How to Maintain Good Pacing in a Fantasy Novel
Ollie Ander
Is probably just a couple cats in a trench-coat—the hair shedding and sunlight napping are highly suspect.
Fantasy novels are canonically accepted as the longest among all literature genres. In statistics provided by $ PublishingTalk.org$ , although it shares a competing word cap of 150k alongside Literary and Crime Fiction, Fantasy has the highest word count in minimum expectancy at 100k. Readers want thick tomes, which give fantasy writers more room to flesh out their story, but can also act as a double-edged sword in providing space to get lost; bore readers, or lose their interest. How does one pace such a long novel in a way to keep readers engaged?
No matter which story structure you’re using—be that the Snowflake, Hourglass, or Save the Cat! Method, etc.—here is a list of literary employments that will negatively affect readers’ reception to the pacing. I’ve divided these avoidable pitfalls into their most common areas of offense: the Beginning, Middle, and End.
Kicking off the Beginning
Every good story needs a hook, and to commit to a longer read, a Fantasy’s starting intrigue needs to be top tier. However, being so dense in its need for context and exploration, it is an unfortunate habit of Fantasy novels to deter readers with the pacing of its opening. Here are several things that can prevent your Fantasy introduction from feeling like a slog or scare away potential readers:
Have Distinct Character Introductions
Don’t introduce too many characters all at once. High and Epic Fantasy are well known for their large cast of characters—it’s hard to determine the fate of a magical world among only a handful of players. However, bringing too many characters into the picture too quickly can overwhelm even the most committed long-form readers. This holds especially true for a cast of characters with complicated relationship structures or political hierarchies, which need to be conveyed alongside their name, appearance, and personality.
Make sure to introduce characters distinctly from one another so readers can keep them straight moving forward, and not have to stop mid-fight-scene to flip back to the front and look up, "who was that guy again?"
Trickle in Fantasy Terms
Treat your Fantasy world’s unique terms with the same care as introducing characters, as not to overwhelm new readers. Too many fantasy words (be that unique names, places, races, objects, or magical physics) can halt readers in their tracks as they try to figure out what something is, or picture a scene correctly among unidentified elements.
The passing mention of an unknown term which you intend to elaborate on further later is fine so long as those instances don’t pile up—then readers will have an ever-growing list, to keep track of everything they don’t know. Whether you provide a glossary or not, if there is a frequent need to check Fantasy terms, it will pull readers out of their immersion.
Try to bring your world’s fantasy terms into conversations in a natural way, that it’s meaning can be gleaned through context, or provide a physical description upon a terms’ enactment: i.e. Someone can be described using a "Wabbajack" so the tool’s purpose is understood in tandem with its appearance.
Don’t Info Dump the Worldbuilding
Textbooks are the least engaging form of literature, so don’t make your fantasy novel feel like one with excessive info dumps. The "coolness" of new information will always come secondary to its means of delivery. The beginning of your novel is the worst place to overdo exposition because it sets a bleak president for the story to follow.
Just as you should find creative ways to incorporate fantasy terms to display them within their context, so too should you introduce your world’s lore through natural interaction rather than narratorial bursts. It’s the classic "show, don’t tell."
To incorporate worldbuilding more naturally, you could have a character seeing something for the first time alongside a reader, or a character having an opinion on a more complex subject that requires extra information to fully appreciate, rather than tell the reader directly through narration.
Telling vs Showing Worldbuilding
Below are examples of telling vs showing the exact same information. The latter, "showing," is lengthier, but designed to keep readers engaged by relating the protagonist to the moment of discovery, making effective use of Fantasy’s allowed, extended word count.
An example of telling: The Mage’s Tower had runes handcrafted into the stonework. Every brick was contributed by a different witch or wizard of the Guild. It took them a hundred years to build. The Protagonist arrived with their party sooner than expected.
An example of showing: Protagonist could already see the Mage’s Tower looming in the distance. Claimed to be the most protected building in the known world, Protagonist was honored to have been invited into its hallowed halls. With runes handcrafted into the stonework, there was no doubt the Guild Mages staying inside slept well at night. Protagonist would kill for that sense of comfort, but their party didn’t intend to stay long.
As they stepped up to its entrance doors, Protagonist felt a great reverence for the witches and wizards that took a hundred years to build the structure, and wondered if any of their unbeknownst ancestors had contributed their own bricks… Their heritage, that’s exactly what they’d come all this way to find out.
Hopefully these examples demonstrate a difference in maintaining the story’s pacing, as one drops the info in readers’ lap and the other takes a reader's hand to lead them through the new element’s relevance to the world and plot.
