I've been writing, and I quite enjoy the process, often times words just comes little from my brain, but if the moment hits, I couldn't stop writing, and when I reread it, it seems okay, but when I edited it, it suddenly becomes 10,000-15,000 words per chapter already. So... any insights and discussion would help a lot!
Writing Any tips not to make slow-burn a yapfest?
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zephyrtrillian
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Can you find a way to split those 10,000-15,000 chapters into 2,500-3,300 word chapters?
MasterY001
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Cutting out redundant words and phrases during a second editing session is the best way to slim down your work. Look for any tautologies like "well-liked and popular" or "a pair of two." Descriptors that start with "more" or "very" can be exchanged for the proper comparative or superlative. Finally, don't be afraid to cut unnecessary scenes, narration, or dialogue.
The second step is to break up your chapters into segments that can be digested easier. Although, as someone who only considers 5000+ words a "proper" chapter, I wouldn't nitpick about this.
The second step is to break up your chapters into segments that can be digested easier. Although, as someone who only considers 5000+ words a "proper" chapter, I wouldn't nitpick about this.
Edenia
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Post an example chapter so we know what it looks like
The Reckless Love of Mafia Ladies [破 天荒の恋 ! ～マフィア淑女たちの無鉄砲な愛！？～]
Leader of black market. Leader of mercenary and arms trading. Leader of underworld intel network. Leader of illegal organ trade. Leader of human trafficking ring. In a world filled with power control, life has it's own pricetag. The story follow a man named Renji Tohara, born in rural place in...
is this how I insert a link? ??
Keene
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I regularly end up writing entire 3k+ word chapters that are nothing but a conversation.
Hell, my Patreon chapters are just finishing up what unexpectedly became the 10k+ word long "present-giving" arc. Literally just the main character giving a gift to a character or two and talking about it (or around it) for thousands of words. (It's currently Christmas in the world of Amelia Thornheart)
And the readers love it.
I've had concerns in the past that my characters yap too much, but I've come to understand the readers enjoy it because even within the conversation, something is always happening. The conversation always has a purpose, it's never pure yapping. There are layers inside and outside the conversation that complete the scene as a whole.
So yap away!
(An excerpt from the chapter in question, if you want to see how I write my yapping) I do 4 of the things in my 5-point bulletpoint list in this excerpt.
Hell, my Patreon chapters are just finishing up what unexpectedly became the 10k+ word long "present-giving" arc. Literally just the main character giving a gift to a character or two and talking about it (or around it) for thousands of words. (It's currently Christmas in the world of Amelia Thornheart)
And the readers love it.
I've had concerns in the past that my characters yap too much, but I've come to understand the readers enjoy it because even within the conversation, something is always happening. The conversation always has a purpose, it's never pure yapping. There are layers inside and outside the conversation that complete the scene as a whole.
- The conversation expands on the world-building
- The conversation further develops a character and their traits
- The conversation answers a promise set up in a previous chapter (a question or mystery or expectation)
- The conversation sets up a future pay-off
- The conversation furthers a plot-line or maintains a running joke
So yap away!
(An excerpt from the chapter in question, if you want to see how I write my yapping) I do 4 of the things in my 5-point bulletpoint list in this excerpt.
[...]
While the Ainese twin had taken it upon himself to help train Noburu, Seonmi was receiving her own form of training under Ido’s feminine counterpart. Arin Song, the enthusiastic markswoman that had impressed the Vengeance’s weapon’s officer, Thorne, was taking Seonmi through rifle malfunctions.
“Your gun is your child,” Arin instructed, “and a specialist marksman’s rifle like this one requires more care than a newly-born softhorn. Mages”—Arin nodded towards Daichi and Hinako sitting in a meditative pose cycling their aether—“think their formations are delicate, but a gun is less forgiving than magic. If an aetherflow shifts a few millimetres within their bodies, there is rarely a negative consequence, but if the wrong component in a gun is off by a tiny amount, it can lead to…” The demon motioned an explosion with her hands. “...Boom.
“Look here,” she continued, pointing to the manual bolt mechanism that loaded the rifle. “If the bolt head is off by even a single millimetre, it affects headspace. You know what happens if you have too much headspace? Case rupturing. Gas blowback.” Arin shook her head disapprovingly. “Too little headspace? Prevents bolt closure.” The demon operated the bolt several times with smooth, snappy motions. “How much did your accelerated training cover?”
