Discovering how to write chapters that move your book forward is essential for writers of all genres: fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. It’s just as important as having a strong opening page. I discuss what agents notice, and where writers often lose them, in Your Opening Pages—What Literary Agents See. But hooking an agent is only the beginning.
Once an agent is interested, the rest of the manuscript must keep giving them reasons to continue. Every chapter, scene, or section needs to create momentum and advance the book.
That doesn’t mean an agent who stops reading—or reads to the end and declines—has necessarily found a problem with your manuscript. Agents pass for many reasons, including personal taste, fit, timing, workload, list needs, market concerns, or having something similar already.
You can learn more about those possibilities in How to Interpret and React to Literary Agent Rejections.
One rejection doesn’t always reveal a change that should be made to a manuscript. You also might not know how far the agent read or exactly why they declined. But if multiple agents respond positively to the premise or opening pages without offering representation, the manuscript’s ability to sustain momentum is one possibility worth considering.
Literary agents probably won’t consciously think, “Chapter seven failed to advance the book.” They’ll simply begin to feel that the manuscript is dragging, repeating itself, wandering, or no longer creating enough curiosity.
During my decades in publishing—including as a literary agent and my work since 2011 helping more hundreds of writers receive offers from literary agents and/or traditional publishers—this is one of the most common manuscript problems and opportunities I’ve encountered.
That’s why I wrote this article, and that’s why I created this free guide about How to Get a Literary Agent.
Momentum doesn’t require nonstop action. It requires more awareness about the various ways a writer can make a book “move.” Or stall.
Quick Summary
Every chapter should earn its place by moving the book forward.
A chapter can be quiet and still create powerful momentum. Conversely, a chapter filled with activity can feel static if nothing consequential changes.
This principle applies to every type of book, from children’s picture books—which use beats, pages, and spreads rather than traditional chapters—to adult fiction and nonfiction.
In fiction, that generally means advancing the main character’s external story, internal story, or both. The movement can result from the main character’s choices and actions, but it can also be caused by another character’s action—or failure to act.
In nonfiction, chapters move a book forward differently. Each chapter should advance the book’s central journey, question, argument, chronology, or promise to the reader.
Key Takeaways
- A strong opening gets a literary agent interested; sustained momentum keeps the agent reading.
- Every chapter should create meaningful change, progression, or forward pressure.
- Momentum isn’t the same as pace or speed.
- Fiction chapters should advance the main character’s external story, internal story, or both.
- Another character’s action or inaction can advance the main character’s story.
- Strong chapters build upon one another through cause and effect.
- A chapter should pass energy, pressure, curiosity, or necessity to what follows.
- Nonfiction chapters should advance the book’s central promise, journey, question, chronology, or argument.
- A chapter that doesn’t advance the book may need to be revised, combined, shortened, moved, or deleted.
Every chapter should change the situation, change the character, change the reader’s understanding—or ideally do more than one.
1. What Does It Mean to Move a Book Forward?
A chapter moves a book forward when something important changes or progresses because the chapter is there.
In fiction, that change might involve:
- What the main character wants
- What stands in the way
- What the character knows or believes
- A decision or failure to decide
- The consequences of an earlier choice
- A relationship
- The level of danger or opportunity
- What the character must do next
- What the reader expects, hopes for, or fears
In nonfiction, the chapter might:
- Advance the chronology or central journey
- Develop the book’s argument
- Answer the next logical question
- Introduce necessary evidence
- Change the reader’s understanding
- Provide a practical tool or next step
- Move the reader closer to the result the book promises
Not everything needs to change in every chapter.
But something should.
2. Momentum Isn’t the Same as Pace
Writers often understandably assume that creating momentum means making everything happen faster.
It doesn’t.
Pace is how quickly a book moves. Momentum is what makes the reader want to keep moving with it.
A thriller will generally move at a different pace than a literary novel. A humorous picture book will feel different from a reflective memoir. An urgent how-to book will unfold differently from a detailed work of history.
A book can move slowly and still have strong momentum if readers sense meaningful progression. A quiet conversation can change a relationship. A character sitting alone can finally recognize a truth they’ve resisted. A memoirist can reinterpret an earlier experience. A nonfiction author can help readers see a familiar problem in a new way.
