Have you ever been writing a new story, or perhaps just a new chapter...and you really want to enrich the characters, or pour some more emotion into the scene, or you feel like you could pack some more detail and dialogue and world building into what you’re doing...but you begin to wonder if maybe you’re doing too much of it?

It’s something that I sort of struggle with from time to time, and my decisions on the matter sort of flip and flop back and forth depending on how I plan to be feeling on that particular day. I don’t think that I’ve ever really found a definitive answer for this one, so please feel free to comment down below when it comes to your own experiences with this phenomenon. Because I’m still trying to figure out if there’s a rule here for this...or if it even needs a rule, to be honest. Not everything does, after all.

The problem is ‘lagging’...and I’d like to talk about it today! So let’s get into it, shall we?

See, when I’m writing chapters for my stories, I try to keep them roughly the same size in terms of length or word count. Usually between 3,000 and 3,500 words per chapter, give or take. And that’s mostly because I’m writing a lot of stories at the same time, so I set that standard for myself so that I can continue them with new material much faster than I could by writing much more every single time, or by making them too uneven in size. It kind of taught me how to streamline my ideas and actually trim a lot of the ‘fat’ off of my writing so that I could just get to the point and keep things moving forward. However, this eventually led to a different perspective on what I was trying to do with my fiction.

With every chapter that I write, I have an idea of what I want to accomplish with that one particular section of the story, and I try to keep my thoughts concentrated on meeting that personal goal. But...the problem is that I really ENJOY writing! LOL! I get wrapped up in a certain scene or two, and I keep adding to it to really flesh it out and make it the best chapter that I can. Not only to ‘express’, but to ‘entertain’. To explore. So I might say to myself ahead of time, “Ok, I’ll wrap up this sex scene in the first half of the chapter, and then I’ll move on to the next day, and then end with them saying goodnight to each other on the phone.”

But as I start ‘wrapping up that sex scene’, I might start adding a bunch more details, and then have it last through the entire chapter, until they’re laying side by side and just smiling and sharing a bit of intimate dialogue with one another...and I’ve reached the end of the chapter without moving things forward as quickly as I had planned to. And this is where I have to make the call...am I just enjoying myself by drawing that scene out? Or am I slowing down the pace of the whole story itself with the extra details? Thus the idea of ‘lagging’.

You never want your story to lag when it doesn’t have to. It’s the internet, and you have to understand that a lot of people are operating with a humming bird’s attention span...so don’t bore them. Lagging is NOT something that you want to make a habit out of, as it may feel like one of your chapters isn’t really saying anything or serving its purpose….even if it is. The question is...how do you know the difference between lagging and enhancing your story?

This is where I may need a consensus from the peanut gallery here, hehehe! But I can tell you what I’ve learned so far over the years.

As many of you guys know, I’m a sucker for details! I think a writer should explore them all to the fullest when they’re putting a story together. Touch, taste, smell, sights, sounds...I try to use them all. Especially when it comes to eroticism in fiction. Stimulation is a full body experience. At the same time, I like for my readers to feel the bliss, the nervousness, the doubt, the confusion, and every wild and random thought that comes along with it. So emotional senses are a part of it too. Sometimes I can accomplish all of that in a condensed space and get my point across. Other times...I let the scene breathe and I spread out every sensation to give it more meaning and feeling no matter how long it takes. There’s nothing wrong with that. I think it makes for GREAT writing. But I also know that I have many examples of times when me being wordy and overly eloquent has slowed my stories down to a snail’s pace, damaging that part of the project and folks want to skip over it to get to the next big revelation, or whatever. And that’s not a good thing.

I wrote a story called “Never Again” a long time ago while I was going through a troubling situation and a really nasty heartbreak of my own (https://gayauthors.org/story/comicality/neveragain), and even though it was my plan to sort of write it in a way that mirrored the kind of obsessive thoughts that were going through my main character’s mind the way that it was through mine back when it happened. Reading it back was just...ugh! Hehehe! Total failure! I had obviously overdone it, and the story lagged and limped its way through four depressing chapters of my personal pain with a lot of repetitive feelings and screwed up pacing issues in a major way. I kind of wish that I could have written it for the first time today, knowing what I know now. Hehehe, but I was hurting at the time. That boy really damaged me!