She looks so cool! Amelia thought. The Ainese demon had a calm yet fierce look in her eye when she held a rifle, like a deadly predator ready to pounce. Wild and focused yet still refined and controlled.
Seonmi glanced at Amelia briefly before answering Arin’s question. “We had a few lessons on cleaning and common failures. They showed us how to take it apart and clean each component. I know how to adjust spring tension. I know not to over-lubricate the gun, especially in cold weather. I know…” Seonmi continued for a while, enumerating the knowledge she and Noburu had gained while Arin nodded along.
Amelia found herself being drawn into the lesson. She almost didn’t notice the presence appearing by her side. Turning her head, she whispered, “Hello!” with a characteristic grin.
“Are those… presents?” Mel asked quietly, peering into the sack Amelia was carrying.
“Mmm!”
The demon’s lips curled. “You’re going to be popular. I saw Officer Dahlberg earlier. He was strutting about with a new rannar belt and scabbard! Was that you?” Seeing Amelia nod, Mel continued with a smile, “He stopped me in the corridor. I think he must be going around showing off because he was far more of a conversationalist than usual, asking me all manner of inquiries while turning his body back and forth like he wanted me to notice!”
Mel puffed out her chest, speaking with a surprisingly good imitation of Dagon’s Wami accent, “Young Officer Mori, are you fitting in well?” Mel giggled before collecting herself again, continuing the act, turning her body to the left and right while exaggeratedly tapping her belt. “Have you adjusted to Anathor’s presence yet? He can take some getting used to. Not many ships have their own Formless…” Mel laughed as she rubbed her scabbard, echoing Dagon’s performance. “It was like that,” she finished.
“You did notice, though, didn’t you?” Amelia asked.
“Of course!” Mel exclaimed. “I was tempted to pretend not to notice, but how could I do that? It was so obvious! Men aren’t very subtle, are they?” Mel raised a knowing eyebrow before giving a second exaggerated performance, this time of her shock and awe at seeing Dagon’s new belt. After Amelia had finished giggling, Mel said, “I actually had a favour I wanted to ask of you.”
“Oh?”
“My orange is progressing nicely. It’ll still be another six months, perhaps a year, before I can think of developing yellow, but I want to get there as soon as possible!” Mel clenched her fist, her face suddenly focused with determination. “Normally, warriors would wait until their orange is more solid before testing it against riflefire, but I figure if you’re around, I can take the risk, right?” Mel tapped her stomach, saying, “Even if a bullet gets through, you’ll be able to heal me, wouldn’t you? Maybe once we exit the passage? I figure if we use me as a target, it could double as practice for Arin as well”
“Mmm! Sure!” Amelia replied with an enthusiastic thumbs up. A small part of her mind tried to protest, arguing that perhaps it wasn’t entirely normal or sane for someone to engage in training methods that would kill a normal person. The dominant part of Amelia’s mind quickly pushed that aside. After all, in the face of Mel’s determination and friendship, she would always go the extra mile!
Also, Amelia herself had happily engaged in Serena’s unusual training. She’d acted as a training dummy for the Vengeance’s explosive broadside and had even tested her wards against the valuable tungsten penetrators that had torn straight through the island they’d been on. She couldn’t exactly protest Mel’s enthusiasm without being a hypocrite, could she?
Mel resumed her own aura refinement, and while Amelia was tempted to join her, she found herself drawn in once more by Arin’s lecture on rifle operation. With one end of the room occupied by the meditating Mel and mages, and the other side occupied by the sweating Noburu and demanding Ido, Arin and Seonmi offered a soothing balance that caught Amelia’s attention.
“Failure to feed is one of the more common problems,” Arin explained, cycling the rifle’s bolt mechanism. “If you keep your gun well maintained, and you know the bolt is aligned and the spring tension is correct, then the first step is to give the magazine a tap…” The demon demonstrated, giving the side of the rifle's magazine a firm tap. “Then try and cycle the bolt once more. It’s okay to use a bit more force to chamber the round. If that doesn’t work it’s possible you have a damaged or deformed cartridge. That’s rarer, especially as production standards improved over the last decade, but it still happens. When you have spare time, it’s worth examining your cartridges yourself.”
“At the firing range, I once had it try and feed two cartridges at once, jamming the gun,” Seonmi said.
