I just finished writing two major chapters in the rewrite, and now I have a question for you all.

  The first chapter focuses on Grub evolving Stone Chip into Stone Fragmentation. In that chapter I show the evolution options, his thought process while choosing between them, and then spend time on him experimenting with the new spell afterward, figuring out exactly how Stone Fragmentation works and what he can do with it.

  The second chapter covers him reaching Level 5, choosing his class, and selecting the free Spell/Skill that comes with that level. That decision process is also shown in detail.

  Together those two chapters ended up being close to 8,000 words (the Stone Fragmentation chapter alone is about 3,000 words), largely because of the time spent showing his reasoning and experimentation.

  What I’m unsure about now is how to handle future Spell evolutions.

  In the original version of the story, I briefly showed his thought process when he chose Stone Fragmentation, but later evolutions were handled quite differently. Instead of showing the full option list and internal debate, I just revealed the results later in the story.

  For example, instead of showing the full evolution menu and decision process, I simply states that:

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  - Pebble Toss evolved into Stone Spear

  - Stone Tap evolved into Resonance Pulse

  - Grain Shift evolved into Earthflow

  ... without walking through the full list of options and his internal reasoning each time.

  One thing I’m considering for the rewrite is shortening future spell evolution scenes a bit. Not skipping them entirely, but maybe not going quite as deep into the internal deliberation, reasoning, or experimentation as I did with the first one.

  Another factor is pacing. In the original writing, Grub evolved all four of his original Spells within two chapters, even though those chapters covered a fairly long stretch of time in the story (around a month or two if I remember right). In the rewrite, I could probably spread those evolutions out a bit more naturally.

  For example, Stone Chip and Pebble Toss are the Spells he uses constantly, so it made sense for those to evolve earlier. But he doesn’t use Stone Tap or Grain Shift nearly as often, so those could easily evolve somewhat later in the story without breaking anything.

  Spreading them out like that would help avoid having three or four chapters in a row spent almost entirely inside Grub’s head while he debates his Spell options, without the story itself moving forward much.

  The pacing issue is the main reason I’m hesitant here.

  So I’m curious what readers would prefer:

  Would you rather see the full options and reasoning every time a Spell evolves, or are you okay with those scenes sometimes being shorter or occasionally summarized, especially if it helps the pacing of the story?

  I know which way I would like to do it, but reader feedback is very important to me.

  Thank you in advance for any answers!