Those moments can create powerful momentum even when the pace is slow.
On the flip side, a chapter can contain an argument, chase, accident, or dramatic confrontation and still feel static if the characters finish in essentially the same situation, with the same understanding and available choices. Activity isn’t the same as advancement.
Pace also needs variation. Constant speed can become exhausting or monotonous. Faster chapters create urgency; slower chapters can create anticipation, intimacy, reflection, or emotional weight. For more about controlling speed without assuming faster is always better, see Reedsy’s guide to pacing in writing.
3. How Fiction Chapters Advance the External and Internal Story
Most fiction has both an external and internal story, but most authors pay more attention to the external story. Sometimes too much attention.
The external story involves what the main character wants to accomplish in the visible world. The character pursues something, encounters obstacles, makes choices, and experiences consequences.
A chapter might advance the external story by:
- Creating a new obstacle
- Removing an option
- Revealing an opportunity
- Escalating the danger
- Forcing a decision
- Producing an unexpected consequence
- Moving the character closer to—or farther from—the goal
The internal story involves what’s happening emotionally and psychologically. It might concern the character’s fears, wounds, beliefs, identity, relationships, or capacity to change.
A chapter might advance the internal story when the character:
- Questions a long-held belief
- Recognizes something they’ve been avoiding
- Loses or gains trust
- Becomes more afraid or more determined
- Makes an emotionally significant choice
- Repeats a damaging pattern with greater consequences
- Takes a small but meaningful step toward change
Some chapters primarily advance the external story. Others primarily advance the internal story. The best chapters often do both. The external event might create an internal change. Or an internal realization might cause the character to take a different kind of external action. The important point is that the character’s journey shouldn’t remain exactly where it was.
4. How Other Characters Can Move the Main Character’s Story Forward
The main character doesn’t need to cause everything that happens. Another character can take action that changes the protagonist’s danger, opportunity, understanding, relationships, or available choices. An ally might betray the main character. A parent might reveal a secret. A rival might succeed. A friend might make a mistake that creates a new problem.
Another character’s inaction can be equally consequential.
Someone might:
- Refuse to help
- Fail to arrive
- Withhold important information
- Avoid making a decision
- Remain silent when support is needed
- Decline to intervene
- Ignore a warning
The protagonist can even be absent from a chapter, particularly in multi-POV and ensemble fiction. But the chapter should still affect the central narrative, one of the principal character arcs, or the reader’s understanding of what’s at stake.
A secondary character might be the center of the action, but the chapter should contribute to the book’s larger meaning and movement.
The main character doesn’t need to be the center of every action. But the main character should remain the center of the meaning.
It’s a problem when another character’s material exists mainly because it’s interesting, amusing, dramatic, or informative in isolation. A side character’s chapter shouldn’t feel like an unrelated short story inserted into the book.
5. Build Causality, Not Just a Sequence of Events
Meaningful change is important, but strong momentum requires more than placing one new event after another.
Weak or episodic chapters often feel like:
This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened.
The incidents might be interesting and entertaining individually, but they don’t build upon one another, or not enough.
A better book creates a strong chain:
Because this happened, the character did that. Therefore, a new problem, consequence, question, or opportunity emerged.
One chapter should influence what becomes possible or necessary in the next. For example, a decision creates a consequence or a discovery changes the plan. A failed attempt makes the next attempt more difficult or a new idea allows the reader to understand a more advanced one.
That doesn’t mean every connection must be obvious or immediate. Some setups develop gradually and pay off much later. But the book should feel carerfully constructed and building vs too episodic and meandering or not on purpose enough.
Questions, promises, expectations, setup, and payoff all contribute to momentum. When a book introduces a mystery, conflict, desire, danger, or important idea, readers expect it to be developed and eventually addressed.
The One Thing Your Novel Absolutely Must Do on Jane Friedman’s blog offers another useful way to consider the questions that generate curiosity and narrative momentum.