“It happens,” Arin began with a nod, “when the magazine has been improperly loaded. I’ve had it happen myself with a weak magazine spring. It can also happen when…” Arin detached the gun's magazine and pointed out a part of it to Seonmi. “You know this part? The magazine lip? When it or the follower is damaged, it can cause double feeding. Be careful with your magazines. Examine and load them yourself if you can. Many sharpshooters are so focused on the gun and the bullets themselves, they forget about the magazine.”
Arin replaced the magazine and cycled the gun once more, catching the ejected cartridge with a smooth flourish of her hand. “Sometimes the gun will fail to eject. This happens with a poorly-maintained chamber or a weak ejector spring. It also happens if the extractor claw is broken or worn. Here—”Arin produced a spare metal part from a box and showed Seonmi—“this is what a worn one looks like. You see how that nub there is much shorter than it should be? Always keep an eye out when cleaning the gun. Here…” Arin handed the gun to Seonmi. “Let’s see you cycle it. As if you were to fire it.”
After a moment of hesitation, Seonmi brought the gun up, the buttstock against her shoulder and her eye lined up with the iron sights. Then, with a satisfying click, she pulled the bolt up and back before slowly letting it move down and push another round into the chamber. Seonmi glanced at Arin before repeating the motion. “Is it okay?” she asked. “It feels fine?” she questioned as Arin shook her head.
“This gun is well maintained, so your technique is unlikely to lead to a cycling failure, but it should be better. You’re keeping the rifle up when you cycle, which is good, but…” Arin took Seonmi’s right hand and manually placed it against the bolt. “You’re fingertipping the bolt. Use the head of the palm to lift—”Arin pushed Seonmi’s hand up—“then these two fingers to firmly pull”—the bolt snapped back—“and then don’t release the pressure slowly, we call that riding the bolt. Push it forward. If you don’t, it causes the round not to fully seat, or the extractor not to grip properly. I was the same when my father taught me to hunt. I wanted to be quiet, yes?” Arin laughed to herself. “But my father explained to me, we are firing guns. They are supposed to be loud and scary!”
For a few minutes, Arin had Seonmi do nothing but cycle the mechanism again and again, pointing out so many adjustments and errors that even Amelia found herself starting to agree that the operation of a gun was every bit as complicated as a spell formation.
“The action must be fully complete every time, no matter how stressed you are,” Arin explained. “This is a Shimashina 844; it has a higher bolt angle than the Hokanai-built hunting rifle I’m used to, but you must make the full quarter-turn every time. If you don’t, the bolt lugs don’t disengage, and the gun will bind. Under stress, people have a weak lift. They also pull back at an angle, which causes the bolt to bind in the receiver rails and increases the chances of a jam. I’ve had that happen a few times myself when I’m in danger.”
“You’ve fired under stress?” Seonmi asked. “Have you seen combat? I thought you were newly commissioned?”
“I haven’t been in the trenches, but the inhabitants of the wilderness are every bit as frightening as a human,” Arin explained with a grim expression. “There’s been times where I’ve gone too far or lost my way, and stumbled into the territory of creatures that take more than a bullet or two to stop. There’s good money to be made hunting, if you’re not stupid and get yourself killed.” Arin chuckled, continuing, “It’s all fun and games when things are going well, but when you’re cold, hungry, and exhausted and have to crawl through the undergrowth covered in mud because some predator is roaming nearby… not so fun.”
Amelia saw Seonmi swallow before she asked, “Have you ever… shot someone?”
Arin blinked before answering, “Yes. I have. It’s safer now, but there were times our farm would be attacked.”
“Humans?” Seonmi asked.
Arin shook her head.
“Oh.”
The Ainese demon pointed upwards with her index finger. “Lots of criminals from the cities above escape to the lowlands below and the surrounding wilderness. When things were bad, rival farmers would try and steal some of our cattle and sheep. There was a lot of… competition before our governing lord was changed to someone more competent. Things are better now.”
“I see…” Seomi looked awkward, but that didn’t stop her from asking, “What’s it like? To shoot someone?”
Arin shrugged. “It’s mostly quiet.”
“Quiet?” Seonmi frowned. “Don’t they… scream?”
