Do I skip the "settling in" stuff?

One way to use the dialogue route (integrated into a larger conversation):

#1 "How much did you get for the horse?"
#2 "Enough."
#1 "What does 'enough' mean?"
#2 "Enough to get a room and some food."

This could be tweaked or elaborated to help establish or reinforce characterization-based relationships. For example, if there is distrust/friction in the group, you could add:

#1 "And how much did you keep for yourself?"

Or it could be tooled to reinforce a dominant-submissive relationship, or any other kind of interaction within the group.

This is one thing I was worried about in my current WiP (The Unknown, see sig). A pivotal (actually, the pivotal) event of the second act, spinning into the third, occurs after the characters set up shop in a small town.

In terms of pages, about forty pages elapse between their arrival and the third-act turning point, but the time I cover in those forty pages is longer than everything that has come before several times over. I find it's easier to overstate early in the drafting process, then trim on a revision, than to understate to begin with and wind up too sparse on detail, leaving the reader confused.

Blinkk said:

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've learned a lot here. I opted for opening the next chapter with summary, which I'm not really fond of but the other stuff I tried sounded fake. I got it to a grand total of 78 words, which works for me. Also got those 78 words to have a bit of character building (oh dear, he stole money) so it's not completely bland housekeeping chores.

Ever onward

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Good to hear it. I think summary can actually be a good place to include little bits that add to character development, or to include something important that you don't want the reader to pay too much attention to.

I found J.K. Rowling was great at putting little clues in summary (like the locket in the fifth book that's mentioned briefly in a summary).

Blinkk said:

Thanks for the advice everyone. I've learned a lot here. I opted for opening the next chapter with summary, which I'm not really fond of but the other stuff I tried sounded fake. I got it to a grand total of 78 words, which works for me. Also got those 78 words to have a bit of character building (oh dear, he stole money) so it's not completely bland housekeeping chores.

Click to expand...

Sounds fine to me.

Or have whoever's most in charge direct traffic: Tom, go sell that horse, and be discreet, don't let the brand inspectors see him; Ben, go down to the wharf district and find us a cheap inn without too many nosey neighbors, and so on. Not so baldly but a bit of conversation sending the rest of 'em on their way to accomplish these tasks, while we go search up a doctor and do the Important Stuff. Tells us what's happening out of sight, that we can then assume got accomplished, without dwelling on it.

Evan Henry said:

... about forty pages elapse between their arrival and the ... turning point. ... the time I cover in those forty pages is longer than everything that has come before.

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Forty pages can cover forty years, forty days, or forty minutes. Use as many pages as you need to tell the story of that period of time.

But tell story in those pages. Try to avoid backstory, important factoids, information that will eventually become vital and step-by-step detailing of the trivial. Is the reader breathlessly curious about what happens between the arrival in town and the zombie attack? Can you just skip to the zombies and forget about measuring curtains for the bookstore?

But that's Final Draft advice.

In the First Draft, if it helps you to write every bloody event out in long, long detail and then cut it ...
That's your process.
Many folks do long-long first drafts. And cut.
Be proud of your process. Do what works for you.

job said:

Forty pages can cover forty years, forty days, or forty minutes. Use as many pages as you need to tell the story of that period of time.

But tell story in those pages. Try to avoid backstory, important factoids, information that will eventually become vital and step-by-step detailing of the trivial. Is the reader breathlessly curious about what happens between the arrival in town and the zombie attack? Can you just skip to the zombies and forget about measuring curtains for the bookstore?

But that's Final Draft advice.

In the First Draft, if it helps you to write every bloody event out in long, long detail and then cut it ...
That's your process.
Many folks do long-long first drafts. And cut.
Be proud of your process. Do what works for you.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the input!

It's funny; I know almost everyone else trims on their later drafts, but my first drafts are always shorter than they need to be. This is my first novel, so it's taught me a lot about pacing. Honestly, when I started it, I barely could have imagined making it to 50,000 words, let alone 75,000, where I am now.

The story of my novel in particular makes deciding whether/what to trim a bit difficult, and there is a lot of "this happened, then this happened" rather than fully fleshed-out scenes with dialogue, etc. The "settling in" part has to happen, and there has to be one character introduced before the turning point can occur. It's probably the introduction of the character that is the main problem as far as pacing goes in this part of the book. He has got a whole chapter to himself, so there is some "getting to know" time before he takes the initiative to bring about the turning point; I just worry that I'm slipping in and out of full scenes and two weeks of events condensed into a paragraph too much over the space of (I think it's) four chapters.

I have no problem telling other people how to slap their pacing back into shape, but my brain tries to explode whenever I take a shot at fixing my own...