6. The Chapter Handoff
Think of the connection between chapters as the “chapter handoff.” In other words, a good chapter doesn’t just do focus on itself. It does its job for that chapter and it gives energy, pressure, curiosity, emotion, or necessity to the pages that follow.
The handoff might be:
- A decision that must now be acted upon
- A consequence that must be faced
- Information that changes the plan
- A question readers want answered
- An emotional rupture that can’t be ignored
- A danger that has moved closer
- An opportunity that might disappear
- A nonfiction idea that creates the need for the next step
Every chapter doesn’t need a cliffhanger. In fact, constant cliffhangers can feel forced, manipulative, or repetitive. The desire to continue can be emotional, psychological, relational, intellectual, or practical.
Readers might wonder:
- What will the character decide?
- How will they recover?
- What does the revelation mean?
- Can the relationship survive?
- What happens when someone learns the truth?
- How will this idea work in practice?
- What must the reader understand or do next?
A chapter ending shouldn’t simply stop the scene or discussion. Ideally, it should make what follows feel necessary, meaningful, or compelling.
A chapter earns its place partly by making the next chapter matter more.
7. How This Applies to Every Type of Fiction
The principle applies across all fiction categories, although the form and pace of the movement will vary.
Children’s Picture Books
Picture books might not have traditional chapters, but every beat, page, or spread should advance the child character’s effort, problem, emotional journey, or understanding. Because picture books contain so few words, static or unneeded material reduces the writer’s odds of getting a literary agent. A repeated action or refrain should escalate, change meaning, create anticipation, reveal character, or move the child closer to the outcome.
Early Readers and Chapter Books
Each chapter should represent a meaningful step in the young protagonist’s journey. The movement might be simple, but the child’s situation, emotions, choices, relationships, or understanding should continue developing.
Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
Chapters should advance the protagonist’s goal, increase complications, deepen relationships, reveal consequential information, or force increasingly meaningful choices. The external and internal stories are often closely connected. What the young person is trying to accomplish is also changing who they are.
Adult Commercial Fiction
Readers generally expect clear narrative propulsion here as well. Chapters should create escalating and accumulating consequences, complications, discoveries, choices, and emotional investment rather than a series of loosely connected incidents that aren’t tied together, or tied together strongly enough.
Adult Literary Fiction
The movement might be subtler with literary fiction, but the principle still applies. A chapter might advance the book psychologically, relationally, morally, or thematically. The character’s understanding of themselves or others might shift even when little happens externally. Subtle movement is still movement.
Multi-POV and Ensemble Fiction
Every chapter doesn’t need to advance the same character. However, as I explained earlier, each viewpoint should contribute to the central narrative and interact meaningfully with the other storylines. If one character’s chapters could be removed without affecting the rest of the book, that storyline might not be integrated strongly enough.
Prologues and Interludes
Prologues, interludes, dream sequences, flashbacks, and other departures from the main movement aren’t exempt. Everything in a book is important. A prologue should create a meaningful question, promise, danger, expectation, or understanding that matters to the main book. An interlude should alter or deepen how readers understand the central narrative. An unusual format still needs a reason to exist.
8. How Chapters Move Nonfiction Books Forward
Nonfiction chapters advance books differently, but they need to create momentum as well.
Memoir and Narrative Nonfiction
The principle is similar to fiction. Each chapter should advance the central journey, conflict, relationship, question, or transformation. A memory or background section should illuminate the present story rather than merely interrupt it. Events should accumulate meaning and consequence rather than become a collection of experiences.
Prescriptive and Informational Nonfiction
Each chapter should move the reader closer to the result promised by the book.
A chapter might:
- Answer the next logical question
- Explain a necessary principle
- Provide evidence
- Introduce a practical tool
- Correct a misconception
- Help the reader complete the next step
- Prepare the reader for a more advanced idea
Repeating why the topic matters isn’t enough. Readers need to understand more, see differently, or become capable of doing something they couldn’t do before.
History, Biography, and Idea-Driven Nonfiction
Chapters should advance the chronology, argument, causal chain, central question, or reader’s understanding. A chapter can contain accurate and fascinating information but still feel unnecessary if it doesn’t contribute clearly to the book’s purpose.
