Written too thinly?

I would say although you are in a much better position than a person who is sitting on a 200k manuscript, too "lean" can also be a problem. However, you don't tell us what genre you're writing in, and that can make a big difference. Basically, I would suggest putting the manuscript away for a month or so while you start something else (because no matter what, you're going to have to write more novels) and then you can revisit it and see what you think. If you come to the conclusion that it is too bare-bones, you can work on fleshing it out a bit. But congratulations on finishing a novel in the first place! That's a huge accomplishment, and it sounds like you have your head on straight when it comes to thinking about your work.

I'd said stop querying and wait for the full and partials to come back. While you're waiting, get to work on another novel and sit the current one to the side.

Once you get the full and partials returned (if you do...maybe they'll turn into representation and you don't even have to worry!) you can look over everything again. If feedback from agents and betas are similar, then take a look at things again. If not, then maybe you're time away from the work will help you decide exactly what changes you'd like to make.

^Yep, listen to them.

I, for one, prefer to read and write sparse novels. The less there is, the bigger the good parts become.

Shady Lane said:

^Yep, listen to them.

I, for one, prefer to read and write sparse novels. The less there is, the bigger the good parts become.

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Nicely said, Ms. Shady.

John, it sounds like your novel is so tight you could bounce a quarter off of it. That can't be a bad thing. Wait for an agent or publisher to tell you to add fluff.

On the other hand, I like to know where the writer wants me to be. If the narrative is too sparse on descriptions of locations and characters, I sometimes find my imagination takes me places where the writer isn't going.

When that happens, the book get dropped on the trade pile.

I don't know. Who's your audience? Are you writing for youself or are you hoping for a broad audience? If one reader said it was too sparse I'd take it with a grain of salt, maybe even if two did, but how many is all? If you're getting the same feedback from a wide variety of readers could be you have a problem that needs fixing. You can always go back to your Betas, but if editors and agents end up rejecting it for the same reason it's hard to go back to them.

Not all description is padding. When descriptions are too sparse the story can lose its sense of authenticity, it can make people and places feel generic and flat. In order to make all the elements of your story come to life there needs to be detail that suspends the reader's disbelief.

That being said, there's no way of knowing if your beta readers are right or not. Your story may not be too sparse for the agents. I'd wait for the fulls and partials to get back before making any major changes.

As others said ... see what feedback you get on partials and fulls before you return to this ms.

If you are getting requests for partials and fulls, that's already good feedback.

If you worry that you may be lacking embellishment ...
While you're collecting feeback from the professionals
and working on the next ms ...
grab a couple of your favorite, spare-voiced authors in paperback. Pull out a highlighter and mark all their description and discursion.
Steinbeck. Hemingway. Maybe Hoffer's Working and Thinking.

What do they add? Where? Why?

If your underlying prose is vigorous, colorful and exact, you don't need much verbiage spread over top of it.

When more than two people say the same thing, something is wrong. Granted, its just their opinion and they might like the same things. Try finding others to read the story. If they say the same thing, take their suggestions very seriously and decide if you want to make those changes or not.

Wait about a month before sending it out so you have a chance to polish your work. If you decide to go ahead with what you have, listen to the editors. If they agree, then you really have more work to do. If they differ, then listen to what they say and decide what you want to do.

Amber

I've faced the same problem, largely because I hate description. It slows down the narrative and doesn't advance the story.

But I recognize that a story without description reads as vague, almost dream-like (like one of those dreams in which nothing is clear).
I once read a short story in which the narrator talks about the nature of his relationship. It annoyed me, because it seemed to be taking place inside the narrator's head, in no real place. Toward the end of the story, I realized the narrator is lying in bed with his partner, watching her sleep. It totally sucked, and I noted it as an example of lack of description "leaving the reader out in the cold."

The best thing I can recommend is for you to put the MS away for at least a month, better two months, then just read through it. If you've waited long enough, the "bare" spots should stand out. Also, I find that when describing, there are fewer problems with the description stopping the flow of the story if the description is done by one of the characters, or seen through a character's eyes. This is also a good way to avoid "over-description." If the character describes what he sees, as if talking to someone, there's a self-limiting factor, much the same as when you're telling someone a story -- you just know how much is necessary to describe, and don't go beyond that.

