Monday, February 14, 2011

Almost halfway...

I just finished editing chapter 13 of Tail Lights, which means I'm just about halfway through the original draft.

And I'm not sure it's working.

The first 18 chapters or so deal with about six days of actual time. Then the next section is only 3 or 4 chapters long, and deals with a period of weeks. The final section is about 9 chapters long, and deals with another period of weeks, but the finale takes place over just a few days and takes up five of those last chapters.

So the pacing is off. Or something. I know I need to add chapters to the middle section, and I even have some stuff I want to add in there. But I can't add too much, or I'll head into the 95 - 100K zone, which is getting too long for YA.

So I need to look for things to cut in the first section. Or maybe move some of the things that I have happening early in the book toward the middle. Even as I was writing it, I wondered if chapter 12 was really necessary. It's fantastic insight into who Tony is, but in terms of driving the plot forward, maybe it's unnecessary. And then the events that precede chapter 12 might be able to slide into that middle section. I'm not sure though. They work where they are. They're crucial to the development of the relationship between the siblings. But then I'm back to the first section of the book being too long....

How do you deal with pacing in your books? Having never written in chapters before, I've never looked at my stories in this way, and it's challenging. Maybe if I was an outliner.....

2 comments:

  1. It's hard for me to make a useful comment because I'm not a YA writer, but my immediate thought was to divide the narrative into "Part 1" and "Part 2", make Book 1 the first 18 chapters, and make Book 2 cover the material of the last 12-13 chapters, but with the "middle section" dealt with as flashback(s). It may be a totally crazy idea, but that's what came to mind!

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  2. Nice idea, but it's not really going to work. Every chapter already has a flashback in it, and the big climax of the second section is 2 chapters of flashback already....

    I think I need to re-structure a little...

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