Narrative techniques can also create stronger nonfiction momentum without compromising accuracy. Borrow From Fiction’s Toolbox to Elevate Your Nonfiction Book on Jane Friedman’s blog explores several of those possibilities.
Across nonfiction categories, ask yourself:
How does this chapter help fulfill the promise the book made to the reader?
Your chapter summaries can also expose progression problems before agents see them. Learn more in How to Write Chapter Summaries for Literary Agents.
9. A Strong Chapter Can Do More Than One Job
Writers sometimes interpret “every chapter needs a purpose” too narrowly. A chapter doesn’t have to advance only the plot or argument. Strong chapters often accomplish several things simultaneously.
A fiction chapter might:
- Advance the external story
- Deepen the internal arc
- Change a relationship
- Reveal necessary information
- Develop the setting
- Create humor or atmosphere
- Reinforce the book’s themes
A nonfiction chapter might:
- Advance the argument
- Tell a memorable story
- Establish credibility
- Explain research
- Provide an example
- Give readers a tool
- Prepare them for the next idea
World-building, backstory, description, atmosphere, humor, reflection, research, and theme all have value. The problem occurs when one of those elements becomes the chapter’s main or only contribution and requires the book’s central progression to stop.
World-building, backstory, humor, atmosphere, and theme are strongest when they travel with the book instead of asking the book to stop for them.
Advancement can also happen through deepening.
Suspicion can become evidence or attraction can become vulnerability. Grief can become anger or a concern can become an urgent problem. A nonfiction principle can become a practical method. Repetition hits the same point whereas deepening moves, well, deeper, into it.
10. Common Reasons Chapters Lose Momentum
Some of the most common problems I see include:
Backstory That Interrupts the Present Book
Backstory can be compelling and necessary. However, if it pauses the current story or discussion without changing how readers understand the present, it will probably feel like a detour and be a detour.
Repeated Emotional or Intellectual Beats
The character worries, grieves, hesitates, reflects, or argues—but reaches no new understanding and makes no different choice. In nonfiction, the author may repeat the importance of the problem without adding a new insight, example, solution, or step.
Side-Character Detours
A secondary character receives significant attention, but their material doesn’t affect the main character or central book. Many authors get away from their main character for multiple chapters at a time. That’s usually a big mistake, as it’s hard to keep your main character momentum if they’re no longer in the picture.
Setup Without a Turn
The chapter introduces people, places, relationships, research, history, or information but creates no meaningful development.
World-Building or Research for Its Own Sake
The material may be fascinating, but it isn’t connected strongly enough to the character’s immediate situation, the central argument, or the book’s promise.
Dialogue Without Consequences
The conversation may be entertaining or realistic, but nobody learns, decides, reveals, conceals, risks, gains, or loses anything important.
Episodic Obstacles
The protagonist encounters one challenge after another, but the challenges don’t build upon each other or create lasting consequences.
A Passive Main Character
Other people make the important decisions while the protagonist mainly observes, reacts, or goes along. A protagonist can be temporarily powerless or uncertain. But over time, their choices, resistance, mistakes, or refusal to act should influence what happens.
Interesting Material in the Wrong Place
Sometimes a chapter contains worthwhile material but appears before readers need it. Moving it later—when a conflict, question, or consequence makes the information urgent—can transform a slow chapter into a compelling one.
11. Static Chapters vs. Chapters That Advance the Book
The difference becomes clearer through examples.
Fiction
Static: A woman remembers how badly her former partner treated her.
Advancing: While remembering the relationship, she recognizes a detail proving he lied about the night of a crime. That realization changes whom she trusts and what she does next.
The backstory now affects the present story.
Children’s Picture Book
Static: A child tries the same solution three times, with essentially the same result.
Advancing: Each attempt becomes harder, funnier, or more revealing—and teaches the child something needed for the final attempt. The repetition escalates and contributes to the outcome.
Memoir
Static: The author recounts another painful childhood incident illustrating a family problem readers already understand.
Advancing: The incident reveals why the author later made a consequential adult choice—or causes the adult narrator to reinterpret what happened. The memory now advances the book’s transformation.
Prescriptive Nonfiction
Static: A chapter repeats why confidence is important.
