@ fanfic authors: don’t apologise for writing filler chapters! i see this all the time!! filler chapters are so important to narrative pacing! a story needs downtime so the faster paced or denser elements have room to breathe! you’re writing a well balanced story!!! also, you’re giving me that filler for free! thats crazy!!! thats so kind of you!!! thank you for this gift!!!!!!
There are two kinds of filler, which I'll call "scheduling filler" and "pacing filler".
Scheduling filler is what people think of when they hear "filler". It's the anime-original arc written when the studio ran out of source material, the fanfic update posted purely so nobody thought the fic was dead, the weird ninja chapter you wrote because you lost two days of NaNoWriMo to work BS and need to write another 3,500 words in a few hours to keep pace.
It's possible for scheduling filler to be good, but it's uncommon. It's usually written by authors who just need something to be written, under harsh time constraints; more significantly, it's rarely integrated well into the broader narrative.
Pacing filler is most of what people identify as filler. It is a chapter/episode/scene which doesn't obviously move the story forward. It doesn't contain any major plot points, critical exposition, bombastic fights, dramatic confessions, etc.
On first viewing, pacing filler doesn't feel important; on subsequent viewings, it can often be skipped if the viewer wants. Despite this, pacing filler is absolutely critical to any good story!
The most obvious purpose of pacing filler is to plant details that will be important later, even if they don't seem important at the time. Introduce the side character who turns out to be an important ally later, or foreshadow a trick the hero is going to use against a major villain, or something along those lines. This is the least important use of pacing filler.
As the name indicates, pacing filler is necessary for the story to be paced well. No story can be all highs, any more than a roller coaster can be all drops. In order for the big, important moments to feel big or important, they need to be contrasted against small, irrelevant moments—scenes that genuinely can be skipped, that have no purpose except establishing what the characters and their lives are like when they aren't in a crisis.
And establishing what things are like outside crises isn't just important for making crises feel critical. It's important for making things feel real. I know that sounds vague enough to cover a lot of things, but pacing filler is important for a lot of things.
It's important for letting the audience feel like your characters are people and not just vehicles for the plot—for letting your setting feel like a whole world—for showing things to your audience without dry exposition—for character development to progress, and to be seen once it's progressed—for the consequences of major plot beats to be seen—and more.
You don't have to stan bad arcs of Naruto. But parts of a story that arent doing big, obvious things are still important!
