Controlling the narrative pace is an aspect of writing that most authors aspire to learn. However, it’s also a fairly misunderstood concept. To learn how to control the narrative pace you must know three things: how, when, and – most importantly – why.
First of all, a quick definition: The narrative pace (or narrative pacing) of a story refers to the speed at which the author offers the story. Obviously, this isn’t linked to the speed at which the events of the story occur.
Indeed, as we’ll see in this post, the discrepancy between the two is a key component. The difference between these two – speed of narrative versus speed of plot – is integral in figuring out how to control the narrative pace.
To learn how to control the narrative pace, you must understand three things: how, when, and – most crucially – why(more…)
Recently someone left a review on my Narrative Nods android app. Part of their review was about that user’s narrative not having a narrative antagonist, and therefore, as he said, he didn’t need the option.
That review got me thinking. I realized that there must be many authors out there who probably don’t understand the concept of a narrative antagonist. As I explained in my article on the types of fiction characters:
The antagonist, as the name implies, functions as the force keeping the protagonist from achieving the given goal. The antagonist actively keeps the protagonist from achieving his/her/their goal. In other words, the antagonist’s opposition is not a result of error, tragic irony, or other such literary device – see information on the character type of the opponent, below.
This seems straightforward enough. However, I also mentioned in that article that:
In most complex narratives, the author can achieve the most powerful effect by having a character play a dual role. For instance, the protagonist and the antagonist can be one and the same actual character. Imagine someone who half the time works toward some goal (say, to find peace of mind over a past trauma), only to undermine his own efforts due to fear or suspicion.
This is probably the part about a narrative antagonist that many authors misunderstand. So, let’s take a closer look at this.
A narrative without a narrative antagonist is like a chess game with only one side. Sure, you can play a bit in a silly way, figuring out movements and combinations, but it’s all pointless.(more…)
If you take a look around you, you’ll discover we’re obsessed with measuringFor more on this, take a look at my article on measuring success. Your camera is this many megapixels, your phone has this many gigabytes of RAM. It’s no surprise that texts – novels, essays, and blog articles – fall victim to the same process. But what is an optimal word count for a given text?
In today’s article I’ll… Well, let’s be unusual and start from the end: I’ll eventually give you some tips on how to calculate the optimal word count for your novel (though probably it won’t be what you expect). But before that, I will talk a bit about word counts.
Some things can be measured, some things can’t. And then there are things that, just perhaps, should not be measured.
I’ll explain why I think optimal word counts are overrated. Furthermore, I’ll show you why becoming preoccupied with having the “right” word count for your novel might be counterproductive.