Advancing: The chapter identifies a specific confidence barrier, explains how it operates, and gives readers a method for overcoming it. The reader now understands or can do something new.
12. How to Test Whether a Chapter Moves the Book Forward
After drafting or revising a chapter, ask yourself:
- What does the main character, viewpoint character, author, or reader need at the beginning?
- What meaningfully changes or progresses by the end?
- Does the external situation improve, worsen, or become more complicated?
- Does a belief, emotion, relationship, or understanding change?
- Does someone make a consequential choice—or fail to make one?
- Is new information introduced, and does it matter now?
- Does this chapter result partly from what happened earlier?
- Does it create a reason something else must happen next?
- What setup, question, promise, or expectation does it develop or pay off?
- If the chapter were removed, what meaningful value would be lost?
Regarding #10 above, a chapter might not change the plot mechanically, but it might create emotional intimacy, atmosphere, humor, thematic resonance, character understanding, or essential reader knowledge. Ask what meaningful plot, character, emotional, thematic, informational, or reader-experience value would disappear.
If the answer is “very little,” the chapter probably needs revision or removing.
You can also try completing this sentence:
Because this chapter happens, __________ changes, which causes or requires __________.
For nonfiction:
Because the reader completes this chapter, they now understand or can do __________, preparing them to __________.
If you can’t complete the sentence clearly, you might have a weak chapter. This exercise is useful whether you’re a plotter, pantser, or plantser. For more revision and planning strategies suited to each approach, see Three Types of Writers: Plotters, Pantsers, and Plantsers.
13. What to Do With a Chapter That Isn’t Working
A chapter that isn’t moving the book forward doesn’t always need to be deleted.
You might:
- Combine it with another chapter
- Shorten it to its essential material
- Move it to a more consequential point
- Add a decision, revelation, reversal, or consequence
- Connect a side character’s actions more directly to the central book
- Integrate backstory into an active present-day scene
- Change what the character wants during the chapter
- Make the outcome affect what happens next
- Replace repetition with genuine deepening
- Clarify how the chapter advances the reader toward the book’s promised result
Don’t add an argument, accident, villain, surprise, or dramatic revelation just to manufacture activity. That might make the chapter busier without making it more meaningful. The goal isn’t to simply pepper the chapter with action. It’s to identify what the chapter changes, develops, or makes necessary—and strengthen that contribution.
Writing concise chapter summaries is a wondeful way to see the entire book at once. When several summaries describe characters thinking, talking, traveling, remembering, researching, or preparing without meaningful turns, the larger momentum problem becomes easier to recognize. If you create chapter summaries to serve as an ouline or guide, but sure to put the turns in the summs. You might even put them in bold to make them easy to see and remember.
15. Final Thoughts
Getting a literary agent to read the opening pages of your manuscript an important accomplishment. But the manuscript must continue earning the agent’s attention. That doesn’t require nonstop action, artificial cliffhangers, or a major revelation in every chapter.
It requires movement.
- In fiction, every chapter should advance the main character’s external story, internal story, or both—even when another character’s action or inaction creates that advancement.
- In nonfiction, every chapter should move the reader through the book’s central journey, promise, chronology, question, or argument.
A strong chapter changes or deepens something. It builds upon what came before. It creates or develops questions, expectations, and promises. And it hands momentum to what follows. At the end of each chapter, something should be different. That way readers—including literary agents—will be more likely to continue.
Get 1-on-1 Help Strengthening Your Manuscript
As a former literary agent and publishing executive, I help writers identify where their books gain or lose momentum, strengthen their structure and character arcs, improve their chapters, and prepare their manuscripts and submission materials for literary agents. Learn more about 1-on-1 author coaching and consulting. and see reviews from authors of all genres whom I’ve helped.
FAQ: How to Write Chapters that Create Momentum
Does every fiction chapter need action?
No. A chapter needs meaningful movement, which may be external, internal, relational, psychological, emotional, thematic, or informational. Quiet chapters can advance a book powerfully.
Does every chapter need to advance the plot?
