Demon's Throne Pacing

I figure I'll try to make a Messenger post each weekend, while posting early chapters on weekdays.

This one is about the general pacing problems I've bumped into with Demon's Throne 2. I don't know if I'll do a full editing notes dump for this book, for various reasons, but I figure to go through this as a bit of a general talk.

I've mentioned before that I write my novels in a three act structure, and that hasn't changed. The trick is that the three acts are supposed to flow together, and that they're not prescriptive about length. My midpoints tend to happen relatively late in my books, in general.

Demon's Throne 1 presented some issues with the three act structure because it has a lot going on. Almost everyone has a character arc, there's the overarching mystery of how Rys got sealed away, and Rys is building an empire while also regaining his power. On top of that, the book is strongly character driven, so pacing sometimes needs to slow in order for characters to get dedicated screen time.

This only becomes more complicated in Book 2. The three act structure itself focuses on the empire-building (specifically, Rys's conquest of Avolar and confronting the League's machinations) but there are lots of other moving pieces.

Examples are:

• Rys's past and personal motivations need to be expanded on constantly
• Mina is introduced and her character arc started
• The character arcs of Vallis and Fara need to be continued
• Both foxes combined bring fox politics into the fray (although some Act 3 changes mean these might be reduced in scope a little, in favor of talking about them next book)
• The Kinadain issues and Alsia's character arc
• Children

While I could continue stripping some of these out, that kind of defeats the purpose of the series. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that most of the genre is more "empire collecting" than empire building because it spends very little time with the MC as a ruler, instead of as a badass fighter.

Anyway, pacing-wise, I decided to focus on big action events instead of lots of smaller ones. Act 1 ends with a sequence of tightly-packed chapters where a lot happens. The second-half of Act 2 (which starts from Chapter 23) is similarly fast-paced, and Act 3 has a similar peak-and-trough approach.

We'll see if it works. I feel like I worried too much about pacing in Heretic Spellblade 3, and that was well received despite having long periods of slowness between the action and a fairly muted middle of the book (action-wise).

One of the downsides that Demon's Throne has is that it lacks the constant tension and mystery of Heretic Spellblade. Rys never feels as if he's losing his grasp on the situation.

The other problem is showing the action instead of constant dialogue and telling scenes. A lot of people don't like PoV scenes, but they're a great way to show what is really going on and to vary up the pacing of the book.

Finally, pacing means there is never enough time to show everything. There are things that are being cut simply because I know that people will get sick of there not being battles or action scenes. In HS3, I merged a lot of the individual character interactions with plot scenes, and got a lot of complaints. So I'm not doing that here, but I expect to receive the exact opposite complaint in response. Such is life as a writer.

Anyway, let me know if you have any thoughts on my ramblings, or on the pacing of the early chapters posted so far. Altering pacing, shifting around events, and determining what gets cut and where I might need to add conflict is my primary focus while editing right now as I finalize the book.