Forward Progression: ?

[Queenfisher]

This question is more or less something I've always been bothered with. I don't exactly understand what constitutes the bare minimum of forward progression in a single chapter of a story. More so here, trying to write a serial novel (something I'm a complete noob in and feel my overall experience suckage pretty hard). I just have no idea how to change my paradigm and understand what chapter-by-chapter forward progression is and what it isn't in a webnovel medium.


In my previous writing group (regular novels), even the average chapter length was a bit higher than the average I see here. And my critique buddies were not very pleased when the chapter didn't have:

1) main plot progression event [if the subplot is currently on, then it has to tie in with the main plot somehow!],

2) foreshadowing and planting concepts for later usage,

3) character arc/development progression,

4) thematic development [the chapter has to be about something thematic rather than giving out bare events, and also tie into the main theme of the book],

5) the relationships between characters have to progress,

6) worldbuilding or setting has to be displayed for immersion,

7*) something baseline exciting [fanservice, action, comedy, fluff, erotica -- whatever works].


* -- is not forward progression per se (it doesn't move anything forward), but it definitely helps push the reader forward in the book. So while it's not necessary, it is a huge help!


All in all, that's... quite a lot even for a seasoned writer. But the average chapter length of 3,500 to 6,000 words could potentially allow all seven of those points to be addressed each chapter. The main plot progression was always paramount, though. And yet, when I sometimes browse most popular webnovels here and on other sites to see what the trends and conventions of the medium are, I'd say that the concept of "forward progression" seems to work quite a bit differently in serialized novels than in regular novels? Most of the time, even fulfilling one of things on the above list suffices for a chapter. And sometimes none at all. But that's understandable for the chapter lengths that are sufficiently shorter than what I've previously been taught to write!


(And is likely the main reason I struggle so hard with it for now. I need to relearn to conceptualize what makes a chapter).


I really want to get into this new paradigm because whatever it is, it seems to work well enough. But I really don't get what it is yet.


Help?
Thanks in advance ^^.

 

[Moctemma]

In a web-novel we pick one of the points you wrote for each chapter, if another one is added that's good, but it's something focused on events.

For example, the main goal on a specific chapter is to take the MC to the beastkin town, so the chapter is focused on world-building and maybe on introducing a new character. What I do is to know how my chapter will end and what events or knowledge I want in the chapter, and that's all.

 

[Queenfisher]

Thank you for replying! But I'm wondering about the absolute bare minimum. For instance, how much overall forward progression can I drop in a chapter without it starting to feel like stalling or not advancing at all? (Filler, I suppose?)

For many people, not advancing the plot but only focusing on characters might feel fillery, and vice versa. So the general rule of my previous group was to give a bit of everything, thus eliminating the feeling of the novel dawdling in a specific chapter. But that's not really feasible if one's chapter is 500 words long! It would be straight out impossible for most people. (Unless they're gods of writing or something like that).

In the example you described -- you didn't say anything about whether the MC gets to beastkin town or is en route to it, only that that's the goal, plus there is worldbuilding and maybe an introduction of a new character. Then you said that the focus is on the events. Do you mean that any new information would be considered "an event"? But then even the description of weather will be new information if it hadn't been mentioned before!

Also, depending on the new character added in that chapter, they might be NPC or a mob -- and if they're not directly related to the plot, wouldn't that make them feel like they don't help progress anything?

And in case your MC gets to that beastkin town by the end of the chapter: does there have to be a plot/character reason to go there? or are you saying that going anywhere new is the point that would make the chapter feel like the novel is progressing regardless of how much it contributes to it overall?

I am kinda curious as to how much I can strain the "nothing plot or character related is happening", but since there is a constant flow of new information" ==> it can feel like progress.


Sorry if I misunderstood something, but I really want to learn, so I'm asking for elaborations -). And thanks again, Moctemma!

 

[DubstheDuke]

From my perspective, well, at one point in my story I did actually change from 3k word chapters (at a biweekly rate) to 1000 word chapters daily.

However, I stopped this for almost this exact reason.

With only 1000 words, its entirely possible that someone could read an entire chapter, and barely anything at all has happened. Sure, they might understand some things about the characters or the world a little better, but nothing has actually happened.

When I switched over back to 3k words per chapter, I am able to plan out an entire series of events that I want to complete within a chapter.

Of course, sometimes I have to extend them to be more than just a single chapter, but I always start each chapter with a goal in mind.

"I want to at least reach this event, or this point of the story by the end of this chapter."