Every chapter should advance the book, but not always through the external plot. A chapter may primarily advance character development, a relationship, the internal arc, the central argument, or the reader’s understanding—as long as the movement matters to the whole book.
Can another character advance the main character’s story?
Absolutely. Another character’s choice, mistake, betrayal, silence, absence, success, or refusal can change the main character’s situation and available choices.
Can the main character be absent from a chapter?
Yes, especially in multi-POV and ensemble fiction. But the chapter should still affect the central narrative, a principal character, or what readers understand about the stakes.
Does every chapter need a cliffhanger?
No. A chapter should usually create some reason to continue, but that reason can be emotional, psychological, relational, intellectual, practical, or narrative.
Can a slow chapter still have momentum?
Yes. Slow pace and weak momentum aren’t the same. A quiet chapter can deepen a conflict, change a relationship, create anticipation, or transform the meaning of earlier events.
How can I tell whether a chapter is filler?
Temporarily remove it and consider what meaningful plot, character, emotional, thematic, informational, or reader-experience value disappears. If very little is lost, the chapter may be filler—or it may contain material that needs to be condensed, moved, or connected more strongly to the book.
Does this advice apply to literary fiction?
Yes. Literary fiction may advance more subtly through consciousness, perception, relationships, language, theme, and moral or emotional change. But a chapter should still contribute consequentially to the reader’s experience of the book.
Does this apply to children’s picture books without chapters?
Yes. Apply the principle to every beat, page, spread, action, and repeated element. Each should advance the child character’s effort, emotions, understanding, or movement toward the outcome.
Does every nonfiction chapter need a practical exercise?
No. But every chapter should advance the chronology, argument, central question, reader understanding, transformation, or promise of the book.
About
This article about writing chapters that will keep literary agents reading was written by a former literary agent turned author coach. Mark Malatesta is the creator of The Directory of Book Agents, host of Ask a Publishing Agent, and founder of Literary Agent Undercover and The Bestselling Author.
Mark has helped hundreds of authors get offers from literary agents and/or traditional publishers. Writers of all Book Genres have used our Book Agent Advice coaching/consulting to get Top Literary Agents at the Best Literary Agencies on our List of Literary Agents.
The Bestselling Author, LLC
Established in 2011, The Bestselling Author has helped 400+ authors get literary agents and/or traditional publishers. Writers who’ve worked with Literary Agent Undercover, a division of The Bestselling Author, have gotten six-figure book deals; been on the New York Times bestseller list; had their books adapted for TV, stage, and feature film; had their work licensed in 40+ countries; and sold many millions of books.
Notable authors include Nelson Johnson, author of Boardwalk Empire, which Martin Scorsese produced for HBO; Leslie Lehr, author of A Boob’s Life, which is currently being adapted for an HBO Max TV series by Salma Hayek; and Scott LeRette, author of The Unbreakable Boy, which was published by Thomas Nelson and is now a major motion picture by Lionsgate starring Patricia Heaton, Zachary Levi, and Amy Acker.
The founder of The Bestselling Author, Mark Malatesta, is a former literary agent, literary agency owner, AAR member, and Marketing & Licensing Manager for the gift and book publisher Blue Mountain Arts. He is now an author coach and consultant. Click here to see Mark Malatesta reviews.
About the Author
The founder of The Bestselling Author, Mark Malatesta, is a former literary agent, literary agency owner, AAR member, and Marketing & Licensing Manager for the gift and book publisher Blue Mountain Arts. Mark is now a highly regarded author coach and consultant, dedicated to helping writers obtain literary agents. Drawing on decades of industry experience, he works with writers across genres, offering personalized coaching to navigate the complexities of the publishing world.
Through The Bestselling Author, Mark provides practical tools, industry insights, and motivational support tailored to each writer’s needs to help them do so. In addition to coaching, Mark shares his expertise through speaking engagements and online resources. His dedication to empowering authors has made him a trusted mentor in the writing community, earning him a reputation as a knowledgeable and approachable guide for writers pursuing their dreams. Click here for Mark Malatesta reviews.
MARK MALATESTA is a former literary agent turned author coach. Mark now helps authors of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, and children's books) get top literary agents, publishers, and book deals through his company