: 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

@Phylliss352

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There is a balance, yes, and not just in things we literally read. In TV, there's a balance between continual and nonexistent OMG moments. The series 24 is a good case study. For the unfamiliar, each season comprises 24 episodes, each covering an hour in real time in an in-universe day. (For the first 8 seasons, anyway. They did two half-series later whose format is a little different.) Pacing was especially make-or-break for them, because it could simultaneously distress readers (with either overload or boredom) and make you think "are events unfolding over a sensible timescale?"

The first two seasons, and to a lesser extent the third and a much lesser extent the fourth, knew that a plot point could take several episodes to fully explore. When Jack Bauer learns someone wants to kill David Palmer, it takes 8 hours before the first attempt on the man's life, and the next one takes almost another 15, if memory serves. Series 5 was kind of a mixed bag in terms of how quickly you had to take on new things. But then we get to the very unpopular series 6. Pretty much every criticism of it that I've read boils down to "they recycled many plot points from earlier seasons", but they definitely had some new ideas. The problem was they'd gotten so quick-paced at this point they had to dilute the novel content with things we'd seen before.

A writers' strike delayed season 7, and the showmakers decided to round up the delay to a full year, which had a number of side-effects. For one, they planned the season's course in advance much more thoroughly than they ever could before. For another, it gave them a soft reboot opportunity that showed itself most clearly in the switch from fictional department CTU to the FBI. But even with this and the extra thinking time, the go-fast and recycle problems of season 6 were still present to an extent. So I don't want you thinking that, as long as you're writing something over than a sequel, you won't put in too much and make it hit and miss. The real problem, I think, was never the plot recycling at all; it was the plot overload. It was just easy to blame the recycling when reviewing season 6, because most fans, who haven't spent much time thinking about the writing craft, couldn't put their finger on the problem.

I could go into more detail about how the writers got themselves into such a mess, but I want to focus on your situation. I wouldn't go so far as to say you always need to try having fewer plot points. It's not even that, when asking yourself why you're adding another one, "Because not enough's going on" is a bad answer. (But you do have to really believe that with respect to your story, not just try to follow the crowd in making stories crowded.) It's that each individual point needs a certain amount of breathing space. If you put in too many, there isn't room for them all; and a point that doesn't have enough room should either leave altogether, or get it back from something else leaving.

Suppose I could rewrite 24 season 6 to fix what they did wrong. I'd slow down the terrorists' timetable with nuclear technology, so their technician didn't die in an impromptu blast used to prevent capture of the first bomb (they had 5), which would cut a plot concerning how they replaced him. To make room for that, I'd cut some civil rights scenes and the first subplot involving Russians. That would have knock-on simplifying effects on the involvement of Bauer's family, which would allow Jack's brother to last longer. And I do have some other ideas, but I'm worried I'd either go too far the other way (because I'm not clear what we'd gain from such pruning either) or leave us with not enough material for 24 episodes. If you want to get the balance right, pruning requires as much why-does-this-story-need-it consideration as does adding a plot point. How big does each one need to be?

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