Another approach, which I've mentioned elsewhere, is not to actually describe the surroundings, but simply name them. For example, "he stepped into an ultra-modern office, all stainless steel and polished wood." You don't actually say what anything looks like, just say what it is, and let the reader's mind fill in the blanks. I find readers actually "see" the scene more clearly when they use their own mental "file photos," rather than try to picture what the author has painstakingly described. Just a few immediately recognizable words or phrases can paint a complete picture in the reader's head, if done right.

I'm one of those folks that appreciate some meat on the bones of the story. Some descriptions, some adverbs, a little distraction from the main plot line. Probably half of your reading audience likes meat, half prefers the spartan copy.

But if you like it spartan, you approve of spartan, you hoist it up the flag pole, sing its praises and are proud of it then you don't have to add a damn thing to it. Make some queries for it and see if anyone bites. If a pro editor says it would be in your best interest to flesh out the story more, well, you'll have a reason to tamper with your perfection. ^_^

-An

Hi, there, JDP!

You can put your story away or you can leave it out, as many times as you want - you don't have to do what people advise, it's your freakin' book!

It is my humble opinion that many beta readers are big babies and they want you to spoon-feed them a bunch of stuff that their pitiful brains are too weak to imagine on their own. Of course, many of them are really brilliant and know what they're talking about, too.

Who are your beta readers? Are they your friends, or are they published authors in the Urban Fantasy genre? Or somewhere in between?

Do you already have queries out? Because if you are second-guessing yourself at this point, maybe you should take a minute to figure out what you want to do before you send this baby out and take the risk of having to submit a manuscript you're not entirely in love with.

Of course, I'm not the world's biggest expert, but I do have a lot of friends who are published (and I beta'd for many of them) and I think that's what they'd tell you. I'm published by a now-defunct e-publisher, but I know enough to know when my own manuscripts are not done to my satisfaction.

You gotta do your best. Once you've done that, you gotta let your baby go out into the world to make its own way, dude.

Personally, I hate describing my characters' appearance, and I basically don't. But if readers are clamoring for character descriptions, it probably means they like the characters, which is good.

I like Sol Stein's approach: just toss out a few "particularities" about the character's looks. Ian Fleming described James Bond as having a "black comma" of hair over his brow and "a cruel mouth" (whatever that is), and not much more. Just give your readers a couple of small things they can relate to and leave it at that. And if you haven't read Stein on Writing, read his section on particularity (it's short enough that you could read it in a bookstore).

Tossing out a few scattered details that everyone can relate to can create a complete scene in the reader's mind, without actually describing what a place looks like. And it can definitely be slipped into the narration without halting the plot.

As far as effects and visual state of magic, that's not my thing, but I recall some very effective passages from Salem's Lot in which King describes a feeling of electricity in the air, just before a corpse rises as a vampire.

My point is, when it comes to "describing" magical events, I think it's best to go with the character's subjective impressions, rather than trying to give a 3rd-person omnipotent description of what it all looked like (which can too easily come off as artificial-sounding).

JohnDavidPaxton said:

Six Beta's have told me that they'd like more. ...

It wouldn't be hard to do it, but it would add another 2 - 4k words to the piece. It's very trim right now and I like it.

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If your betas are all in agreement about this, I think you should give some serious thought to doing it. Try adding those "particularities" as Wayndom suggested. If you don't like the results, you can always take them out again.

Sparse

I think you should keep in mind that "tight" and "sparse" are not the same thing. "Tight" means cutting everything not needed. "Sparse" usually means cutting too much.

And length really has nothing to do with it. A short story can be too dense, and a novel can be too sparse, or the other way around.

A novel, even a very thin novel, needs some description, it needs detail, it needs texture. How much is up to the writer, but there must be enough to give the novel setting, to make it part of the real world. And a novel needs some suspense, breaks in the action, etc.

It may be that the novel doesn't need to be longer, but that the language you use needs to be more vivid and evocative. Not more words, but better ones.
If six readers say there's problem, there's probably a problem, although you may need to trust your own instincts rather than theirs to find the solution.

JohnDavidPaxton said:

So far, all of my Beta's who have finished have had the same opinion: It's too spartan. Every last one who has reported back to me has told me they want more. More narration. More description. A longer resolution at the end.

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If ALL of your betas say similar things, then you should perhaps look it through and see if they're right. There's merit for writing concisely, lean and mean, but if your betas say it's too spare, and not enough narratives or the ending is too rush, trust them. Sometimes the writer is too close to the material to objective assess the quality. Your betas (and if you have chosen them well) are supposed to be your first readers' advocates. If you don't trust them, why even bother, then?

