Breaking the word barrier

I do this, and the culprit is usually my assuming away details such as location descriptions, character development, background information, and the like, in favor of faster transitions and faster plot pace. I am usually mistaken to take such shortcuts.

Take a look at your scenes. Make sure you're showing and not telling.

I use to have that problem too, but mine usually didn't even make 10k. I finally came up with a plot so complicated I figured there was no way to not have it end up novel length. I may have miscalculated, because I ended up with a trilogy.

As I learn more about proper descriptive writing, I'm getting concerned that my trilogy will be to long for three books and may have to be split into more. I know that a lot of those 5,000-10,000 word stories I use to write would be 30,000 or 40,000 words with what I know now about writing.

You could always post a few scenes from one of your stories in Share Your Work. The reviewers will tell you if you're leaving out to much. If it turns out that's not the case, then you just need more complex plots.

Because I came from short stories, it took me some time to get a run up into novel size works. I didn't anticipate a problem, because some of my stories were beginning to get bigger and bigger if I let them. I did a 100 page episode of a serial simply because I wanted to. So I figured....novel size? Pfft. No worries.

It is different, though, and it does take time. Just keep writing stories. They'll work themselves longer in time. And then, when you're more comfortable with the length, you might revisit the old stories that didn't quite make it and see what you can do with them now.

I did that. Or at least, I looked at 'em. By that point, I had grown past thinking very much of the stories and I just let them lie.

I'm a very succinct writer by default, because like gclare, I tend to brush over descriptions and such. The book I'm editing now clocked in at 66,750 words (267 manuscript pages) when I finished the first draft. I've only edited 23 pages and I've already added another 1,500 words (6 pages.)

By the way, the best thing I ever did for my writing was to write two D&D adventures. Having to describe the rooms gave me a good insight into writing descriptions in novels.

An example of a room description in an adventure:

Each of the corners of this room holds two narrow beds, footlockers, and a small chest of drawers. Three pallets lay on the floor between the two doors, and a single table near the western door is surrounded by four chairs. Stacks of barrels and crates fill the center of the room. None of the furniture is of any particular pattern or style.

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Now, you cannot write this way in a book. It would sound awful. This sort of description is to give the gamemaster (sort of the head storyteller) a visual of the room to describe to the other players. Placement of objects matters to (some) people. But writing this out for dozens of rooms really brought it home to me that people need to know what the rooms in which my characters are interacting look like.

I am on my fifth novel. On each one the 20,000 to 30,000 word count was the hump. Each time I slogged through it and then when I hit 35 -45,000 words I'd fly home. After that each of my edits adds about 10,000 words. When I hit the last few edits words start being shaved. I know many many writers that talk about the 20,000 word hump.

Digress. A lot. Go on crazy tangents that have little or nothing to do with the story. Also take many many many many many words to say something that should only take a few. At least that's what I do. But then you will have to deal with the reverse problem, cutting down the word count which is equally as frustrating.

20,000 word hump? THat one doesn't bother me. It's around seventy-five thousand words, when I'm unsure if I'm 20k away from the ending, or 50.

Sage said:

Subplots are your friends.

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Sage is right. When you're writing short stories you don't have room to expand to subplots. But when you get to novels, you almost have to have them to flesh out that 100k.

Same goes for characters. A short story can only hold so many characters before they start spilling over the edge, so to speak. But with a novel, as long as the reader can keep them straight, you can add characters to your hearts content.

You may have perfectly good novel sized ideas, you just have to work some more stuff into them and you'll get that novel you want.

Good luck!

I've done it with scripts and wound up with 50-65 pages and needed more like 90-120 does that count??

What that means is I don't have enough subplots and events. Some are harder than others to get those subplots in.

I haven't had the problem with novels yet, all of mine end between 350-400 pages.

I've always figured my problem is that I still write novels like short stories. That may mean they come out fairly tight and streamlined....but the downside is, they come out fairly tight and streamlined. I don't wander enough.

It's a problem I'm becoming aware of more and more, and I'm stewing on how to fix it.

Something else you may be able to try: Think about your 20k not as the first draft, but an extended outline.

I did short stories a lot, too, and it took me a long time to break the habits ingrained from years of them to do a novel. I was hitting about 20K, and the story was fizzing out. I'd always thought I had enough material for a novel, so I didn't understand why.

Later, I learned that I made two very important mistakes. The first was that I was trying to write it like a long short story. A novel is very, very different from a short story in basic structure and how it gets developed. The second was that I didn't have any subplots.

I started with trying to plot out the story using index cards. There was a book I ran across at the time that talked about using colored stickes to show the plot, as well as the different subplots. Though I really hate index card outlines, I tried that just to understand how to plot. And I also read authors who were good examples of plotting to study how they did it.

I ended up abandoning the project above, and co-writing one with someone who could plot better than me. Even so, early on it was a near constant battle with the short story mentality. I remember us realizing at one point early on we were going to run short because we were rushing it too much. At which point, I really had to stop and think about what I was writing constantly. I'd catch myself self-editing as I put it down on the paper or just leaving out detail because I was still thinking short story. I found so many bad habits from short story writing, and I had to work through and correct every single one of them. The hardest two of those, after my problems with plotting, were orienting the reader in each scene, and setting. At one point, I was literally stopping to think about each word and reminding myself not to write short.

Probably the most helpful thing you can do is be aware it's going to be a problem throughout the book and try to identify your short story habits so you can work around them.

