Fast-paced or slow-paced?

[BlackKnightX]

Which one do you prefer: a fast-paced story or a slow-paced story?

I know there’s no definite answer to this question because it’s more like a spectrum. If the story moves too fast, it may risk being shallow and exhaust you; if the story moves too slow, it runs a huge risk of boring you to death, makes you lose interest, and never come back to read it again. So, a balance is always ideal.

But like I said, it’s more like a spectrum and also depends on a story. But just for fun, which end of the spectrum do you lean toward more than the other?

For me, I prefer more of a fast-paced story—a story that’s constantly moving (it may stop from time to time to give out details and some important expositions, but overall it just keeps advancing forward).

What about you? Which side of the spectrum do you lean toward more?

 

[NotaNuffian]

Fast.

Unless the slow pace can keep me interested like Mushoku.

 

[Clori]

I want to say a balance of both, but I feel like that is cheating

But I prefer fast if the story fits better with fast. If there is a sense of urgency (e.g The world is ending, the demon lord, etc), then the story should move to accommodate for that time. Quite a few novels tend to forget their big problem in their novel in favour of spending multiple chapters not even developing their characters or the world.

On the flip side, if the story is more character-driven and relaxed, a slower story can work really well. I think of the animes with hundreds of episodes, where the watcher is primarily enjoying watching the characters have fun and do things at a slow pace. Often times there might be some big goal, but it isn't an urgent one or will take a long time to reach.

All in all, I like fast stories, but slow stories have their own place in the market.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Mushoku

Yeah. Mushoku’s world-building and characters are superb.

I want to say a balance of both, but I feel like that is cheating

But I prefer fast if the story fits better with fast. If there is a sense of urgency (e.g The world is ending, the demon lord, etc), then the story should move to accommodate for that time. Quite a few novels tend to forget their big problem in their novel in favour of spending multiple chapters not even developing their characters or the world.

On the flip side, if the story is more character-driven and relaxed, a slower story can work really well. I think of the animes with hundreds of episodes, where the watcher is primarily enjoying watching the characters have fun and do things at a slow pace. Often times there might be some big goal, but it isn't an urgent one or will take a long time to reach.

All in all, I like fast stories, but slow stories have their own place in the market.

Totally agreed. You articulate it very well.

 

[TotallyHuman]

Slow

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

Which one do you prefer: a fast-paced story or a slow-paced story?

I know there’s no definite answer to this question because it’s more like a spectrum. If the story moves too fast, it may risk being shallow and exhaust you; if the story moves too slow, it runs a huge risk of boring you to death, makes you lose interest, and never come back to read it again. So, a balance is always ideal.

But like I said, it’s more like a spectrum and also depends on a story. But just for fun, which end of the spectrum do you lean toward more than the other?

For me, I prefer more of a fast-paced story—a story that’s constantly moving (it may stop from time to time to give out details and some important expositions, but overall it just keeps advancing forward).

What about you? Which side of the spectrum do you lean toward more?

Pretty sure it would be possible for these two aspects to mix together

 

[Deleted member 57675]

Pretty sure it would be possible for these two aspects to mix together

It can happen if some arcs too fast paced and some are too slow progression within same novel thu..

Not enough balance on speed of story pace, unless intended for that way.

 

[PancakesWitch]

With serialized webnovels its kind of tricky. You release daily or weekly cahpters, and might sometimes be in a huge fight that takes several chapters to wrap up, but due to releasing one by one as it is serialized and not just read everything in a single chunk of a volume like normal books, readers tend to think that even when stories are fast paced, they're slow just because the writer is trying to portray things correctly in a story. It has happened to me several times. A lot of people call it "stalling" as if they want the conclusion of a big climax to end in half a chapter or something. whenever that arc ends, any nw readers will probably read it in half an hour already, but those that were there waiting each published chapter felt it was slow

 

[K5Rakitan]

Generally fast. When it slows down, it should focus on emotional motivations.

 

[Temple]

With serialized webnovels its kind of tricky. You release daily or weekly cahpters, and might sometimes be in a huge fight that takes several chapters to wrap up, but due to releasing one by one as it is serialized and not just read everything in a single chunk of a volume like normal books, readers tend to think that even when stories are fast paced, they're slow just because the writer is trying to portray things correctly in a story. It has happened to me several times. A lot of people call it "stalling" as if they want the conclusion of a big climax to end in half a chapter or something. whenever that arc ends, any nw readers will probably read it in half an hour already, but those that were there waiting each published chapter felt it was slow

Hmmm, yeah, it's kinda this for web novels.