It's fine to change things up if something happens while you're writing, and not to fulfill this goal- as flexibility is extremely important to writing in general, but I would say that simply having that goal allows your writing to be oriented towards it, and it becomes overall more focused on something.

I think that as long as you write with a goal in mind, it doesn't matter how fast things progress- because as a writer, it takes longer to write than it does for the readers to read, so something that may seem to take hours for us may only be a few minutes for the readers.

 

[AliceShiki]

I don't think you need to worry about it too much tbh?

Like... Write each chapter on its own and if later on you decide to revise everything, you can then re-edit them to make all chapters feel more meaningful.

For me rn I'm writing a Slice of Life Novel and there is hardly any plot in it, so I just focus each chapter in doing something that I would enjoy reading about.

 

[MrAntonym]

I'm pretty new to actually being on the writing side of this, but I've definitely read quite a bit, so from that perspective I think that there are a couple key differences between regular novels and webnovels.

1) Expectations
This will definitely vary for different readers, but at least for me, I go into reading a new webnovel with very few expectations in terms of whether the characters will be interesting, the setting immersive, or the plot is paced well and is interesting. Obviously if I don't feel like any of these aspects are done very well, I'm not likely to keep reading, but as long as one of these is there, then I keep reading for what is interesting and done well by this particular story. For example, I tend to read a lot of fluffy slice of life stories with basically zero expectation that the plot will ever go anywhere, so as long as the characters continue to develop and I get my fix of fluff, I'm happy. On the other hand, I generally expect that a regular novel will have the full package (though the setting can be ignored to some extent when things are set in contemporary settings), so it is much more important that a chapter hit on all the points.

2) Cliffhangers
Both regular novels and webnovels have cliffhangers, but I think that especially when a reader is caught up to the latest release of a webnovel, the effect is very different. In a regular novel, the function is basically to keep the reader engaged with the book, make them turn the page or make them want to come back to the book when they get their next break, that sort of thing. With a webnovel, I would argue that a cliffhanger has some function as a way to get readers coming back for the next release, but primarily is about bridging chapters. So if you spend the 1000 words of a chapter on world-building, you can use a cliffhanger to tell the reader that you haven't forgotten about the action and that it will be coming soon.

3) Complexity
Webnovels don't tend to be very complex, so what constitutes plot development can be much more fuzzy. For some webnovels, the extent of the plot is pretty much just that the main character is getting stronger and we as readers are just along for the ride. In that sense, so long as the capabilities of the main character change (like if they have a system and they discover that there's more that they can do with it or they learn it's going to rain, so that picnic they were considering might not seem like such a great idea), then it basically counts as related to the plot.

As for the absolute bare minimum amount of progress it takes to make a chapter not feel like filler, I would generally say that you should always hit on something at most one degree of separation away from the main draw of your story. For example, if you're writing a xianxia, that probably means that there needs to be some action, some character who is going to be involved in a conflict soon gets introduced, your main character powers up in some way, or some new conflict is set up.

 

[Moctemma]

Thank you for replying! But I'm wondering about the absolute bare minimum. For instance, how much overall forward progression can I drop in a chapter without it starting to feel like stalling or not advancing at all? (Filler, I suppose?)

For many people, not advancing the plot but only focusing on characters might feel fillery, and vice versa. So the general rule of my previous group was to give a bit of everything, thus eliminating the feeling of the novel dawdling in a specific chapter. But that's not really feasible if one's chapter is 500 words long! It would be straight out impossible for most people. (Unless they're gods of writing or something like that).

In the example you described -- you didn't say anything about whether the MC gets to beastkin town or is en route to it, only that that's the goal, plus there is worldbuilding and maybe an introduction of a new character. Then you said that the focus is on the events. Do you mean that any new information would be considered "an event"? But then even the description of weather will be new information if it hadn't been mentioned before!

Also, depending on the new character added in that chapter, they might be NPC or a mob -- and if they're not directly related to the plot, wouldn't that make them feel like they don't help progress anything?

And in case your MC gets to that beastkin town by the end of the chapter: does there have to be a plot/character reason to go there? or are you saying that going anywhere new is the point that would make the chapter feel like the novel is progressing regardless of how much it contributes to it overall?

I am kinda curious as to how much I can strain the "nothing plot or character related is happening", but since there is a constant flow of new information" ==> it can feel like progress.


Sorry if I misunderstood something, but I really want to learn, so I'm asking for elaborations -). And thanks again, Moctemma!