As to how to go about adding to it... do what's good for you. If you think making a separate file would help, go for it. Personally, I would just go through the original file, read it through, and add/subtract, so I can see the whole picture. If I use a separate file that cuts out all the dialogue, etc. I might miss something. The dialogue is a part of the story, and sometimes they need to be spiced up, too, to match the rest of the narrative.

JohnDavidPaxton said:

I want to thank everyone for the advice. I guess it's just confirming what I knew would have to happen. I was just hoping I didn't have to inject (or at least that what it feels like ) life into the narrative.

So, I know the parts that people want me to fluff up. If anyone has had a similar experience, I'd very much like to hear how you went about it? I'm thinking about making a separate file, one that only holds the narrative without any dialog and going through it.

Any advice?

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When I need to bulk up, I add smells.

Shady Lane said:

When I need to bulk up, I add smells.

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Yes! If your betas are complaining that your writing feels thin, it may mean a lack of sensory details.

Humans come equipped with five senses. Far too many writers use only sight and sound. Sometimes, even sound is limited to the fact that the characters can hear each other talking.

Adding sensory details doesn't mean going off into vast passages of purple prose. You can mention a ticking clock, a squeaky door, or tell us whether a knock on the door is a quiet tap or a loud pounding. A drop of sweat can tickle the character's cheek, sting his eye, or taste salty on his tongue. When the character touches something, it can feel hard or soft, smooth or rough, hot or cold. He can wrinkle his nose at a noxious odor or be reminded of an embarrassing childhood incident when he smells ripe bananas. Smells are useful to prompt flashbacks, because scent and memory are closely-related brain functions.

I'm thinking about making a separate file, one that only holds the narrative without any dialog and going through it.

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I'm not sure I'd do that for the whole book, but doing something like that for a couple scenes would be a good exercise, and then you can apply what you've learned to the rest of the manuscript. You don't need a separate file. Just print out a scene, and highlight either the dialogue or the non-dialogue. (You could black out the dialogue with a sharpie, but the idea is to be able to read the two versions separately, and see if the non-dialogue is properly supporting and complementing the dialogue, so at some point, you'll need to be able to see the dialogue.) Read just the non-dialogue as if the dialogue wasn't there. Does it still tell a story? It won't be as rich as with the dialogue, obviously (but what your readers are saying is the inverse of that -- the dialogue isn't rich enough without the non-dialogue), but there should still some action in a setting -- people moving around, thinking, doing stuff, seeing stuff, hearing stuff, touching stuff, etc.

Then, for comparison, take the book of an author (or two or three) whom you admire (someone who's publishing currently, not a classic), who writes in your genre and whose technique is solid, and type out a scene straight from that author's book (you'll erase it later; this isn't plagiarism, this is studying, and typing it helps to capture the flow in ways that merely reading a photocopy doesn't), and then separate out the dialogue and the non-dialogue in this author's work, and see how it balances.

In a really layered story, the kind that readers go back to again and again, you'll find that if you read the non-dialogue separately from the dialogue, there's stuff going on, and it is very revealing of the characters. (Actions speak louder than words.) For instance, the dialogue alone can tell one story:

"Hey, you. I told you to stop littering."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"Arrest you."
"You and what army?"

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The narrative between the words can tell a slightly different story than the dialogue would suggest on its surface:

He shook his billy club at the toddler.
The little girl giggled.
He paused, trying to figure out what he could possibly do. Maybe he'd try the Scared Straight approach.
She puffed herself up, as if she thought she was as big as a building, instead of only two feet tall and all of about 40 pounds.
He accepted his defeat and bent to pick up the trash she'd tossed on the sidewalk.

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And then if you put them together, you've got the whole picture:

"Hey, you." He shook his billy club at the toddler. "I told you to stop littering."
The little girl giggled. "What are you going to do about it?"
He paused, trying to figure out what he could possibly do. Maybe he'd try the Scared Straight approach. "Arrest you."
She puffed herself up, as if she thought she was as big as a building, instead of only two feet tall and all of about 40 pounds. "You and what army?"
He accepted his defeat and bent to pick up the trash she'd tossed on the sidewalk.

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That's just a quick example, nothing particularly engaging, but just intended to show how the narrative and dialogue complement each other. It's particularly interesting -- although not something that would be done in every scene -- when the dialogue and the actions are inconsistent, thereby revealing something about the characters.

JD