Addendum

The conventional method is to have uninvolved characters comment on how exciting the action is, but I'm not sure that does anything but pad. By "action sequence" we here mean "card duel" of course. Have you ever gone back and watched Yu-Gi-Oh? It's amazingly fast-paced till the ratings came in, and then began the age of milking.

Addendum

That old sailor is a sea god, but you won't find that out for a few books, or maybe in an interview.

Number One Reason to Include a Map in Your Book

Your characters can flip to it if they get lost. Nobody wants to wait fifty pages while they try to remember what they heard about stars once from an old sailor.

The Way Forward

There's been a lot of stagnation in the literary world, which means a new trend is coming. What will it be? Fiction told entirely in the future perfect tense. That will have gotten readers more invested in the proceedings and increased the word count without the need for food descriptions.

Cuisine Scene

Remember you can pickle tons of stuff. Make sure to spend at least thirty pages talking about pickling to stretch that manuscript out.

Three Act Structure

In the first act, have something happen. This act should take up about 5% of your novel. At the end, have something else happen. This third act should be another 5%. The second act should be 90% of your novel. There is no need for anything to happen in this act.