: Re: Is my story pacing too fast? I have a quick question- I'm just a bit confused about the story I'm writing. So earlier today I posted the first chapter of my story, and someone commented that

When the author and the reader have a different experience of a work, it's usually because the writer is experiencing a context to the events that the reader does not have access to. Remember, the only things available to the reader are what you put on the page. In general, people respond to stories emotionally, so critiques about stories are generally best analyzed as critiques of the emotional structure.

In this case you have some big emotional highs and lows in a very short span of time. For someone to leave a hospital and immediately get in an unrelated car crash doesn't feel realistic. It's not that it couldn't happen, but that it won't resonate with readers. In terms of fixing it there are three ways you could go:

You could make each of these incidents into its own story. Most short stories only focus on one major incident, because there really isn't time to do justice to more than that in a limited amount of space.
You could combine these incidents and reduce the total number. It's not clear to me why the protagonist needs to be in the hospital twice in the same chapter, or what the utility of delaying the showdown with the boss until after the collapse is. That's not to say you might not have good reasons, but you may want to try to see if similar things can be combined into one.
You could start the story at a later point. For instance, the story could start with her waking up in the hospital and move forward from there.

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: "the antagonists are all irredeemably evil" that causes me issues, people, real people, are never all of one thing. Part of showing that the protagonist is human is showing that those he opposes

@Sarah872

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: I would credit the actor but not their role if that's possible, credit them by name as part of an "and others" section for the parts with no lines. Or maybe disguise their role, instead

@Sarah872

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: Early investment in a character who "learns better" I'm looking for ways to build early reader investment in an unlikable character who "learns better," but not until fairly late in the book.

@Sarah872

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: People like my book, starting halfway through This is kind of an alternate take on my other recent question, as well as the inverse problem to this question. I've been told by more than one

: Re: Is my story pacing too fast? I have a quick question- I'm just a bit confused about the story I'm writing. So earlier today I posted the first chapter of my story, and someone commented that

More posts by @Sarah872

: "the antagonists are all irredeemably evil" that causes me issues, people, real people, are never all of one thing. Part of showing that the protagonist is human is showing that those he opposes

: I would credit the actor but not their role if that's possible, credit them by name as part of an "and others" section for the parts with no lines. Or maybe disguise their role, instead

: Early investment in a character who "learns better" I'm looking for ways to build early reader investment in an unlikable character who "learns better," but not until fairly late in the book.

: People like my book, starting halfway through This is kind of an alternate take on my other recent question, as well as the inverse problem to this question. I've been told by more than one

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