However, some years later, I started to re-edit and recreate my older stories for release as Ebooks and I saw where the story was lagging most and tried to repair and cut back on what I had done before. (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/) This is when I began to learn the difference between dreaming and dragging. There really is a separation between the two, and once you see it...it’s like you can’t unsee it. Some writing will enhance your project, and some will drag it down. The difference, as is with most things in writing...comes from your story’s goal. Your guidance and your character’s motivation...and how you use it.

If you’re sticking with a certain situation, adding dialogue, or digging into the emotions of that particular moment, I’ve always found it best to sort of focus on details one at a time instead of a scene as a whole. The reason I say that is because it keeps my ideas from floating away or scattering in all directions. Like...if I try to write about a first date all at once, I find that it’s really easy for me to sort of derail my train of thought and stretch that scene out for a lot longer than I should. I can feel myself almost ‘wandering’ around the situation and capturing a bunch of needless sights and sounds that aren’t really warranted in that moment. This causes me to simply talk way too much in my fiction, and it takes up a lot of room, slowing everything down when I could be building up a decent amount of momentum for the next scene instead.

Now, I try to be a little bit more careful, and not color too far outside the lines. Instead of trying to describe a first date in drawn out detail...I start breaking the date up into smaller parts. Maybe they meet up at the same restaurant. Ok, so I might talk about how they’re dressed, or where they get seated, and what might look good on the menu. Finish that off with just a few sentences without getting into anything else, wrap it up, and be done with it. A much smaller scene doesn’t really take a whole lot of description to paint a picture. Then...once that’s finished...maybe there’s a short dialgue between my main character and his date for the evening. Maybe they’re nervous, maybe it’s comfortable, maybe they share an instant connection, or maybe the awkwardness of the situation is making it hard for them to talk much. That tiny piece of the first date becomes the focus, and get that wrapped up and move on to the next one. Maybe they have drinks. Maybe talk about the food. Maybe show a progression in their comfort level. Take each piece and don’t go too far into the future with it. Obviously, you want your writing to have a certain flow to it where they don’t sound like a bunch of scenes from separate stories...so you want them to blend together in a soft and natural way. But the key is to not go traveling off road with a bunch of other ‘cool, but ultimately’ unfocused details that peel away from your main focus. And once you wander off road...you have to find a natural way to wander back before you can start moving forward again. If that makes sense.

That’s been my self reflective experience with the idea so far.

I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, for example...and there are a lot of memorable conversations that take place within them that can be really interesting. But they have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Like...at all. They’re just people talking to one another about topics that don’t tie in to the story, that don’t really elevate the characters in any particular way, and often don’t move the move the story forward. They’re just sort of...’there’. They can be entertaining, sure...but there have been times when the actual focus of the movie gets started up again, and I’m left wondering, “Well...what the hell was all that about, then?” Stay in the pocket when you’re writing. Where are you going with the scenes you write?

I’m not saying that every single written word has to be a race or rushed through so you can hurry up and get to the end of the story. Like I said, I LOVE details and little extras. And I think it’s ok to slow down your momentum a little bit to explore your characters and the themes they’re dealing with in that part of the story. But don’t go too far off the beaten path with it. Take a bit of a ‘plot recess’ to have some fun, and then get back to reaching your goal. It’s easy to get lost when your story starts lagging, and then you’ll end up spending even more time trying to get your audience back on track again. Cool?

This is something that I’m still trying to figure out for myself, but I’m always trying to see what parts of my writing I can strengthen here and there, and the only way for me to find a way to pull that off is for me to experiment and see where it takes me. I hope you guys will do the same.

I hope this helps you guys, or at least gives you a little something to think about! Feel free to add your two cents down below if you’ve got any ideas! I’ll seezya soon! And stay beautiful!