hack that is so easy and so straightforward this is one of those writing tips that like changed my life i mean it wasn't really a tip i to be fair i just realized this but to be fair it doesn't take a genius to realize this because it's extremely obvious and yet i've never heard anyone say this before you know it's almost like too obvious to realize but once i started using this hack i became good at something that i used to be terrible at i used to be very bad at pacing um i considered pacing one of my greatest weaknesses i had very large pacing issues in all my novels uh the pacing was just a mess when i started doing this suddenly the feedback on my work was great pacing consistently over and over very consistent feedback that i've gotten on my novel from everyone who's read it is that the pacing is really consistent and strong and i was like stunned when i first started getting this feedback because pacing used to be something i really struggled with and this is the thing that changed my ability to pace and it is the simplest tip know what a chapter is in your book and do it consistently chapters are such a crucial tool and we don't really talk about them enough and i think the way a lot of people see chapters is in a counterproductive way and i i get this sense from the way that i used to see chapters and a lot of questions that i get a lot of people worried that their chapters are too long or too short there is no set length that a chapter needs to be and i think the the biggest mistake that i used to make is that i saw chapters as a tool for readability that essentially a chapter ended at a natural break for the reader i didn't see chapters as a consistent tool to pace the book that the chapters were the sections of the book that you could use in a repeatable way in order to ensure consistent pacing i think the biggest mistake you can make with chapters is think that there is a set thing chapters need to be like chapters need to be this length they don't a chapter can be like literally as long or short as you need what you want to do with chapters is figure out what a chapter is in your book a chapter is just like a division of a novel so what you want to do when you start writing a novel is ask what do chapters mean in my book not just what is the average chapter length that i'm going for though if you know what the chapters do you will likely have a consistent average chapter length but what is the purpose of a chapter in relation to my pace sign i've talked about this before in my novel honey vinegar and i did this because i was discovery writing the book which is something i found funny just because you know plotting elitists will say that like pantsed books have terrible structure and terrible pacing but my plotted books had terrible pacing and my pantsed novel that i discovered wrote had really great pacing and that's been consistent feedback that i've gotten like over and over again and it was because i did this thing and i did this thing because i was discovery writing so i was like well i don't have an outline she would sure my pace seems good even though my outlines never gave me good pacing because i'm not very i'm not a natural outliner who knows how to outline vowel um not saying that like outlining is bad for pacing i'm just mad at outlining so i was like i have to find a way to ensure good pacing okay well let me just think about what my chapters are because i'm just writing the book one chapter at a time so if i do that consistently theoretically i should have good pacing so i kind of saw each chapter in that book as a short story and that each one kind of had a short story structure there was like an inciting incident that would trigger like the event of that chapter there would be an escalation to that mini event there would be a mini event and that mini event would kind of cause like the inciting instead of the next chapter so i saw the structure of my novel as a series of interlinked short stories where like each short story built upon the the overarching narrative and what this gave me was a very consistent unit for my chapters all my chapters kind of had the same thing they had kind of the same consistent structure they all circled around a singular but core event and as a result of the fact that i was viewing them as a short story they all developed information that related to that event so i could have pretty consistent information reveal i also consciously wanted to make sure that my main character made a choice in every chapter so that she was always active and i knew that she was always an active participant on the plot because typically the reader will feel the plot moving when the main character is being active and making choices that affect the plot not just when things are happening so i did that consistently throughout the whole book and i kind of saw chapters in this distinct unit were they all the same length no but most of my chapters were between four and six thousand words because they all had the same core building blocks and because i used chapters essentially in this really clean way where i knew exactly what a chapter in my book was and i just did that over and over and over and at the points where i wanted the pacing to be faster i could make the chapters a little shorter and make those mini escalations a little faster and at the pace at the points where i wanted the reader sit with things a little longer i could stretch out those mini arcs a little more give them a little more breathing room but overall i still have this consistent unit i was able to move my book in a really consistent unit towards the ending and have this consistent pacing throughout now you don't have to use chapters the same way that i did in that book that's the thing and with another book i use chapters in a completely different way but when you start a book ask okay what is a chapter in relation to my pacing like how big a step do i take if you want really slow pacing maybe you're even gonna say okay i'm gonna have a major event in a three chapter arc so i'm gonna have the first chapter which is gonna be build up to the event the second chapter will be the event and then the third chapter will be wind down from the event and then in the next chapter i'll start a three chapter arc and i'll kind of have build up to event event in the second chapter wind down in the third chapter or maybe you have like you want really fast pacing and so you're gonna be like okay i'm gonna have like a key event in every chapter and my chapters are going to be pretty short like just two or three scenes this is going to be the relationship between those scenes and you're going to be able to keep up a really really fast pacing i like to think of this as the book's resting heart rate uh if the plot starts running faster that heart rate can escalate and sometimes he needs to rest and slow down but you have like a resting heart rate that you can kind of play within in order to tighten or relax the pacing at moments of higher intensity or moments where you need rest and breathing space while still having a general consistent heart rate in every book a chapter will have a different relationship to the pacing but before you start writing whether you're plotting or discovery writing ask yourself what the unit of a chapter includes and do that consistently and then manipulate that unit at the points that you want faster or more relaxed pacing it is the easiest plotting hack of all time it is so easy all you have to do is just take a moment to think about the form of your book before you start writing in my other novel that i'm working chapters work very very different differently in that book the form shifts chapter to chapter to kind of signal like the emotional relationship that the main character has to that moment of her life and how she's processing it and so for me in that book a chapter ends at the end of an emotional shift every time there was an emotional shift the chapter needs to end and we start again with a different form and so the chapters are very inconsistent lengths but each one focuses on an emotional beat and an emotional statement because it's a very emotional plot the book is moving kind of through emotional state tied to emotional state that's the causality and so that's as well in the pacing and you can also use larger divisions in that book i used parts because my chapters are very very short in that book and a bit more inconsistent because they literally have different forms i split the book into six distinct parts that all have a very consistent length and accomplish a similar thing they all kind of accomplish a significant step in the character relationships so each arc has a significant change in the main character's relationships with the two core the two core relationships that the book is exploring you can also use kind of a nested arc system which i talked about in a video on structure tips for discovery writers which i'll leave a link to you can even do like multiple types of chapter divisions like parts and then chapters within it if you want that like extra bit of structure and pacing which i found helpful in this particular book because the chapters were so short and naturally a little more inconsistent than the like short story style chapters in my previous book that is the tip it's so easy it's like it's so obvious the tip is just used chapters it's so obvious that i never thought of it for a long time and once i started doing that it kind of changed my life my question for you for this video is how would you describe the unit of a chapter in the book that you are currently writing like what goes into a chapter for you there's no wrong way to write a chapter um just understand what a chapter is i think too many people worry about the wrong or right way to write a chapter when really a chapter depends on your book and you just want to know what that means but that unit can kind of be whatever you need it to be and can be a tool for you not just a place to give the reader a break i first too long saw chapters as the place to give a reader a break when really it was a tool for me to control the pacing and i didn't really take advantage of that so thank you guys so much for watching and i'll see you in another video bye [Music] you

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 69,038

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, authortube, writing tip

Id: bMGUEwbumw8

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022