“Not normally,” Arin explained, holding up one of the rifle’s cartridges. “If this hits someone’s torso, whether demon or human, they’re more likely than not dead before they know it. The lungs and diaphragm often get damaged, preventing them from breathing, or they immediately go into shock and can’t scream even if they wanted to. That’s what normally happens. Sometimes…” Arin took a slow breath. “Sometimes it isn’t quiet, but I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine!” Arin waved a hand, her smile returning. “The war is over, so I don’t think the good captain is going to send us into any trenches any time soon. With any luck, we’ll have an easy few years!” Despite her efforts, the atmosphere was still a little cold.
Well, it was Amelia’s time to shine! There wasn’t a depressed or awkward atmosphere in the Known World that wouldn’t rejuvenate itself when faced with her overwhelming amount of adorable, golden cuteness!
“It’s time for presents!” she announced, holding up and wiggling the large sack. “No more talk about war! No more sword training, no more cycling and convecting! Gather around!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, oozing excitement and encouragement. “I haven’t left anyone out! Come on!”
While the Ainese twin had taken it upon himself to help train Noburu, Seonmi was receiving her own form of training under Ido’s feminine counterpart. Arin Song, the enthusiastic markswoman that had impressed the Vengeance’s weapon’s officer, Thorne, was taking Seonmi through rifle malfunctions.
“Your gun is your child,” Arin instructed, “and a specialist marksman’s rifle like this one requires more care than a newly-born softhorn. Mages”—Arin nodded towards Daichi and Hinako sitting in a meditative pose cycling their aether—“think their formations are delicate, but a gun is less forgiving than magic. If an aetherflow shifts a few millimetres within their bodies, there is rarely a negative consequence, but if the wrong component in a gun is off by a tiny amount, it can lead to…” The demon motioned an explosion with her hands. “...Boom.
“Look here,” she continued, pointing to the manual bolt mechanism that loaded the rifle. “If the bolt head is off by even a single millimetre, it affects headspace. You know what happens if you have too much headspace? Case rupturing. Gas blowback.” Arin shook her head disapprovingly. “Too little headspace? Prevents bolt closure.” The demon operated the bolt several times with smooth, snappy motions. “How much did your accelerated training cover?”
She looks so cool! Amelia thought. The Ainese demon had a calm yet fierce look in her eye when she held a rifle, like a deadly predator ready to pounce. Wild and focused yet still refined and controlled.
Seonmi glanced at Amelia briefly before answering Arin’s question. “We had a few lessons on cleaning and common failures. They showed us how to take it apart and clean each component. I know how to adjust spring tension. I know not to over-lubricate the gun, especially in cold weather. I know…” Seonmi continued for a while, enumerating the knowledge she and Noburu had gained while Arin nodded along.
Amelia found herself being drawn into the lesson. She almost didn’t notice the presence appearing by her side. Turning her head, she whispered, “Hello!” with a characteristic grin.
“Are those… presents?” Mel asked quietly, peering into the sack Amelia was carrying.
“Mmm!”
The demon’s lips curled. “You’re going to be popular. I saw Officer Dahlberg earlier. He was strutting about with a new rannar belt and scabbard! Was that you?” Seeing Amelia nod, Mel continued with a smile, “He stopped me in the corridor. I think he must be going around showing off because he was far more of a conversationalist than usual, asking me all manner of inquiries while turning his body back and forth like he wanted me to notice!”
Mel puffed out her chest, speaking with a surprisingly good imitation of Dagon’s Wami accent, “Young Officer Mori, are you fitting in well?” Mel giggled before collecting herself again, continuing the act, turning her body to the left and right while exaggeratedly tapping her belt. “Have you adjusted to Anathor’s presence yet? He can take some getting used to. Not many ships have their own Formless…” Mel laughed as she rubbed her scabbard, echoing Dagon’s performance. “It was like that,” she finished.
“You did notice, though, didn’t you?” Amelia asked.
“Of course!” Mel exclaimed. “I was tempted to pretend not to notice, but how could I do that? It was so obvious! Men aren’t very subtle, are they?” Mel raised a knowing eyebrow before giving a second exaggerated performance, this time of her shock and awe at seeing Dagon’s new belt. After Amelia had finished giggling, Mel said, “I actually had a favour I wanted to ask of you.”
“Oh?”
