I actually really enjoy books that are “slower” in the sense that it’s not a lot of battles and action but the plot is constantly moving forward and keep you intrigued

Watching these vids always get me raring to write and fills me up with ideas. They do 99% of the time end up as concepts but they still motivate me to write 😂

One pacing gripe I have is when a book is 300+ pages and is only split into like 10 chapters. It means each chapter is like 40 pages long, and it just makes the whole thing feel like it's taking forever to get through.

So happy that Dear Authors is back. 📚

I actually hate when an author builds up for something, then, when the thing finally happens, it's brushed over in a few paragraphs. Like... we waited all this time for THAT? Eff off!! Take you time to really rub that scene in, whether it's the first kiss, or a reveal of a secret, or a battle. It doesn't matter, just make that scene important and make us feel it! XD

I personally love a short "breather" in between action scenes. For me it gives me time to process my thoughts and to get in the heads of the characters. For instance in HP when Harry has just gotten the memories from Snape and we see everyone's reactions to the recent battle. Those were the most emotionally charged moments for me.

I personally really like books that take their time. Especially if the author can use that time to get me really invested in the characters or world in that time. I've found that books that go super fast between sections of the plot can definitely keep you interested, but it becomes harder to become invested in anyone because the plot is moving like a rollercoaster.

I feel like the quality of videos has been exceptional since the break. The only thing i've been missing is a good rant. [ive been working on writing my first book... and dear authors is second only to Sanderson lectures... which i consider to be the masterclass of writing]

I can't be the only person that fully flinched when Merphy sent that book tumbling off her shelf at 4:55, how she didn't physically react to that at all has me STRESSED lmao

Your video made me think of a humorous piece called “The Tandem Story” in which students Rebecca and Gerry tried to write one story by writing alternate paragraphs. Rebecca was writing about an introspective woman making tea, but Gerry was writing an action-packed space battle.

Hey merphy your a sweetheart, I love watching your videos and listening it always makes me feel like I’m listening to a friend. You exude such warmth and you seem like a wonderful mother and person never stop doing you and I hope you’ll always be happy 😊

So I'm an author and its fun to puzzle these sorts of questions out. As far as downtime goes I think there is a huge difference between downtime and a cliffhanger. I think that a lot of authors don't finish the current scene or action and put a big cliffhanger to go focus on something else thinking that this will keep the reader interested. I feel like readers get very sad when they are in the middle of an interesting scene and they hit a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger should make a reader interested, but if its at a point in which the reader is already interested generally your just going to have a really bored and dissapointed reader. Downtime I feel is like the calm after the storm. The readers world has been changed and now needs to see the consequences, they may notice different characters acting in different ways, maybe a character has a barely noticeable limp that he once did not have. Little changes that become apparent in the small things and decisions that characters make in everyday life. Mistborn does a great job I feel in using the balls that Vin goes to to showcase the small differences in her character as the book goes on.

I love a good slow burn especially with romance. If it’s romance I love for there to be time for it to develop now if they’ve been friends for a while then they likely will already have some chemistry bc that’s how friendship works. With friendship it depends on the characters and what makes sense for them. If there is a character that makes friends quickly or at least considers ppl friends quickly then they would consider ppl friends quickly. If there is a character that take a while until they see someone has a friend then I like to see that friendship blossom. It’s also really fun seeing both of those characters interact and one considers one a friend while the other one is like they’re not my friend atm

1. Dear authors is amazing 2. A book with good pacing is amazing, I honestly might take a break from The Dragon Reborn and just read Jade War since I heard it has better pacing. Honestly sometimes it seems like a happy accident

Is it a weird dream/goal to have, to one day write a book that Merphy will love?

Off topic, but glad to see this post! Don't know what part of Kentucky you live in, but have been worried with the news of that horrible tornado!! Happy to see you guys are ok! ❤

The One Piece slow pace "meme" is just because of the anime, don't let it take your curiosity off the manga

I believe that more slower paced writing reveals more of the author (rough edges, poor editing, and all), and often prefer that over a more polished/well-trimmed narrative.

I love slower pacing too, not filler but just books with time for character interaction and growth. My favourite romances or fantasies like LOTR are slower. In LOTR I felt like we needed the slow pace to make it realistic and to flesh out the amazing friendships.

I love how Murphy just slowly starts to hold more and more books it's like she's flexing on us

I am so happy that this series is back. Thank you so much Merph.

i remember someone suggesting a dear author on family dynamics a while back, it’s a great idea!! id really like to hear u talk ab this topic

I do not like single threaded or too simple of plots. Like Harry Potter or The Hobbit. I enjoy MANY Threads like LOTR, First Law, Stormlight Archive, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, WOT, Shannara Serries and Malazan Book of the Fallen. Thank you for being a wonderful Book Tuber.

