A Writer's Journey: What Is The Right Length For a Chapter?

All that in one chapter?

Ever wondered if the chapters you're writing are long enough? And how long is long enough? Well, Panzer has spent a lot of time staring out the window while he tried to figure it out. So today when he was out in the Catosphere he happened to find the answer at Nat Russo's blog A Writer's Journey.

Nat has four purposes he says a chapter needs to fulfill: Pacing, Characterization, Suspense and Transitions. He explains each of these and its use in the chapter. This post is a whole college course in writing not only a chapter, but your whole novel.

Panzer says, "By the time you finish this post, you'll be an expert at chapter construction!"

 If you're interested in chapter writing, tootle over to A Writer's Journey: What Is The Right Length For a Chapter?:

Keeping a Cozy Series Moving

A murder?

Today, Panzer was over at Terry Odell's blog Terry's Place. He found a post from November 19, 2013, by Elaine Orr about cozy series writing.


Panzer's adventures with Lori Stockley aren't strictly cozies. A cozy has a murder, but it's a clean murder. There's no blood or gore in the story. Panzer's stories involve crimes other than murder, but they are all clean crimes. There's no blood or gore in his stories either.

So ... he was out in the Catosphere looking for some help keeping cozies that are series moving along.

Elaine Orr writes real cozies with a clean murder in each book. She deals with pacing your novel, when the murder happens, the setting, and all the things that make up a cozy.

To read the post, tootle over to Keeping a Cozy Series Moving

How to Pace a Crime Novel

How important is pacing?

Panzer was out in the Catosphere today and stumbled onto a site called Now Novel.

He found a post there about how to pace a crime novel. The post starts off with the easy don'ts in pacing. We've posted here before about the "info dump" which leads to the "too much information upfront" and the "too little payoff." So ... Panzer knows none of you need to worry about that part of the post.

The obvious don'ts are followed by three less common ones and that's the important part for Panzer's friends because he hasn't covered them here before. There's the "begin with a bang," "solving too easily" and "revealing too soon."

If you're interested in learning the don'ts of crime novel pacing, tootle over to Pace Your Crime Novel