The story curve has a name!! With some slight alterations, it's called Freytag's Pyramid! Just in case any of y'all are studying English.

“Enter late and leave early” that is so helpful. Oh my god my middles are always a mess. This video was so helpful, will be rewatching and rewatching this.

I’m binging all these before I start writing

As a non-native English speaker who prefers to write in English I often feel like throwing myself into a horrible situation for my stories. But I would like to say that your videos have helped me so much to take a more critical look at my writing. I was able to realize why my story didn't work and after years of not looking at it, I started a full rewrite. And I am already feel so much better. Not only this video but all your videos have been so full of helpful information I can't wait to watch more! Thank you for sharing your craft!

Someone explained pacing to me as the number of questions your story raises vs the number of questions that are answered, and that really helped me understand.

For me, good story pacing is what you achieve when you keep your story concise and to the point. It's one of those techniques you really cannot 'unlock' until you do something else first. Stories with things like info dumping, or too many in-between scenes that doesn't move the story forward are slow story culprits, meaning you don't want to take two or three pages on covering a breakfast scene or a shopping scene just for the heck of it. It must be relevant to the story. I don't care if a story is 50.000 or 500.000 words in length if the story pace is balanced.

If you don't have one already I'd love a video on trilogies and how we plot our MC character arcs across all 3 and also in each individual book. Or any advice about how to go about a trilogy. Thanks!!

Felt “fine” about my opening set up and inciting incident.... But while I was watching this, an idea came to me... one that would improve my story tremendously! Fantastic! Right? Wrong!!! Now I have to rework the first 30k words in my book. So thank you Alexa Donne for completely messing up my writing groove 😂❤️

According to “the write practice,” Stephen King said your story should be 25% beginning, 50% middle, and 25% end, and you can determine this structure by looking at word count.

Just found your videos. Love them. I have SEVEN books that I dread editing and all of this has been incredibly helpful. Now I dread editing them... uh... differently. But I feel like I have a game plan, and for that, I can only thank you.

I had momentarily forgotten how writers used the word “pants-er” and when you said you were one, I was like “she pulls people’s pants down?!” Oops.

Word count stresses me out! My writer friends are always talking word count, whereas I just write, only to then get sucked into their word count obsession. I then spend entirely too much time thinking about my count being too low at that part in the story, agonizing over revealing too much too soon. Pacing kills me.

I rarely read, so I've probably read five novels in my life, and none of them had an identifiable plot structure. And I loved it. I hate predictable structure. I'm very good at picking out patterns and structures and predicting outcomes, and if I saw that in a book I would probably put it down.

This is such a hard topic to cover and you did it beautifully! Your story curve talk was solid! Also, love the cherry shirt :)

This video made me realize my book idea needed a midpoint turn 😅

I LOVE how you connect the technical/academic techniques to larger, squishier concepts. It is super helpful to see the way the planks and nails build the house! Thanks so much for the GREAT content :)

I enjoy listening to your shows. I find something every time that sends me back to a WIP to fix, change or re-ponder.

Alexa, for starting off seeming to be unsure of how to present story pacing to us, I must tell you that you did a smashing job of it! I especially appreciated your use of the bell curve - that brought it into focus. You are...amazing!

You definitely simplified this for me, thanks!

Hello Alexa. I am so thankful I found you're channel here on KZfaq. I am actually writing my own story and I was kinda stuck and felt like giving up but when I saw your video on harsh writing advice, I was instantly cheered up by all the things you said because it is true. And now I am trying to revise my story with your advice in mind. Thank you. Your videos are really helpful.

I am thankful for the advice of jumping into the story and leave early and the curve structure. Plus, looking at books of my favorite authors. I thank you so much.

I looooove your graph!!! I think it's the best I've seen. It spoke to me. I really found myself thinking about past books I wrote and where I went wrong in the past when i was a more novice writer. Thank you for such a profound reflection experience!!

Thank you, great advice. Keeping the arc in mind is super helpful as I get started. This is all new to me, thanks for giving me the confidence to get started.