AHHHHHH as a reader AND author I am always awaiting the next installment of this series, liked before the video even started. I’ve been eager to watch this one! 😍

I loooveee that you have reintroduced the dear authors series. I enjoy them soo much, they actually got me into watching your videos. Thank you for your work and time you put into this amazing channel :)

These videos are amazing in giving me ideas on how to flesh out my book, on how to add in little moments that will clue in the reader to what’s actually happening in the book. As an aspiring writer (who is a terrible at writing but loves it) I really appreciate them!

It was so interesting to see how everyone feels about pacing, and I thought this was a great video with brilliant examples given. Thank you.

I’ve missed this series 😍 You really help pinpoint areas that while I write I just keep in mind. Thank you for helping me get motivated!

I thought of you and your family when I heard about those tornados in Kentucky. I hope you're well.

This is the second dear author i started and these are the best thing i feel i could find. I wrote a book in high school that i've recently been thinking of working on again in my spare time and want every piece of information i can get from Merphy and her amazing community. It got me thinking about so much i could incorporate into it and how to improve. Thank you Merphy for motivating me to read, write, and be creative again. It's something I needed that i wasn't even aware of.

Yes! I have been waiting for this! Totally very patient...

God I love these. It helps ne so much with my writing, thank you Merphy and all the contributors!

Oh my gosh, it was so cool to see you respond to my comment! Thank you so much for such your thoughtful response and book recommendations! It’s so cool to be a part of one of these videos after watching them for a good while 😊

Yours is one of the only channels I watch the sponsor ads for! You never know what chaos you're gonna get here 😂

Hi Merphy! I really enjoy Dear author section, thank you for bringing it back! Greetings from DR!

I love your commercials, so good. I do love a really well paced story. I tend to describe super fast paced stories as, "and then this happens and this happens."

I really liked this video! It's been helpful as a writer and also helped me better understand my own thought as a reader. Also Merphy your red sweater is really pretty!

The thing I learned the most in this book is that most people don't understand what pacing is.

Oh I have missed your videos Merphy!

The question to ask yourself is, would the character(s) need to process these events? When there is action be it a battle or a break-up, the beings involved would usually think about and reflect on events. They would process trauma at the moment and then going further through their life. Pacing feels really off to readers if the character(s) don't do any of the processing on-screen. Immersion in the story is much more difficult without these sections because the pauses to process for characters allow the readers to also pause to consider and theorize.

As someone who is working on writing a piece of fiction, this was a really great video to watch. My big thing is my pacing that I need to work on so this video had a lot of great pointers.

You are spot on. Downtime is important! Emotional connection is everything for me.

As an aspiring writer and reader these videos are very helpful. So ty!!

I love your jumper/sweater💕

Merphy, did you buy a giant one Piece Poster? 25:29

I recently found this channel as I decided (again) to finish my fantasy trilogy and the more I watch you, the more I like you and the greater my inner conflicts are 🤣

I wonder how much the pacing is affected by people's reading speed and habits. Do people who read the books 50 pages/a chapter or two per day feel the pacing to be very different from those who finish the book in a day or two? Being a busy person and a slow reader, I often read 40-50 pages in a day, sometimes cannot continue to read for a few days. So there's always time for pausing, reflecting on the story & characters. But some days when I just sit down and finish half the book in one sitting, that does affect how I feel about the pacing. Or people who listen to audiobooks versus those who read the books? I often feel with audiobooks, I don't have time to reflect as it keeps on going until I pause the device.

Once again, I am late… and once again I have to recommend “Ascendance of a Bookworm”. As cliché the theme may seem at first (22 years old collage student dies in ironic accident and wakes up in the body of a 5-year-old girl in a medievalesque world -so typical Japanese pop culture) and even recognizing the prose suffers somewhat from it being a translation I still consider it one of the best (if not the best) long running fantasy stories ever written. There is next to no action and the pacing is slow enough that I would consider the first 3 books (together about 1000 pages) to be the prologue of the story and yet there are so many little details within the story that when you read it the second time* (and just to clarify: This one is a single plot long enough to rival the wheel of time. Only here the author actually managed to pull of an ending**) it feels like a totally different story. * It will still take about three years until the English translation will be completed, so reading the whole story will only be possible if you know Japanese or fight through machine translation. ** I know this sounds harsh given Jordans death, but I am convinced that if not for this WoT would never have been finished. Writing true long stories (meaning a story with a single plot) need skills that sadly neither Jordan nor Martin possess(ed).

Actually loved the add part!

