: Re: Does something need to happen in every single chapter? My style of writing is - I think - more investigative into characters and what drives them. I think however that this could be problematic

@Bryan361

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What do you mean by "nothing happens"?

If you mean "nobody gets killed, there are no car chases, and nothing blows up", then certainly you can have chapters where "nothing happens". There are lots of books that have no action of that sort at all.

I suspect you mean something more like, "there are chapters that are entirely the heroine considering what she wants to do next". If that's the case, then of course that's totally legitimate and may be very interesting.

The question is not, "Does this chapter have action in the sense of people engaging in vigorous physical activity?", but rather, "Are the things that happen in this chapter likely to be interesting to a reader?" If, after honestly considering what you have written, your answer is, "No, this is boring and irrelevant", then it's not a good chapter. Throw it away or rewrite. But if the answer is, "If they care what's going on inside this character's head -- and they should be because I've tried to build up psychological conflict or character development -- then yes, this chapter should be interesting", then great.

Of course what you find interesting and what a potential reader finds interesting may not be the same thing. You might fight an account of a character struggling to decide whether to wear a red dress to the party or a blue dress to be a fascinating subject, while someone else would think that's boring, "just pick one already". But that's a big piece of what writing is all about: trying to come up with a story that will interest the reader, or at least some number of potential readers.

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