So you are the first person I’ve run into that was able to explain the bell curve to me. THANK YOU. I was struggling to apply my novel to it, since it doesn’t follow a hero’s journey, and you helped me immediately put my story into context. Do you have a video that goes into each of those stages? I thought you did but my mobile app is failing me! Great video!!!

nice detailed info on pacing. it can be a tricky thing to figure out and not be too fast or slow in each scene and through the entire story. thanks!

This was a very good one. Thank you Alexa.

I want fast pace, when think fast pace I think Deathnote. Seems every thirty seconds or so new info, a new mystery, a new challenge comes up and you just have to know what they make of it. That's what I think makes it addicting

Much love for the info!

What if a character has to travel a long distance (and time (I tend to let logistics influence my story)) to get to the next main plot event? Shift the attention to another POV or weave in a sub-plot that relates to the main plot and have minor events for the subplot when they reach different towns and cities?

I NEEDED THIS

This is so good, wow!

Thanks again, Alexa!

I read Brightly Burning in one day on vacation. I couldn't put it down! You definitely nailed pacing. Can't wait for your new novel!

Thanks bunches, Alexa. I very much am a person that loves revising over and over and have trouble creating that first draft. The tip that didn't work for you, but I have a feeling will for me, is the quick and dirty draft. I might even start it smaller, at around 5000 words, but I'll see what works best.

This is absolutely so helpful. I got my notes back from my beta and it was a bunch notes about pacing (although he didn't mention the word so I don't think he knew what he was referring to_, and then I had a freak out because, oh no! I'm terrible at writing! But for real this video is so helpful, especially the part about the bell curve. I definitely have to butcher my own book just to get it right.

This was so helpful I took a screen shot of your bell curve and I was totally going to use it

Hey Alexa, solid video. I totally agree regarding the BS2 beat sheet a li'l denouement in the right spot goes a long way! Cheers, scott.

I love how you mentioned reading a LOT of things with good pacing! and haha I'm actually just about to start reading Harry Potter so that's perfect :)

Your hair looks so sleek and cute in this video! And your advice is amazing as always!

Great video thanks for mentioning three act structure and ticking clock and tournament as pacing techniques :)

Pacing is the thing I struggle with most and I haven’t found a lot of tips for it! It’s just so confusing for me and I never get it right or consistent

This channel is sooo under-subscribed! I've perused various booktubers and, while most are just fine, they're geared more towards beginning writers and folks who may be writing as a hobby. And don't get me wrong: everyone should write for fun if they're willing to! Writing is excellent therapy and a brilliant form of communication, and I believe everyone has at least one story in them - waiting to be told. That said (and again, not to sound like a braggart), I feel like I was born to write. I've had a relationship with it since I first began to understand the concept of books. It's a relationship that has had many highs and lows, eventually leading me to this point in my life, wherein I've got my proverbial shit together and have finally committed to a novel. It will be the first of many projects, because I have a backed-up flow of them. My stories have been building behind a psychological dike for decades. Now that I've torn down the barriers, ideas both whole and partial are spilling over the embankment and flooding my daily consciousness. So many stories, so little time... Every English and writing teacher I had, from kindergarten to college, encouraged me to follow writing as an actual career path. Not a day of my adulthood has gone by without me feeling pangs of regret and shame for letting them, and especially myself, down by not taking advantage of what appears to be a precious gift (and ew, really, I hate how boastful that sounds). On the other hand, those negative emotions are tempered by the wisdom I've gained which tells me it was necessary to live a life filled with misadventures and flaws, because it's given me both inspiration and perspective. It's allowed me to meet some incredible characters and learn things about life that I wouldn't know any other way. And for that I am grateful, and understand the time to begin could only truly be now; I had to reach this point in my own hero's journey. Anyhoo, the point of this is to say that this channel is the only one I've found that's actually helped me write better prose, because the advice is suited to writers who have more confidence in their commitment to the craft. I feel Alexa has a fair amount of confidence in her own writing, and she strikes me as a good writer, without even reading her work (in fact, I probably will do so at some point). It sounds like she has a thorough knowledge of key resources about the writing process, so it's almost like an online class. It's also harder to find booktubers who give so much insight into traditional publishing. She's completely convinced me to go that route. But what really sets her apart, in my opinion, is how she addresses every aspect of writing, and does so in a way that makes me feel like she has confidence in her viewers. She treats her audience like we are already in the community. It gives people inner strength to have such a resource. Like I said, this is the only channel I've found that actually gives me advice I don't already know, even if some of it is stuff I knew intuitively, it's great to have help conceptualising it in such an intelligent, professional, yet amiable fashion. I sincerely hope her channel grows in leaps and bounds, as well as her writing career.

