Pacing and Setting

[Mathas]

Hi all,

I've tried to search for this in previous posts and haven't come up with much. I am well into the first draft of my novel, and I find myself 8 chapters in and the characters are still not moving on from the first location. The chapters are around 10 to 16 pages long, and I am dealing with 3 main POV's at the moment. I have heavily edited this much already, and merged scenes, and removed sections of world building for later, and I still wonder if they are spending too long where they are.

The location is a subterranean city inside a mountain, and it is being attacked and sacked. One character (D) lives there, one (Y) is arriving there on a diplomatic mission, and one (M) is on the bad guys side in the process of assaulting the city. Heres how it goes -
- The story opens with Y arriving with her protectors
- then D is on the way to the meeting and I use this to show a part of the underground city,
- then Y meets D who tells her to hide as the attack begins,
- then it switches to an outside perspective where the bad guys are attacking the city
- D is in the library when M arrives and is introduced
- D escapes and I then have a scene where Y is hiding and must fight her way out of her hiding place
- M is in the library and D is introduced to his quest in the depths of the book shelves
- Then I switch to another location, where other characters learn of this attack
- M is in the library and falls asleep, Y is captured and her protectors are killed after traversing through the caves and D escapes on a goat... yes
- Y is brought to M who orders her taken as his prisoner and thats when they all move on from the mountain city.

Each of these either represent whole chapters or multiple scenes within chapters. I feel like it takes quite a long time for this all to happen, and with 8 chapters drafted and another two or three to come until they move from the city, to all be travelling across a harsh landscape, I feel like things are moving very slowly. When I break to the other location briefly it is for a political perspective. And this all adds up to about 130 - 140 or so pages.

Is this too long in the same place? There are various settings and places within the city that serve as settings, but the reader is reading about the same place for that long. Should I break from there and look at other locations like I did that one time? Or would that break the pace of whats happening in the city? At the same time I feel like everything that's happening is necessary having already done a fair bit of whittling.

Oh, the calamity

 

[Rexenm]

There is the point where escape is futile anyway. If they are so caught up in their own worlds, of epic tales and ballads, why don’t they just drop their burdens, and go walk about?

I have a similar problem. Two stories I noticed could, merge, and they are quite unremarkable alone, but together kind of frightening. I like the character arc more than plot, but together it seems they are fighting not merely humble.

 

[pmmg]

I cannot tell you if it is too long or not. I would have to read the work. If the story is getting what it needs, then it is a the right amount.

I will caution, that an authors perception of a story is not always the same as a readers, and only readers can really answer this.

I would ask....

Has the inciting incident happened? If so, have all the character's reacted in a way that seems congruent with story. If so...roll the story on.

I would also advise that you should begin the story at the moment everything changes. If you feel the story is struggling to get going, that says to me that it has not started there, and I will point to it and say...you have the wrong opening. Open just when things change.

 

[Mathas]

There is the point where escape is futile anyway. If they are so caught up in their own worlds, of epic tales and ballads, why don’t they just drop their burdens, and go walk about?

Ah yes, if we could all simply go walk about and abandon our woes, things would be so much nicer

I cannot tell you if it is too long or not. I would have to read the work. If the story is getting what it needs, then it is a the right amount.

I will caution, that an authors perception of a story is not always the same as a readers, and only readers can really answer this.

I would ask....

Has the inciting incident happened? If so, have all the character's reacted in a way that seems congruent with story. If so...roll the story on.

I would also advise that you should begin the story at the moment everything changes. If you feel the story is struggling to get going, that says to me that it has not started there, and I will point to it and say...you have the wrong opening. Open just when things change.

I appreciate this, I see that my perception may be different. I think I should get someone to read it and I'll ask them about that.

The inciting incident has happened for each character in their own ways. D has been put on his quest, Y has been captured and M has been landed with something I failed to mention above. M's inciting incident is far more subtle than those of Y and D. But I believe things are in motion from chapter 7 or 8 onward. I think. By then, D is well underway and has done what he can to escape and start his quest, Y is pretty much trapped and will need a miracle, and M's story is only just beginning really, and it isn't until he arrives back in his city where things change drastically for him, but his inciting incident has occurred, he just doesn't know it yet. And I am taking far more time with M because he is what I would consider to be my main character, and will bear the brunt of the character change.

I did try to begin the story when everything changes, but I had been told by a couple of people that they really wanted to feel the gravity of the change, and see what life was like beforehand. Maybe I need to hack it up a bit and take less time to get there.

 

[Incanus]

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with this portion of the story taking place in the same overall setting. For one thing, from how it is described, there are multiple places within this setting that the scenes take place in.

If there are other story problems, such as issues pmmg raised, that is a separate problem.

I would ask: did this turn out differently than you had planned? Or did you intend the story to have more travelling/journeying? If that is the case, it may make you feel the story isn't 'working', when in fact, it may very well be working.

Also, don't stories about hospitals take place mostly in and around hospitals? There's nothing wrong with that. It makes me think of two Alfred Hitchcock movies (Rope and Dial 'M' for Murder) where 99% of the story takes place in a single apartment, and they're both great.

Getting feedback on this and other issues should be invaluable. Good luck!

 

[Mathas]

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with this portion of the story taking place in the same overall setting. For one thing, from how it is described, there are multiple places within this setting that the scenes take place in.

If there are other story problems, such as issues pmmg raised, that is a separate problem.

I would ask: did this turn out differently than you had planned? Or did you intend the story to have more travelling/journeying? If that is the case, it may make you feel the story isn't 'working', when in fact, it may very well be working.

Also, don't stories about hospitals take place mostly in and around hospitals? There's nothing wrong with that. It makes me think of two Alfred Hitchcock movies (Rope and Dial 'M' for Murder) where 99% of the story takes place in a single apartment, and they're both great.

