At my recent events, I’ve had multiple readers comment on how much they love the short chapters in the Inheritance Games, and that got me to thinking about the writing process that has led to those short chapters. (Thread) My shift to shorter chapters was accompanied by a second shift to writing books with more scenes. My books tend to have a LOT of scenes—often 100+. Back when I was writing longer chapters, I’d guess I had half as many scenes? Maybe less.

One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic & some are made of glass. And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.

I study the psychology of fandom. One thing that seems very clear to me in some of the comments I’ve seen directed at @cassieclare is that there is a tendency to prioritize the (imaginary) feelings of fictional characters over the real-world feelings of an actual person. Many of the complaints I’ve seen in comments come in the form of “she said X about Y!” where Y is a fictional character, but treated as if they were a real-person.