: Re: Is there a balance between a page-turning read and an exhausting 'too much' reading experience? I have learned over the past fifteen months of writing fiction that every scene needs to have

@Si5022468

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I'd like to agree with @Rasdashan and add that most books marketed as page turners and which indeed live up to their reputation become boring to read (at least, for me). If the reader is constantly running from one dizzying fast scene into the next, then the thrill becomes constant and, like most everything that is constant, it becomes banal and unthrilling.

On the other hand, I'd suggest some soul searching. How many of the books you read are constant page turners? Or are they mostly impossible to stop for a few chapters and then there's a break and you put it down for a break with a sigh of satisfaction?

In the same vein, are you the type of a reader that can sit for ten hours straight reading (with grudging meal and toilet breaks)? If you're not, then no matter how much of a page turner your novel is, you'll always reach a point when you'll be fed up. It's only natural.

Lastly, a great novel does not have to be a page turner. Some are better read a few chapters at a time, so don't take the 'page turner' advice radically.

EDIT in response to the OP's edit

While I did assume your novel was an action tale, I'd like to point out that a fast scene doesn't have to be about fights and life-or-death thrills: a sequence of dramatic scenes can cause the same effect.

If the the MC is under pressure, running from home to work, difficult meeting, and then school phones in because one of the kids got into a fight, then take the kids to their practice, take the chance to talk about the school fight, then take the kids home, cook dinner while the kids bicker... if the MC keeps running from scene to scene, from plot point to plot point, then the novel may be too fast paced. The MC has no time to breathe and neither does the reader.

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