Getting feedback on this and other issues should be invaluable. Good luck!

Overall I think the main beats of what I'd had imagined so far have happened, with a few extra added suggested by other people. That's probably why I feel there's too much is happening. I started it a few years ago when I hadn't the foggiest how to actually plan, and now that I do have an outline, I know where they'll go next. But I think there is plenty of depth to keep things interesting between the various settings within the city, now having worked and reworked this section exhaustively (a habit I intend to incinerate and cast protective blessings upon from now on until I have the whole first draft done!). Now that this portion is more or less completed, I think getting feedback may be a good way to go.

I must look at those AH movies!

 

[JBCrowson]

There's a vogue currently for the inciting incident to appear immediately in stories. There's a counter argument that until I know enough to care about a character 'so what if they have a life changing experience'. Neither is wholly right or wrong; both serve to illustrate the old adage that you can't please everyone all the time. I would say go with what feels right to you, and then make it work. Get feedback wherever you can, persevere until you finish, and realise that 2 years after you finish you will probably hate the naivety of it. It's all part of the process.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think a lot will depend on how you see the story developing. It's entirely possible to have a novel length book set in one place (like a city) with only a few areas within that place used for the action. An example would be Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest. I think I might turn your question around and ask you if the protagonists really need to move outside the city to resolve the plot?

 

[Mathas]

I think a lot will depend on how you see the story developing. It's entirely possible to have a novel length book set in one place (like a city) with only a few areas within that place used for the action. An example would be Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest. I think I might turn your question around and ask you if the protagonists really need to move outside the city to resolve the plot?

Thats interesting I will take a look at that. I definitely think they need to leave the city, the story has far too many players and events to be there, and in many ways the attack on that city is the overall inciting incident. My concern though is that I currently don't have anything planned which will revisit this city later on, and is it then just there as a throwaway location to serve the plot? Including this city there are 5 main areas that the plot takes place in.

 

[skip.knox]

What about the characters? I could not tell which of them is the protagonist, but whichever one, how do they change over the course of the whole story? What causes that change? What are the milestones along the way?

If I had those clearly in mind, then I would go back and ask *where* those changes need to happen. If the answer is all five locations are required, and each location is 100+ pages, you've got yourself a hefty novel there. But also, maybe everything in this first city turns out to be backstory, and the real inciting incident, complication, climax, and resolution happen elsewhere. Conversely, maybe all the change can happen right here, in City A.

To put it another way, maybe look at the issue from the point of view of character arc rather than plot elements.

Now, maybe your story is not character driven. Maybe it's all about events and twists and quests. That would bring forward a whole different set of questions.

 

[Prince of Spires]

The only real answer we can give at this point is It depends.

There are plenty of novels that take place in a single city or even a single room. Some of them amazing. Sixteen ways to defend a walled city is about the siege of a city and happens (almost completely) in and around a single city. I can list a dozen other novels from my bookshelves also happening inside a single city. Nothing wrong with that.

In the end, location is important, but it is mainly there to serve the story. If the story is served by being in a single location then go for it. If you want multiple locations, then change it up.

Another angle on it depends is how long you expect your novel to end up being. Spending 150 pages setting up the main conflict in a 1.000 page novel is very different from doing the same in a 250 page novel.

The best thing you can probably do is to keep writing until you finish the story. Then you can truely judge if you started at the righ place and if your pacing is correct or not. Trying to judge that after finishing the first act is hard. Also, it might turn out that you're writing a different tale from what you thought you would. And most of it may very well need to happen in a single location.

2 things to keep in mind though are firstly, if your brain is telling you the pacing is wrong and that you're spending too much time doing nothing, then there probably is some truth to that. Our subconcious tends to pick up on those sorts of things.

Secondly, 150 pages of setting up the conflict is a lot. Just to go with a famous example of a slow paced, 1.000 page book: By page 150, Frodo has inherited the Ring, fled across the Shire and through the old forest and has arrived at the Prancing Pony.

So if you're still setting up your main conflict, then you're probably too slow. However, if the story is already moving forward, then it doesn't matter.

 

[xena]

Staying in that location for a while doesn't seem like a bad thing. If the characters are developing and the plot is advancing, readers will stay engaged

 

[Penpilot]

IMHO worry less on location and more on if the plot is moving forward. Take a moment and think about how each POV's s plot is unfolding. Can you speed it up? Does it make sense to speed up? If you can justify every chapter's existence, then maybe you don't need to do anything about it.

Also, another way to look at things is it may be 8 chapters, but it's split up among three POVs. The plot for each main character has just under 3 chapters of advancement. If you think about it that way, it's not necessarily a lot of time in one place for one POV.

That's the thing about multi-POV stories, with each POV, the story expands and can become exponentially more complicated. Sometimes you can rein it in. Other times, it takes as much time as it takes.

 

[Devor]

The plot pushes until the character shifts, and that first shift ends Act 1.

And this looks to me like a first act, which is usually about 25% of the story. The first act typically ends with the characters accepting some kind of call to action, which I presume they would be doing as they escape. A fantasy novel for a debut author is around 100K words, so your expected word count here is roughly 25,000 words.

But the first Act doesn't have to line up with changing the setting. In Star Wars, the Call to Action happened after they found Luke's aunt and uncle killed. Meeting with Solo, still on Tatooine, was the start of act 2. So if you can't get the word count down, you can try having the call to action a little before they escape.

If Act 2 continues in the same location, it shouldn't feel like it's running long, you just have to reorient the character's goals and the book's tone accordingly. Maybe they "accept defeat," resolve on their new goals, and then escape with a bang... on a goat.