Anyway, I'm not a reader, just sharing my observation and what I've talked about with other authors. Web/light novel readers usually want fast-paced stories. The best example of this is the "usual" start of isekai's, like kill the guy asap and move him to the other world, no need to establish who he is or what's his life before is. (Granted a lot of isekai forget about the MCs past anyway as if he wasn't isekaid in the first place.)

My story is deliberately slow-paced for half of its volume, then the latter half is the action part. I do that for the last four volumes, and the fifth I'm currently writing. There's a lot of complaints about being slow-paced, but I found that these complaints drop off as my story becomes longer. Readers are willing to read slow-paced stories as long as there's a lot of content to binge.

 

[EternalSunset0]

I think fast-paced is definitely the way to go if you want readership. Get to the point quickly but not rush through everything, if you get my drift.

However, slowing down for character building and such, I feel, is better if you're intending to have your stuff undergo critique or more "in-depth" discussions.

 

[Zirrboy]

With serialized webnovels its kind of tricky. You release daily or weekly cahpters, and might sometimes be in a huge fight that takes several chapters to wrap up, but due to releasing one by one as it is serialized and not just read everything in a single chunk of a volume like normal books, readers tend to think that even when stories are fast paced, they're slow just because the writer is trying to portray things correctly in a story. It has happened to me several times. A lot of people call it "stalling" as if they want the conclusion of a big climax to end in half a chapter or something. whenever that arc ends, any nw readers will probably read it in half an hour already, but those that were there waiting each published chapter felt it was slow

I haven't read any of your stories, nor do I know what you mean by "correctly", so take this as general opinion, nothing more.

"It's a big event, so of course it has to be grand and extensive" certainly isn't wrong, I've seen quite a few arc endings cut short despite lengthy buildup that made it feel like whatever was gained came too cheaply because the author wanted to move on.

On the other hand you also need to keep in mind that even if it feels necessary to you, this might not hold true for the readers.

Say you have a fight between two strong and versatile warriors. It would be very reasonable for the tides of battle to change multiple times as they continue to adapt to their opponent.
But if that's implemented by them alternating powerups in "this isn't even my final form" fashion, it starts to feel pointless, since any advantage gained through immediate effort will lose it's effect a few paragraphs later.

Which gets worse if you split it into chapters. If your big event has only one important part, it should be one chapter. If you make it more, each has to be entertaining as the last you'll read in a while.

TLDR Look at your own feet to check whether they have a point, then blame them for wanting to push their climax junkie narrative on you
Or don't

 

[Jemini]

I think fast Vs. slow is the wrong question to be asking to begin with.

What you need is to properly set up and justify events before you get to the pay-off. Having a firm foundation to work with, and having that foundation justify the events that take place in the story, always makes the story better. There are techniques to establish a foundation in a fast paced story, but it only works in certain plots that use a certain set of techniques, and the use of those techniques tends to be rather deterministic of what kind of tone you are going to get.

On the flip side, it's far easier to set up the world building properly in a slower paced story. This would be the example of Mushoku that was brought up earlier. The reason Mushoku worked so well is because, even with the slow pace, not a single moment in that story was wasted. Every single line was used to establish something in the world, and those points of world building it established became important later on and helped the story to hit the amazing quality it did.

The real dichotomy is whether or not you have wasted moments in the story that accomplish nothing of value. So long as you are accomplishing something with every moment in your story, and you are also putting in the effort to build your foundation (while avoiding just having bland exposition info dumps), it will allow you to keep an interest in your story.

 

[Daitengu]

There's a time and place for both.

Action scenes you want fast with little distraction. Where as slice of life scenes can waffle on.

An example of what not to do is The Spearman and The Black Cat. The author will stretch out a 1 chapter fight into 3 - 5 chapters because boobs or cat or whatever distracted him at the time. It's very ADHD and there's never reprecussions for Shuya not to screw around mid fight. Which is entirely an author problem.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Pretty sure it would be possible for these two aspects to mix together

That’s what I said. It’s a spectrum. But most stories I’ve read tend to lean more toward one side than the other. It’s hard to find a very well-balanced story. It also depends on how one perceives the story’s pace.

 

[Macha]

I like past paced stories better until the author ran out of ideas for the plot and started writing fillers.

 

[SirDogeTheFirst]

It is hard to keep a slow-paced story interesting. Yet when the writer manages to overcome that hardship, that story becomes the real poopoo.

 

[SailusGebel]

Slow-paced.

 

[MareoKen]

I lean more towards the fast-paced side. Overall as long as something is moving forward in the story or character development department, I'll be satisfied.

Slower-paced stories can be good too but the characters and world have to pull me in so much that I become invested in everything they do. It's harder to write such stories but if done well, a 'slow' chapter (nothing much happening) can be seen as 'fast' when reading it because I'm so invested in the characters.