The more I read and write the more I've come to think that pacing is more about the experience of reading the story than the actual, technical speed of the story. If there is strong conflict within the story or interesting questions raised then I keep leaning forward wanting what's next. But a high-speed story can still feel like it has poor or dull pacing if it's just a blur of events. Great discussion!

Unicorn Merph with the Thousand Sunny riding the waves of Wano in the background ❤ Glad for "Dear Authors" being back! Good job as always!

Very happy to see this series back :)

Slowing down the pacing actually takes quite a lot of skill. Good writers know how to continue to include character, interesting details, and relevancy; not so good writers tend to write a whole page dedicated to a character looking through their fridge, lol.

I'm super flexible with pacing. I like books that are fast and slow equally. But what really irritates me is when the pacing affects the story telling and exposition. Like exposition is super rushed or we aren't told important things until the very end

I agree so much with that comment about writing details according to the pacing of the situation. I’ve read some battle/fight scenes where the armor or weapons are described in excruciating detail. It really draws away from the tension, because there’s no way the character is analyzing things *this* deeply when he’s trying to *dodge a sword to keep his head from getting cut off* .

Love these videos :) Quick suggestion though, it would be super handy if these videos came with a list of books mentioned!

For me a page or two of info dumping is great after an emotional or intense event in a book. I say this because this me as a reader a little time to process what just happened. Also I get to learn more about the world the story is set in with killing the pace.

Merph's Campfire skit, though! HAHAHAHA :)

Merphy, I love your videos, especially the “Dear authors,” series. I am glad that it came back. I have used this series, in the past, to learn what read like and don’t like, applying those comments to my own stories as an author. Do you think that you could do a video on what readers think about co-writing? I am currently working on a project with my two friends and I thought I could get some inspiration.

A great example of pacing to me (in a manga or anime S1) is Berserk. Unfortunately the Author died earlier this year so its source will never complete... but what he spent time on since the 70's is such an epic tale of good and evil and the effects of such a struggle on the world at large that you might think the story would feel slow or disjointed at points. But its a master piece of character and morality study and it never feels stagnant or like your reaching a conclusion soon. The 2 central characters of the story are some of the best examples of good character writing and the effect it has on pacing out there. Guts the MC is Tacturn as all hell and a very troubled soul since birth. Having a heart breaking past that led to his current self and the rival/best friend/and at times antagonist Grifiph. Grif is what you can easily misunderstand as a privileged brat that is crazy good with a sword. No character controls a stories pacing quite like Grif does. Its impressive how these 2 individuals warped their universes reality as much as they did. In the case of the 1997 anime the Audio aspect was splendid at keeping the series level of melancholy present, by being uplifting against the sadness and dragging down the joy so you always felt like the characters did. Very Gory at points and not very child friendly in some scenes depicted. But Miura the Author captured the feeling that this was another reality and the stakes were personal. I do suggest reading it but expect Uzamaki levels of WTF to show up up some of the time as its a very oppressive and dark world it deals with and the people are depicted as genuinely realistic as possible (in my opinion).

As a newer amateur writer I find how I like to structure my stories is to only have action when it really means something to the character engaging in it. The idea being that every single action scene has some kind of significance for building, leading into breaking or growing the character or characters further. example a character who really doesn't like killing people is forced into a situation where to survive they suddenly are forced into a fight where they have to kill someone. A moment like that where the character is suddenly forced to chose between their morals or their life isn't something the character will soon forget And can have a lingering effect that influences future choices they made

The pacing in A Man Called Ove wasn’t an issue for me being that once I started I had a hard time putting it down and the more I read the more I loved that grumpy old man with a heart of gold.

Love the campfire commercial(?), it was interesting and informative.

Now I can binge watch Dear Authors all over again ❤️

I just came back to the channel after about a year, and noticed that you went from 56k subs to 321k subs. Congrats!

I’m writing a book of my own, so you have no idea just how helpful this series has been

I break each chapter into a small 3 act structure - review/resolution, conflict, then setup for next chapter. This avoids a chapter that doesn't go anywhere.

Dear Authors has been very important for my development as a writer. Thank you.

I think Man Carrying Thing's point was = There is a difference between something being fast-paced and the pace of something just being rushed. ^-^ (I could be wrong, but if I'm not, I absolutely agree with that!)

Oh I’m terrible at pacing, definitely needed this 🙏

I love how the ad is so self-conscious and Merphy wants it to end. "It's Campfire!"

Hell yeah Dear Authors is a great series

Hey you actually mentioned the outsiders! That's my favorite book

I love fast paced writing, but I think I'm learning to love slow paced writing as well, (I'd hope so, since my stories are rather slow paced, for some reason, I have a very hard time writing fast paced) so I suppose I love both.

Just finished Locke Lamora. Thanks for recommending it. It was worth the read.