“My orange is progressing nicely. It’ll still be another six months, perhaps a year, before I can think of developing yellow, but I want to get there as soon as possible!” Mel clenched her fist, her face suddenly focused with determination. “Normally, warriors would wait until their orange is more solid before testing it against riflefire, but I figure if you’re around, I can take the risk, right?” Mel tapped her stomach, saying, “Even if a bullet gets through, you’ll be able to heal me, wouldn’t you? Maybe once we exit the passage? I figure if we use me as a target, it could double as practice for Arin as well”
“Mmm! Sure!” Amelia replied with an enthusiastic thumbs up. A small part of her mind tried to protest, arguing that perhaps it wasn’t entirely normal or sane for someone to engage in training methods that would kill a normal person. The dominant part of Amelia’s mind quickly pushed that aside. After all, in the face of Mel’s determination and friendship, she would always go the extra mile!
Also, Amelia herself had happily engaged in Serena’s unusual training. She’d acted as a training dummy for the Vengeance’s explosive broadside and had even tested her wards against the valuable tungsten penetrators that had torn straight through the island they’d been on. She couldn’t exactly protest Mel’s enthusiasm without being a hypocrite, could she?
Mel resumed her own aura refinement, and while Amelia was tempted to join her, she found herself drawn in once more by Arin’s lecture on rifle operation. With one end of the room occupied by the meditating Mel and mages, and the other side occupied by the sweating Noburu and demanding Ido, Arin and Seonmi offered a soothing balance that caught Amelia’s attention.
“Failure to feed is one of the more common problems,” Arin explained, cycling the rifle’s bolt mechanism. “If you keep your gun well maintained, and you know the bolt is aligned and the spring tension is correct, then the first step is to give the magazine a tap…” The demon demonstrated, giving the side of the rifle's magazine a firm tap. “Then try and cycle the bolt once more. It’s okay to use a bit more force to chamber the round. If that doesn’t work it’s possible you have a damaged or deformed cartridge. That’s rarer, especially as production standards improved over the last decade, but it still happens. When you have spare time, it’s worth examining your cartridges yourself.”
“At the firing range, I once had it try and feed two cartridges at once, jamming the gun,” Seonmi said.
“It happens,” Arin began with a nod, “when the magazine has been improperly loaded. I’ve had it happen myself with a weak magazine spring. It can also happen when…” Arin detached the gun's magazine and pointed out a part of it to Seonmi. “You know this part? The magazine lip? When it or the follower is damaged, it can cause double feeding. Be careful with your magazines. Examine and load them yourself if you can. Many sharpshooters are so focused on the gun and the bullets themselves, they forget about the magazine.”
Arin replaced the magazine and cycled the gun once more, catching the ejected cartridge with a smooth flourish of her hand. “Sometimes the gun will fail to eject. This happens with a poorly-maintained chamber or a weak ejector spring. It also happens if the extractor claw is broken or worn. Here—”Arin produced a spare metal part from a box and showed Seonmi—“this is what a worn one looks like. You see how that nub there is much shorter than it should be? Always keep an eye out when cleaning the gun. Here…” Arin handed the gun to Seonmi. “Let’s see you cycle it. As if you were to fire it.”
After a moment of hesitation, Seonmi brought the gun up, the buttstock against her shoulder and her eye lined up with the iron sights. Then, with a satisfying click, she pulled the bolt up and back before slowly letting it move down and push another round into the chamber. Seonmi glanced at Arin before repeating the motion. “Is it okay?” she asked. “It feels fine?” she questioned as Arin shook her head.
“This gun is well maintained, so your technique is unlikely to lead to a cycling failure, but it should be better. You’re keeping the rifle up when you cycle, which is good, but…” Arin took Seonmi’s right hand and manually placed it against the bolt. “You’re fingertipping the bolt. Use the head of the palm to lift—”Arin pushed Seonmi’s hand up—“then these two fingers to firmly pull”—the bolt snapped back—“and then don’t release the pressure slowly, we call that riding the bolt. Push it forward. If you don’t, it causes the round not to fully seat, or the extractor not to grip properly. I was the same when my father taught me to hunt. I wanted to be quiet, yes?” Arin laughed to herself. “But my father explained to me, we are firing guns. They are supposed to be loud and scary!”
For a few minutes, Arin had Seonmi do nothing but cycle the mechanism again and again, pointing out so many adjustments and errors that even Amelia found herself starting to agree that the operation of a gun was every bit as complicated as a spell formation.
