Writing Tips and Reviews

Pacing

"You want to have peaks and valleys in your writing, so the audience can have their exciting moment but can also recover so they don't get exhausted. You don't want your peaks to high, and you don't want your valleys to be too low or too long." -KrimsonRogue

Well, thanks to reviewing some garbage fires, I have content. I also have a review to do but I'm lazy.

-Too Fast-

Rise of Skywalker, I'm sure many people know this movie and how it spends no time on calm moments. It's one scene after another and things can't make sense when you do this. If you constantly run, you'll exhaust yourself, take a break and look at the scenery or start walking to catch your breath.

You can lose out on answering questions the reader may have, giving characters development, making sense of the world, or just times when everything needs to settle down. In real life, you can spend days working hard, but you eventually need a break. Putting that into writing, the one break in the story shouldn't be the end.

You should have moments focused on the times when the characters take a break, and they don't have to be useless. A calm scene with them at the table talking about their life develops their relationship and gives the reader a hint to who they are. You remember Devil's Taboo when Beth and Eichi sat at the table eating dinner and nothing happened? Well, that was a missed opportunity to have a calm moment and develop the characters.

-Too Slow-

What does When the Stars Align fail at the most? Besides introducing anything, instead expecting the reader to know what's going on without a single explanation. It's pacing. We spent over half the story with the characters being little pansies that there was no development at all. And when there was a hint to something going on, it was quickly ignored for more whining. Priority check is what that story needs.

Getting nowhere in the story in twelve chapters really says something, and I thought my pacing was bad. At least my stories see a finish line, despite how much padding I give out so characters can develop. I'm well aware of my faults and at least I'm trying to fix my problems instead of ignoring them and taking down the story.

But even I do pad out things, most of it goes into other development, so it's not completely useless. It's not watching the characters sit on a chair for three hours instead of focusing on the Holy Grail War going on outside. That would be horrible. Imagine if Fate spent twelve episodes leading up to the Grail War, imagine if they spent the first ten minutes hinting at the war, then the rest of the season with Shirou sitting on his bed, Type Moon would be a laughing stock. Cooking with the Emiya Family has more substance than that.

When you're going at a snail's pace in writing, then people lose interest, they don't care about what's going to happen because there are no stakes when the characters are screwing around. They don't know what the story is going to be about so choose to leave instead of waiting, because you made them wait for too long.

-How to Pace a Story-

I like the idea of having one or two main story moments, then some side story moments, then back to the main story. That gives the reader development and a break afterwards to process the information.

It's like a game, I focus on doing a few story missions then grinding for levels and items, then back to the story. Because if you go the story only route, you could be under leveled, not have the items for a quest, or miss out on what else the game has for you. You can miss some development that only happens during quests, sure, it's not important to know a character likes to fish, but it's part of who they are.

If you only go around grinding, then you'll be locked out of some areas that are opened by the story, never know who the characters are, not know about the story, get ambushed but you don't know why because you didn't bother to do the next chapter that explains it, and miss out on everything. You could even lose out on new characters who join later in the story.

Because yeah, stories do that, not everything is shoved into the first chapter and not everything moves so slowly that snails are laughing at it. There's a middle ground and you need to find it.

-Comparison-

Let's look at the first twelve chapters of Miraculous Lostbelt and compare it to Stars Align.

In the span of twelve chapters, Miraculous Lostbelt introduced the characters, the world, the stakes, had plenty of fight scenes, met the bad guy, lost a few allies trying to fight the opposing forces, gained a few allies who told the others about the story, and gained Solomon, which is a major win. Every scene was either major in story development, character development, or giving the readers a short break.

The chapters after that introduce Junao, Arjuna's other self, and Karna Lily, both who are important to Arjuna's development. Made Marinette a master to Artoria, had Bradamante join the team, revealed more about the miraculous through Fu's involvement and the book, and showed the relationships of the opposing servants.

In the same amount of time, Stars Align had a prologue that was decent, said character names, said terms with no definitions, introduced Celestia's power then retconned it, had one scene where Celestia had a plot important dream then decided it wasn't as important as whining so ignored it, introduced Raven as "evil" because she disagrees with Amber, effortlessly beat up Raven for no reason then called her "extremely powerful" and ended with forgetting what the plot was supposed to be about. GOOD JOB.

You know, most first seasons of shows have twelve episodes, and those are meant to go through the first arc or the entire show. When your twelve chapters has the same amount of content as ten minutes in a normal show, then you need to stop, think about you're doing, and rewrite your shit.