Hello everyone (Basic novel-writing advice)

tasha43055 · Sep 12, 2008

Hi. I am a short story writer and I am writing my first novel. What advice could you give me on learning to write novels and mostly making your novel the proper amount of words. I am at 23,000 as of now but I want at least 30,000 more words.

regdog · Sep 12, 2008

Try expanding the story surrounding your main characters and their interaction. Involve your secondary characters in a couple of subplots. The subplots shouldn't overpower the main story but add to it in parts. Don't worry how fast you 'get to the point'.

tasha43055 · Sep 12, 2008

Thank you

HeaGrg said:
Try expanding the story surrounding your main characters and their interaction. Involve your secondary characters in a couple of subplots. The subplots shouldn't overpower the main story but add to it in parts. Don't worry how fast you 'get to the point'.

I will work on that. Thank you.

Straka · Sep 12, 2008

First off, are you writing this for fun or to try to make a sale?

If you going for the selling side, do research in your genre. 53K sounds really short. Is it YA?

Most agents I've read are looking for fantasy to be around 100K - 125K

To increase it, add some more subplots - like minor conflicts. Perhaps even a few more characters.

Good luck.

HConn · Sep 12, 2008

tasha43055 said:
Hi. I am a short story writer and I am writing my first novel. What advice could you give me on learning to write novels and mostly making your novel the proper amount of words. I am at 23,000 as of now but I want at least 30,000 more words.

Don't have characters cooperate. If your book is coming up too short, look for a place where one person helps another and turn them into an obstacle instead.

tasha43055 · Sep 12, 2008

smart idea

HConn said:
Don't have characters cooperate. If your book is coming up too short, look for a place where one person helps another and turn them into an obstacle instead.

It kills me when people think of things I should have thought of.

No this helps so much. I am working more on my story now and I have turned off the word count so it does not drive me crazy.

Chasing the Horizon · Sep 12, 2008

Think of your story in individual scenes, rather than as a whole (don't ignore the whole, but don't spend much time thinking about it when you're writing, concentrate on the individual scene). If you do an outline, do it broken down into scenes (this might sound like a big project, but it's really not, you usually only need one sentence for each scene). I recently identified the fact that I think of my story in single scenes as the reason I tend to write long (as in too long, look at word counts in sig).

Keep 'show don't tell' in mind (it's not an absolute, of course). It takes a lot more words to show something happening than to tell about it, and showing things makes the story feel more vibrant and 'real' to the reader.

Make sure you put in enough description of the characters, settings, and actions that the reader can visualize what's happening (but not so much that they're drowning in the calm sparkling azure seas of over-description).

Those are all writing techniques that can make the exact same story significantly longer (and often more realistic and fun to read). You can, of course, increase the length even more by adding more characters and subplots, and by putting additional twists and complications into your main plot (this is my second issue; I loooooove my subplots

).

mlhernandez · Sep 12, 2008

What Hope to the Horizon said. Seriously great advice.

qwerty · Sep 12, 2008

When I wrote shorts, I was constantly on that word count button, and always pruning to keep within a required word count.

Novel writing is far less restrictive, and I wallow in the freedom to write whatever comes to mind. A certain amount of dicipline is still required (like not being over-wordy just because you can) but its a different medium you may need a bit of time to adapt to.

RJK · Sep 13, 2008

Your short story experience should provide good discipline in tight writing. Don't become wordy just because you have the room. When you need to add length to the novel, throw another obstacle at your MC, bring in another character, or have your sub-characters get involved in sub-plots that intertwine with the MC.

Another issue you may run into is the complexity of a novel. Find a method of keeping track of what you're doing. I use two methods.

First, I give each scene a descriptive title such as:
# INT. Police Detective Squad Room Thu 6/26 0745
When the MS is ready for presentation, I make a copy and I delete all but the "#" in the scene title.

Second, I use MS OneNote. I use it to describe my characters, keep my outline, write notes for revision, list research sources, and anything else I need to keep me on track with the MS. Others use notebooks, index cards, spreadsheets, and several other methods.

tasha43055 · Sep 13, 2008

so much good advice

RJK said:
Your short story experience should provide good discipline in tight writing. Don't become wordy just because you have the room. When you need to add length to the novel, throw another obstacle at your MC, bring in another character, or have your sub-characters get involved in sub-plots that intertwine with the MC.

Another issue you may run into is the complexity of a novel. Find a method of keeping track of what you're doing. I use two methods.

First, I give each scene a descriptive title such as:
# INT. Police Detective Squad Room Thu 6/26 0745
When the MS is ready for presentation, I make a copy and I delete all but the "#" in the scene title.

Second, I use MS OneNote. I use it to describe my characters, keep my outline, write notes for revision, list research sources, and anything else I need to keep me on track with the MS. Others use notebooks, index cards, spreadsheets, and several other methods.

This is so helpful. Keep the tips coming and I am writing these down.

Judg · Sep 13, 2008

I found it very useful to write brief synopses of the story from the viewpoint of secondary characters. It became much easier to figure out what their reactions and more importantly, their actions would be. This helped enrich the story a lot, and make things more plausible and cohesive.

blacbird · Sep 14, 2008

Adverbs. Lots of adverbs. You'd be amazed how quickly you can build your word count using adverbs.

caw

tasha43055 · Sep 14, 2008

Thanks and I will try that.

Telstar · Sep 14, 2008

blacbird said:
Adverbs. Lots of adverbs. You'd be amazed how quickly you can build your word count using adverbs.

LOL

qwerty · Sep 14, 2008

Ouch! When an agent was going through edits for one of my novels she told me to get rid of superfluous adverbs.

JJ Cooper · Sep 15, 2008

blacbird said:
Adverbs. Lots of adverbs. You'd be amazed how quickly you can build your word count using adverbs.

caw

Don't do this. Poor advice.

JJ

Telstar · Sep 15, 2008

I think it was a joke.

qwerty · Sep 15, 2008

tasha43055 said:
Thanks and I will try that.

I thought it must be a joke. I said "ouch" because, if it was, it was made at the OP's expense.

Nateskate · Sep 15, 2008

The easiest way to expand a story is to add a new character and another plot.

blacbird · Sep 15, 2008

(It was a joke, about the adverbs. I didn't imagine anybody would take it seriously. My mistake. Probably a failure of my imagination. Wouldn't be the first one.)

(caw)

Susan Breen · Sep 15, 2008

I wrote short stories for a number of years and when I switched to novel writing, it took me a while to figure out that I didn't need to wrap up everything at the end of each chapter. It's okay to introduce a new character at around page 120. It's okay to wander around a bit. Good luck!

Hello everyone (Basic novel-writing advice)

tasha43055

Writer For Life

regdog

The Scavengers

tasha43055

Writer For Life

Straka

Bored Fanatic

HConn

Whore for genre

tasha43055

Writer For Life

Chasing the Horizon

Blowing in the Wind

mlhernandez

qwerty

exiled Brit

RJK

Sheriff Bullwinkle the Poet says:

tasha43055

Writer For Life

Judg

DISENCHANTED coming soon

blacbird

tasha43055

Writer For Life

Telstar

I create people

qwerty

exiled Brit

JJ Cooper

.

Telstar

I create people

qwerty

exiled Brit

Nateskate

blacbird

Susan Breen