Faster and slower segments add verisimilitude; that's how life unfolds. Incidently, "The Secret History" is one of my favorites. "The Little Friend" by DT is also a bloody great book--very southern and young Harriet is a fascinating character.

I read a bookthat was redefining the concept of infodumping. It wasn't dumping all of it in one place, it had a lot of unuseful names, places and notions sprinkled everywhere and I didn't know where to watch for the plot because everythig was relevant, even the fact the main character looked like some statue frome some guy in a room in a palace in a city we never got to visit in the book. But it was able to do that and still being fast paced.

Remember when Merphy posted THIS IS THE LAST DEAR AUTHORS ? 😂

I like more fast-paced stories, but the downtime is indeed what adds depth to the world and characters. A good balance is important. I especially like interaction between the main characters where they voice opposing views and you get just enough time to consider it and the characters get a moment to reflect as well before the action starts up again Also, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I love the sweater you're wearing.

I love Slow Burns... And hate them. I always want to scream at the character to move faster or to finally get together. While I also hope that it stays so slow so I can enjoy the whole story without asking _„Why are they together again?_ and then answering it with *„Oh right, because they both look good and are the main characters.“*

Quality and intentionality of the writing aside (both key points aforementioned), I also feel like the genre of book matters a lot too. My day-in-the-life period piece or epic fantasy should probably not have the same pacing as my swashbuckling book.

Pacing is so tricky. Especially when everyone really has their own idea of the perfect pacing. I'm SO glad Dear Authors is back!

Evil double unicorn horned Merphy is terrifying 😵 She will destroy us all!

those moments of downtime are what make something like Berserk hit so hard.

I think it matters when the downtime happens. Authors sometimes try to front load it to get to those feels right away, but I don't want to have downtime with these characters until I know them better. Then I want to spend all my time with them

Loved the video! I would like it better if we could see you as you read the comment, though. Having it besides your camera would be, imo, better. Awesome video!

I think we have grown too accustomed to perceiving literature through a very market-driven lens and often forget it is an art-form. Some books will be “slow” because that’s what the author was going for. Some books will unravel a huge magic world with strong military conflicts, magical races, complex magic systems… and yet most of the “action” will be pages upon pages of dialogue and diplomacy. Not all books will be for us and that’s fair. I often think of it in terms of “what if an alien race were to document human history?” Would their readers get mad because the author speak of an inconsequential romance between a Swiss spy and her sex-worker friend right in the middle of WW2, when “more interesting” things are taking place? Well, hopefully not lol.

I think stronger stories work in such a way where there's no "fat". Every scene should have a purpose even if it feels slow. Scenes should be spending time building on ideas, foreshadowing events, asking questions that us as readers WANT to be invested in. I'll take a slow story without huge action scenes if there's something for me to THINK about while things are slow or emotions for a character to be working through like you mentioned. Mystery and suspense are great for this reason because even while things feel "slow" we as an audience can infer that something might be building up around the corner. I do really agree that spending too much time worrying about explaining the world-building can be really exhausting, especially if as a reader you're just trying to get to the good stuff.

My view on pacing is that every chapter should change the reader's understanding of the story and/or characters. This could be as major as a game-changing event, or as minor as showing us how a character reacts to a certain situation. You could have an entire chapter that's just a character ruminating on past events, and it would still accomplish something important as long as our understanding of that character and/or those events has changed in some way.

Awesome video!! Undulates!!

One slow burn series you might enjoy is Ascendance of a Bookworm, about a woman who loves books being reborn as a peasant in medieval society.

I usually prefer a faster pace, but I am also happy to just hang with characters I enjoy.

Please review, 'Oyasumi Punpun'.

Hard agree on 1:07 Lauzuli! I love that!

There’s a lot of different “lines” so to speak that need to be paced separately depending on the type of book. For example, if you have a series of stories where action is a focus, then the action line would be paced relatively fast along with some breaks in between. But maybe you want to develop a certain type of relationship between two characters, so instead of trying to take all of the attention away from the action line, you have this relationship line being slowly built up across books and in between the action or during specific action events. Really, you have to figure out the different “lines” that you need to develop, figure out how much you want to focus on each line, and pace each line accordingly

17:58 The waves going up and down, really intense ....You mean undulating?

Is there gonna be more Dear Authors? Pls I need more...

I have always wanted to know another person's view on pacing. I like having a moderately fact-paced series of events because I usually read genres like action, fantasy and dystopian. However, I find it extremely disconcerting having giant plot-twists and events one-after another. I enjoy deep and meaningful conversations, some little things that put you off and a view into the characters life.

Man the campfire Merphy looks so severe :o

Hi Merphy, I heard about the tornados. I hope you and your family are okay.