Comments on: Writing Excuses 4.6: Pacing with James Dashner

By: Podcast Review: Writing Excuses–Pacing w/ James Dashner | Fumbling with Fiction

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:04:17 +0000

[...] Episode: 4.6: Pacing with James Dashner [...]

By: Writing Excuses 5.4: Creating Suspense » Writing Excuses

Writing Excuses 5.4: Creating Suspense » Writing Excuses — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:26:38 +0000

[...] Episode on Pacing I Promised to Link To: Right here, and it features James [...]

By: ISBW #144 – Level Up! / Ellen Datlow Interview / Matt Wallace is Bad Cop : I Should Be Writing

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:02:27 +0000

[...] Feedback part 2: chapter length and pacing (recommended listening: Writing Excuses episode on Pacing with interviewee James Dashner); fan fiction addiction; definition of “dark [...]

By: ISBW #144 – Level Up! / Ellen Datlow Interview / Matt Wallace is Bad Cop : The Murverse

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:36:17 +0000

[...] Feedback part 2: chapter length and pacing (recommended listening: Writing Excuses episode on Pacing with interviewee James Dashner); fan fiction addiction; definition of “dark [...]

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:59:24 +0000

I can totally attest to the notion of shorter chapters pulling you all the way through. I finished The Maze Runner last night. Picked up at about Chapter 30-35 and my reaction at the end of every chapter was “Just one more. Just one more.”

An hour and a half later, I saw how many pages I’d gone through, how few were left, and just ripped right through it. As a result, the experience was thrilling and I just look back on it a happy happy reader.

This also worked well for “Under the Dome”. That book is one big beast, about 1100 pages long. Regardless, the chapters were on average no longer than 4-5 pages long with each section being no longer than 80-100 pages long, and the entire book felt like it was half its length.

By: atsiko

atsiko — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:55:22 +0000

I loved the comment at 7 minutes where they talk about how chapters are an excuse to stop reading, but if the next chapter is short, the reader will keep going… that’s me, at least eight or nine times a night (if I’m reading).

However, I don’t appreciate Brandon calling me crazy. I like to finish my books in one go. (And if that means spending eighteen hours straight reading the Mistborn Trilogy, that’s just how it’s gonna be.)

By: Dan Absalonson

Dan Absalonson — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:12:35 +0000

I’ve heard this argument for short chapters from Mike Stackpole, how it helps the reader think, “I’ll just read one more chapter,” because they know it will be short. I think it’s a great way to go, it’s funny I just wrote a blog post about this same thing, delivering our fiction in bite size portions. It’s great to hear more about this idea, I’ll post a link to this episode in my blog post. Thanks for another great one guys! Full of great advice, fun and hilarious to boot.

By: Beverley BevenFlorez

Beverley BevenFlorez — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:13:45 +0000

It’s funny, I was just thinking about chapter size, and questioning the effects of the small v large chapters when I decided to listen to this podcast. Thanks for talking it out, and showing the reasons why a writer would choose one over the other.

By the way, I added a link to this podcast on my blog on Friday, since I thought plenty of other YA writers (my blog’s target audience) would enjoy listening to a podcast with James Dashner. I’ll definitely be checking out your future podcasts.

By: Mike Barker

Mike Barker — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:37:16 +0000

Three steps forward, three steps back, all day long he paced in his cell…

Transcript!

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/134079.html

By: Pacing | Christian Riesen

Pacing | Christian Riesen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:52:41 +0000

[...] their latest episode, they have James Dashner as a guest and they talk about [...]