I've found it's all about controlling the conflict. If you're going to write a short story (about 2000 words) the conflict has to be minimal in order for you to be able to resolve it at the end. Now a novel....you need a lot of conflict to keep it going. I've also found that with a novel you have to look at spots where you may have made it too easy for your characters. Look for areas where you can drag it out more (as long as it stays interesting). As you write your story in order to continue you must think...where is the next conflict coming from. Ask yourself.....Did I solve it too soon?

Character development is also a way to add words. Write some bios of your characters and you will find yourself wanting to put these details in your story.

You know, Linda, I came to reply to you calling your short story habits "bad" habits. Except that as I thought about it further, I realized you were absolutely right. They are good and useful skills for being able to write a solid short story, but they can turn on you when you hit novel length.

That's very, very interesting and something I want to give more thought and discussion toward. I expect it's a problem I have, somewhere in there.

Another thing to think about: are you throwing enough obstacles in front of your heroes, or are they succeeding too easily at everything they try? Bad luck, bumbling sidekicks, smart(er) villains, hero mistakes; those are all things you can throw at your hero to help your story.

Is this your first draft? If so, I tend to loosen up a little and just write, write write. Of course this doesn't mean writing complete crap, it just means throwing your internal editor in the closet for a while so you can concentrate on the creative aspects of writing. If you're confident your story can break 100pg's then go for it - let loose. Stephen King writes in excess, knowing that he will edit out over 10% of his draft.

Also, I find it useful to have a rough outline of my book (revise as necessary), which acts as a barometer and target for me. I know the direction of my novel, plan for key chapters/scenes and write towards those milestones. My outline is the single biggest difference between what I produce for short stories and what I produce for a novel.

PeeDee said:

You know, Linda, I came to reply to you calling your short story habits "bad" habits. Except that as I thought about it further, I realized you were absolutely right. They are good and useful skills for being able to write a solid short story, but they can turn on you when you hit novel length.

That's very, very interesting and something I want to give more thought and discussion toward. I expect it's a problem I have, somewhere in there.

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One of the most difficult ones to overcome for me was the plotting. I started out trying to write the novel as a long short story, and the further I got into the story, the more it didn't work. I'd hit 20K and it would unravel. What was really frustrating was that I felt I had enough for a novel, and it just simply wouldn't come together, and I didn't understand why. So I tried all kinds of things, like thinking of each chapter as a short story or padding scenes to bring the word count up, and invariably, I'd go back to the beginning and try rewriting again, hoping to figure out what the problem was. Every time I got stuck, I ended up writing short stories for a while and coming back to find the same inexplicable problem. Ultimately, I ended up completely giving up short stories just to help overcome the plotting problems. I do better now, but I still have a tendancy to run short (not that I'm complaining; 15K short is a lot better than 70K short!). To fix the running short, I looked through the manuscript for places where scenes could really be expanded legitimately and cringed every time I lost a page or a chapter as revisions forced them out.

Characters was another problem I had--and still do. Short stories don't generally require a lot of characters. In the ones I wrote, I had a max of three. In the novel, I have some trouble juggling more than two characters. I'll be writing a scene with five characters and suddenly realize I've ignored three of them for several pages.

Also starting the novel. Where most people tend to spend 50 pages of nothing happening, I ended up with too much happening. In a short story, because the story concept was simple, I could jump into something big happening right away and the reader would get it. In the novel, when I did that, the comments from our writing group were "We can't figure out what's going on" and "Why is this happening?" I found that, because of the more complex storyline a novel required, I needed to orient the reader into the story.

And the details. Because I hadn't needed as much detail because of the short story length requires, many details didn't even occur to me for a novel. The critique group was very useful here--they pointed out problem areas that could be corrected.

The one benefit short stories did give me though was that I can easily see where something can be edited.

I came away with the impression that all planning was bad b/c you were forcing the story into a set parameter.

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Ah ha! This isn't necessarily true. Planning provides guidance and direction and should be flexible to change because stories do evolve as they go along. Some people do well with seat of the pants writing, others need some direction, and still others need to meticulously map it out. It comes down to what works best for you.

firefingers said:

How many of you have had trouble with this?

I'm a writer, and like a few others, did a bunch of short stories to strengthen my craft. Problem was, I kept thinking of novel-size plots. So, I went for the novel-size plot and....

Came up short!


Am I just strange?? This is a repeated phenomena with me; I think of novel-size plots, and wind up around the 20k mark--and that's usually about as far as I can stretch it without completely weighing the work down with unneccessary stuff.

Any ideas or tips on how I can unlock the wordy muse? How do you guys do it??? lol.

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Unfortunately, that's one problem I've never had. I'm not a big believer in short story sized plots, or in novel sized plots. There are far too many excellent short stories that have been turned into excellent novels for me to believe a plot is either or.

I know from experience that any plot can be told at any length, and any story can be told at any length.

A plot is a plot, and whether it fits a short story or a novel depends on how the writer handles it, what he adds or removes.

A short story hits five thousand words because you write it to hit five thousand words, and a novel hits 100,000 words because you write it to hit 100,000 words. You add threads or remove threads, you add obstacles or remove obstacles, you add characters or remove characters, you add complications or you remove complications. But it's mostly a matter of understanding pace. If you do, these things get added or removed pretty much automatically.

It is, I think, a matter of learning how to deal with pace, and knowing what length you want to hit before you begin writing.

You may be one of those writers who needs to outline chapter by chapter. Sit down and write the numbers one to thirty. These are your chapters. Now write one sentence saying what is going to happen in each chapter.
Now write chapter one, and make it somewhere around three thousand words. Do the same with each following chapter.

If nothing else, you'll learn something about pace, and what it takes to turn an idea into a proper novel.