Disconnected Prologues
Prologues are a contentious topic, but with the length of the average Fantasy novel, a disconnected prologue (one that is out of plot or sequence to the main story) becomes all the more disorienting for readers. Not only is there a push back by many readers to books that open to a seemingly irrelevant character/events, demanding unfounded tension, but by the end of a 100k word book, readers may very well have forgotten about the prologue’s eventual relevance altogether. Starting your Fantasy novel $ In Medias Res$ instead of with a prologue could save readers from putting down the book before they’ve even started.
Carrying through the Middle
Although readers should be thoroughly invested in your story by the midpoint, a sagging middle could have them putting down the book, fatigued. If that happens enough times, they may not pick it back up again! So let’s make sure your pacing stays on-track to carry them through:
Intertwined Development
The middle—and largest part—of your Fantasy novel can suffer from too much of a good thing. Presumably your readers like your characters and want to explore your Fantasy world, but indulging too much in that Fun & Games aspect can make your pacing drag; make readers question what they’re "doing here?"
Magical side tangents are Fantasy’s bread and butter, but they should always contribute to the plot in some way: acquiring a skill, discovering new knowledge, developing a relationship, or providing progress on a journey. A sense of progression is necessary to garner and maintain readers' investment. Keep your pace steady and your story moving. If the general consensus among readers of your novel is that, "you can skip the middle part without consequence," they will.
Juggling POVs
Fantasy books are both notorious for the size of their cast and their use of multiple points of view. If a party has to split up, or the overarching conflict of the world requires dissection from contrasting perspectives, having several POVs is an efficient way to address that, however, juggling POVs can be difficult.
If characters' quests don’t deal out the same sense or progression among them, readers may get bored, form a dislike for the dragging players’ sections, skip them, or let that aversion affect their appreciation of the rest of the book’s merit.
Keep your character POVs across the middle chapters of our Fantasy book even. That doesn’t mean in the measure of the number of a character’s chapters or page count, but "even" in their worth to the plot.
It is a balancing act to be sure. You don’t want a character to be absent for a significant portion of the book, to be mostly forgotten, then suddenly reappear again at a pivotal moment…but you also don’t want readers to suffer through meandering, irrelevant chapters in an effort to spend time with characters equally. If you have five POVs, for example, you may need to prioritize juggling between only two of them for a while to keep timelines in order and readers engaged with the story’s pace.
Sticking the Ending
These last points to remain aware of with your pacing are more particular to ending a series' installment than a standalone. If your fantasy is a single volume, then it should round out the same way any regular story might, but if you’re dealing with a long-winding epic, it’s important not to leave early installments on a sour note, and here’s how:
Plot Progression in Hindsight
Write down the state of your characters and plot at the start of the novel, and at the conclusion, then ask yourself: has anything changed? Surely lots has happened, but if there is no feeling of meaningful progression, the pacing of your series could be compromised.
Such instances are referred to as "suffering from middle book syndrome" where the installment feels like filler; too long and unnecessary for the small pay off it provides. This issue primarily exists because Fantasy worlds can be so sprawling and complex, the author wants to explore it as much as possible, but that comes at the cost of pacing and reader’s attention span.
Just as you may need to cut and juggle POVs inclusion in your works, you must treat the setup of your entire series the same way. It doesn’t matter if the fifth book in the series is the best one, if the audience was lost on the second volume.
Cliffhangers
Cliffhangers are the epitome of suspense—the ultimate means to drive readers onto reading the next book in a series as quickly as possible—but as good as they are at pulling readers in, that momentum can easily turn to a dead stop. Cliffhangers are a common contributor to "middle book syndrome" where the tension at the start of an installment is high, gets resolved quickly, and leaves the rest of the book wanting.
Remain aware of readers’ reception of your literary devices and whether they serve the purpose you intended. Manufacturing a heightened state of tension with a cliffhanger ending, especially if readers need to wait for the release of the next book, could result in a strongly negative response once that promise is fulfilled: "I waited two years just for that?"
If your cliffhanger’s solution doesn’t have the potential to merge into the overarching plot of the next book, dedicated fans will feel betrayed that it existed in the first place. In terms of pacing, readers want to be led on an adventure, not dragged along by a promise of fulfillment—especially if that promise is delivered unsatisfactorily.
With all this advice about the pitfalls in writing different sections of Fantasy novels under consideration, the most helpful tool for keeping your pacing on-track is to adhere to a story structure. Story Structures are designed to assist authors in hitting important plot points in an effective and timely manner, and you can find one that appeals to you with this article on several different $ Book Outlining Techniques!$
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