“The action must be fully complete every time, no matter how stressed you are,” Arin explained. “This is a Shimashina 844; it has a higher bolt angle than the Hokanai-built hunting rifle I’m used to, but you must make the full quarter-turn every time. If you don’t, the bolt lugs don’t disengage, and the gun will bind. Under stress, people have a weak lift. They also pull back at an angle, which causes the bolt to bind in the receiver rails and increases the chances of a jam. I’ve had that happen a few times myself when I’m in danger.”
“You’ve fired under stress?” Seonmi asked. “Have you seen combat? I thought you were newly commissioned?”
“I haven’t been in the trenches, but the inhabitants of the wilderness are every bit as frightening as a human,” Arin explained with a grim expression. “There’s been times where I’ve gone too far or lost my way, and stumbled into the territory of creatures that take more than a bullet or two to stop. There’s good money to be made hunting, if you’re not stupid and get yourself killed.” Arin chuckled, continuing, “It’s all fun and games when things are going well, but when you’re cold, hungry, and exhausted and have to crawl through the undergrowth covered in mud because some predator is roaming nearby… not so fun.”
Amelia saw Seonmi swallow before she asked, “Have you ever… shot someone?”
Arin blinked before answering, “Yes. I have. It’s safer now, but there were times our farm would be attacked.”
“Humans?” Seonmi asked.
Arin shook her head.
“Oh.”
The Ainese demon pointed upwards with her index finger. “Lots of criminals from the cities above escape to the lowlands below and the surrounding wilderness. When things were bad, rival farmers would try and steal some of our cattle and sheep. There was a lot of… competition before our governing lord was changed to someone more competent. Things are better now.”
“I see…” Seomi looked awkward, but that didn’t stop her from asking, “What’s it like? To shoot someone?”
Arin shrugged. “It’s mostly quiet.”
“Quiet?” Seonmi frowned. “Don’t they… scream?”
“Not normally,” Arin explained, holding up one of the rifle’s cartridges. “If this hits someone’s torso, whether demon or human, they’re more likely than not dead before they know it. The lungs and diaphragm often get damaged, preventing them from breathing, or they immediately go into shock and can’t scream even if they wanted to. That’s what normally happens. Sometimes…” Arin took a slow breath. “Sometimes it isn’t quiet, but I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine!” Arin waved a hand, her smile returning. “The war is over, so I don’t think the good captain is going to send us into any trenches any time soon. With any luck, we’ll have an easy few years!” Despite her efforts, the atmosphere was still a little cold.
Well, it was Amelia’s time to shine! There wasn’t a depressed or awkward atmosphere in the Known World that wouldn’t rejuvenate itself when faced with her overwhelming amount of adorable, golden cuteness!
“It’s time for presents!” she announced, holding up and wiggling the large sack. “No more talk about war! No more sword training, no more cycling and convecting! Gather around!” She bounced on the balls of her feet, oozing excitement and encouragement. “I haven’t left anyone out! Come on!”
Yeah, that's what I did right now, but this is just my overthinking brain, that people might bounce if I yap too much ? do you think people really care about slice of life conversation nowadays?
Ooh thanks, that's a good tips. I guess I need to expand my vocabs
Zagaroth
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Have the conversation take place while the character are *doing* something, even as simple as a meal.
Intersperse the dialog with actions, such a gesturing with a fork, or pausing to sip their drink thoughtfully before answering a question.
If you want to break up the conversation more, have them doing something more active, like, say, sparring. Then you might need a paragraph or two of action before a brief pause to talk before the next exchange.
There shouldn't be any need to add random activities to their lives. These should be things they would be doing already, though they might be things you would not otherwise be going into so much detail on.
Best of all is when you already have two scenes in mind, one of them doing something and one of them talking, and then you blend the two scenes into one, somewhat longer scene (that you can then break across multiple chapters if needed).
Intersperse the dialog with actions, such a gesturing with a fork, or pausing to sip their drink thoughtfully before answering a question.
If you want to break up the conversation more, have them doing something more active, like, say, sparring. Then you might need a paragraph or two of action before a brief pause to talk before the next exchange.
There shouldn't be any need to add random activities to their lives. These should be things they would be doing already, though they might be things you would not otherwise be going into so much detail on.
Best of all is when you already have two scenes in mind, one of them doing something and one of them talking, and then you blend the two scenes into one, somewhat longer scene (that you can then break across multiple chapters if needed).