I love your videos so much! I’m wrapping up a 100K novel after 11 years (yikes)! And I’m trying to think ahead to editing because my manuscript is such a disaster. Your videos have been so helpful and you’re so beautiful!!❤️ thanks for sharing💞

This video was helpful. Thank you.

One day I'll post a link of my book here. I was about to give up on my first book then I found your harsh advise for newbie writers. I'll write that damn book now, since my health is getting better. I thank you in advance. Your videos will be my guide now. God bless you!

I actually learned a lot from this. I actually didn't even consider this a problem until I saw this video and now it's like why didn't I know this could be an issue, it's so obvious. So thanks for the vid. You gave me a lot to think about. 😁👍

What are your thoughts on time skips and flashbacks?

Love ALL your stuff, Alexa! Whenever I have a few minutes to kill, I turn on my Alexa youtubes. So helpful. Thanks!!

the only thing i would say is that, unless your reader is looking for short, snappy paragraphs with punchy pacing and relatively simple phrases and wording (which i don't mean as a bad thing, please don't think i mean to say that style equates to poor writing - i loved The Hunger Games, for instance), you're not necessarily shooting yourself in the foot by writing chunky paragraphs with long sentences; however i think the purple prose is slightly (but only slightly) subjective, but you would be able to tell if a novel like The Road was written by someone whose prose is purple, rather than the guy who wrote that one, Cormac McCarthy, who i consider to be an absolute master.

Another thing about pacing: After an intense (physical or emotional) scene, give your reader some time to catch their breath with a slower scene.

In my book I use pacing as a stilistic device: In the beginning my character is quite depressed and the world seems to rush past her, she only now and than describes little snips of her surrounding and moves through the world without caring about where she is and what is going on around her. When she gets better she describes more and more of her surroundings and is more invested in what is happening. Do you think to play with the pacing like this is a no go, or do you think it can be done good?

My books pacing are slow and steady.

Great video

Omg 9:46-9:55 had me laughing so hard. I totally get what you’re saying. Delivery was so endearing and funny 😆

this was really helpful- I'm not much of a writer but I want to create comics, so these videos are so godsent to me TT

Thank you for efforts. I can tell you put a lot of work into your videos. Could you perhaps go into more detail about the mirroring you mentioned and provide some good examples?

this was really usefull, thank you! Though sometimes I wonder how I should use pacing because I'm writing a series. Should I follow all the beats in each book, or should it be spread over the whole series? or both?

I think it was really good! Not confusing at all 😁. Thanks! 😃

Love her vids! ❤️

Subscribed. You had me at Jim Butcher.

Can you do a video on how to balance negative, action and dialogue in the Page?

Thank you for this video! Your talk of the three act structure really helped me think about the pacing of my current work in progress.

Could you talk about writing for a plot when you plan a sequel? Surely this might strongly change the ending?

May I ask what is a too high word count for a chapter on a fiction / Romance?

im convinced pacing is purely subjective. I drool to huge 500 word novels.

I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint people with my ending... I build up a fight, the fight happens and the MC wins, then I set up book two after that, with what could be seen as a second breaking point I suppose. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. :/

If you want a hook at the beginning of your book, you may wanna start at the inciting incident on the story curve here 11:18, and only hint back to the setup section rather then actually writing it. ;)

Is it possible to have an "inciting incident" in the first sentence? Like, if the POV is from the cause of said inciting incident rather than the main character?