I'll start by the wrong version. Having a passive character, without a goal, will make the story boring, if the secondary characters does, it can stand for a while. There's a story here that I dropped because the MC didn't have a goal, there's a mystery she has to solve, and that'll become her goal once she knows what's going on. But until then, all the battles, the weapons she gets, the companions, etc., feel like filler.

So the bare minimum is to know the goal of the MC or side characters. Then I prefer to write or read at least a full scene in this sense (using this as base):
Who wants what?
What happens if they don't get it?
Why now?

All those questions can stretch along multiple chapters. If we know them or are being answered as we go, that's the bare minimum.
I'll use the previous example. If I decide MC must go to the beastkin town, I should know the answer to those questions, even if the answer won't be in the chapter.

Lets say someone will train him. The readers need to have the answer to one of the questions (on the general plot or exclusive to the arc, or the scene, etc.) The most pressing one is "Why now?". You have to give the reader the reason behind doing it now instead of later, in this example the overall aim answers it (there's a war incoming, the MC wants to be strong to raise his status or survive, etc).

If the reader has that, no matter what happens in the chapter, the MC talking to himself, expanding the world by describing it through the MC, knowing more about MC (past or opinions), having him eat and describe the taste, dreaming about marrying, a battle with a monster that's there to be killed by MC, etc. The reader will perceive progress if the MC is shown to have progressed a lot or already arrived at the town by the end of the chapter.

I'd prefer if MC interacts with the town in some way to make it feel as if MC arrived. But the main point of all this is that we know why the MC is going to the town. If he's a passive character, and we don't have the answer to those questions from the perspective of the secondary characters, it becomes a waste of time (filler). I would say if the MC is passive, at least two of those questions need an answer.

 

[Moctemma]

This is the novel with the shorter chapters I'm currently reading. It does a good job even though sometimes I feel they're incomplete, and only one chapter was boring for me. https://www.scribblehub.com/series/108367/the-queen-of-darkness-does-not-want-to-be-the-villain/

 

[Queenfisher]

Thank you all so much for your views and for the elaborations! These are all solid advice, but I am a bit late to save this thread for later to review some stuffs you wrote about. I feel like there had been one post that I saw when it first came out, but now I don't see it anywhere... is it deleted? Why?

(I feel like this is some glitch in Matrix, tbh) -- there was one reply talking about the 8th point in my list above, saying that this 8th point is giving any kind of update. I don't know what happened to that post or if something happened to my view of the forum, but I felt that advice was also very inspiring and sort of liberating. And that for someone new to writing webnovels it might be very useful.

But I don't even remember who wrote it and anything else other than the general gist ("as long as you give any kind of update, it's okay to do a bit of filler since we're all human" -- something along these lines). Anyway, leaving this here for those other newbies like me who might feel the need of such advice as well as all the other good ones in this thread.

 

[MajorKerina]

When writing for a format, style morphs to meet it. At times when I just write to write, I'll go off on pretty things and lovely notions and digressions but serialized writing it like a clock saying "get to it get to it". Like in one thing I'm writing I use where the characters are positioned and their body language to tell what is going on with them.

How a character is described can allude to upcoming things like if a character later stabs someone you could have them described as "cutting right to the point" in an earlier chat which suggests they are no-nonsense and might be cruel enough to kill. Character's must always want something in a scene even if it is to enjoy a glass of wine in peace. I can imagine a scene where people are chatting and say a visceroy is pouring themselves a glass of wine and keeps trying to control where the wine is on the table whilst chatting.

It works sympathetically because we can all relate to not getting enough time to just relax and the chat can offer information about what is going on. At the end of the scene, the joke can then be that the wine is spoiled and they just pour it over the ledge and maybe a guard slips on it.

These are random examples but really effective writing should be doing lots of things all at once. It should take you from a to b, it should let you know about character, and it should have destination. This is kinda my apex goal to reach some day where I can take these ideas for scenes and create them easily and cohesively.

 

[Queenfisher]

Spoiler

That was my post. I regularly delete posts of mine across all forums/social media because I had an issue with a stalker a couple years ago and it's left me quite nervous about leaving a digital footprint so sometimes I get panic attacks and just purge all my posts and tweets and shit.

I'm glad the post helped though and you seemed to have gotten the gist of it anyway. :"D

Um, that is scary +_+. I also have a phobia of being stalked online by some people from my past, but that's why I never reuse account names or even pen names anywhere!

And thanks for your post. It was great -).