Like the rest of the US, I have been spending my time recently bingeing K-Dramas. The latest one (and so far favorite) was It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. But it also got me thinking…

Much of what viewers love about K-Dramas are the rich character development that allows each person in a story grow, change, and often surprise us over the course of 8, 16, or 24 episodes. We, the viewers, expect it to take awhile for the story to unfold, patiently waiting for the payoff of extensive set-up and multiple storylines intersecting at once.

So why do we refuse to trust readers to do the same? If someone is willing to sit through 3-5 hours of a show before deciding whether or not they want to stick with it, why do we constantly tell authors that action must begin within the first 50 pages? Why do we place so much emphasis on opening lines? Why aren’t we given time and space to fully develop our characters the way they deserve?

Listen. Could it just be I’m not a good enough writer to condense stories down to what’s considered a “reasonable” word count? Probably! (BOYS, for reference came in around 89k words, with most YA contemporaries in the 60-75k range.) But it can be frustrating to feel hemmed in by these publishing “norms” that often restrict author creativity.

Like everything, it’s about execution. Of course there still exist books with slow starts (literary fiction comes to mind lol). It’s just the *trust* that isn’t there from readers because they are so used to stories being fast paced and stuffed in their faces. Every so often, someone tweets about wanting “quiet books” and all of us “quiet stories” authors come out of the woodwork to cry together because marketing demands we jazz it up.

Because this is the internet and I am perpetually online, I feel it necessary to clarify that I have nothing against fast-paced stories. They’re great! I just wish that we allowed for larger variety of storytelling, so that audiences could get accustomed to it and therefore more tolerant of something outside of the usual 3 Act, hero’s journey or whatever. (Is it obvious I don’t use beat sheets?)

Anyway. This wasn’t really an endorsement post for It’s Okay to Not Be Okay so let me say at the end, I am endorsing It’s Okay to Not Be Okay. It encapsulated everything I love about K-Dramas (the plot twists! the drama! the hotness of the main characters!), so go watch it.

But bring tissues. And be patient.