Advice please! I’m writing a fiction book that takes place over the course of 13 years. I don’t want the book itself to be too lengthy but I don’t want the pace to be too fast. Advice??

So... How can I take pace with my chapter having a lot of things going on?

I’m a pantser too but I don’t do that other thing because I’m a noob and lazy with trying to do that stuff *cri*

Pacing is Cats??... Well. Uhh, sounds kind I weird but, ok, If you say so. I'll put more cats in my novel📖🐈✍🏾 Love your Videos, Much Love and Respect🎉💯📖

Oh, I am trying to reduce my word count so much right now! Shortening sentences, removing entire paragraphs, rewriting things more tightly. XD Gah! But hey, it gets better. :P

I tend to write in fragments-how about transition words?

I do have a question about pacing with the three act structure. Do you continually build up the pacing and make it go faster until it reaches the climax (turning point) and slow it down, or do you balance them out and have more of one another as the story reaches the turning point?

My book faces a serious dilemma. Nothing I do truncates it enough that the inciting incident happens before...I think it's chapter twelve, which is simply not excusable. There is action and character development before that, but I need that time to set up my characters and the stakes. So I'm either terming "inciting incident" wrong or getting it seriously wrong in my book.

i'm somewhat stuck in honey right now because i'm unsure of what my story's genre is. my story is about a boy named naomi novák whose biggest dream is to climb k2, the savage mountain. the longest part of the book would be his journey up the mountain (he does it alone) and there are some parts were it gets pretty suspenseful. i assume it'd be a drama or a thriller, but i have no idea! can someone help?

All i need is how many pages i should generally spend on the start or intro or part 1 to get into a vibe or idea. Not words cos those drive me mad. Its my first attempt at writing.

How much of a page should buying something at a shop take just wondering this would help me alot. Thanks

Love your videos! Can you give an idea for good movies with good pacing? :)

I feel like act one was too slow so I have to end up fast tracking the second act

What I'm worried about is that my story has NO middle. Yeah, I said no middle. I started, and then had an adventure or two, then skipped to the end. So the first 5 chapters explain my character´s life. Chapter 6 and 7 are the "middle" the following events are leading to the end, connected to it. What should I do?

I'm reading Brightly Burning right now. Is your kitty the one Luna is based on?

When you start playing with youtube speed modifier to change the pacing of the video (?)

Can pacing be too tight?

In almost the exact middle of my story, the MC gets word that his wife is kidnapped... I guess that's good. But in general, I think my story has a too long mid-point and it might drag a bit. But I'm not sure. Arrrgh! I really need so much feedback on my story. XD

Is the goal for the pacing to always be fast?

I have way-too-fast pacing but I also use way too much description so I’m really confused

Do the cats count as a cliff hanger? Because I want to keep watching for more of them.

What about pacing a romance novel?

The harry potter books are wordy af.

This is my ABSOLUTE struggle in writing, I end up making my stories to fast. I have always wanted to write a horror novel but I feel like my book is going to be terrible.

So what you mean... Is that if a person falls and trips In my story... I can stretch that scene to 3 more pages with the power of pacing... God

I'll review this video again.

I LOVE the flow chart you have. But you keep going off on tangents and forget what you were talking about in a couple of places. You said the Denoument was super important...but you never explained WHAT it is... (Other than something french sounding.) So... What IS it?

As Alexa spoke, the cat paced in.

*writes down* pacing is cats, got it

time to restart LOL

"[...] in what I like to call the dénoument [...]" Gurl, saying it in french doesn't make it your thing hahaha I've been calling it that since elementary school because that's just what it's called in french and I was thaught in french. Anyways. No hate, just sass. Been watching your videos as I write my first book, it's been helpful and interesting. Thanks for the free educative content.

Waves at video-bombing kitty.