Writing too short?

Unless it's an academic text or automatic writing, I never write long, always short. This because I want my creative work to be as compressed and on point as possible. Seeking: verisimilitude.

Discussed how I put pieces together to make a longer work on my earlier thread today (Aug 18) called "Your #1 Technique?" (It's here with your thread under "Basic Writing Questions.")

Would love to discuss futher if you like, as I may be the only writer on the board working in this way...don't really know.

Best to you,

: = ) Lance

I'm linking to a previous AW thread over in the Romance section that helped me with the same issues you seem to be struggling with. Scroll down to post #8. http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263288

One of AW's own romance goddesses wrote an incredibly helpful post about breaking a scene down into elements to determine the average amount of time spent on dialogue, description, etc. Even though it's in the romance section, the advice works across genres.

When I first read her post, I just happened to be at the library with a stack of novels in front of me and one of them was hers. It was an ironic moment.

by_the_way said:

Do you ever come across individual scenes that feel rushed and therefore disappointing? Scenes with dialogue, for instance, often give me trouble.

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Thanks for your kind question, b_t_w! I see by your profile you are in your teens, which is wonderful. Wrote all my life but became serious about it at age 19: that's when I really started pounding.

You might check my thread "Writer's Block Exercise" under "Outwitting Writer's Block." It describes what I did in my early 20's to free myself as a writer.

I'm a surrealist, an outsider of sorts, and don't have these problems because my expectations are different.

(But I did have to do a lot of work to change the expectations!)

Tell you what: I'll go dig up the script for NEVER FORCE...copy something from it to show you how I handle it with actors and such.

Meanwhile, here's the scene that closes my longest chapbook (90 pages), which happens to be right beside me!

How many here
are tapping at this hour?
I see writers by the thousands
stooped over thousands of machines.
Here at midnight,
all of us tapping--
all of us connecting
and laughing.

@ by_the_way: "Have you had luck generating a complete-feeling work with your method?"

Most certainly so, and thanks again for asking!

: = )

If it is your first draft, don't sweat it. You can add description, texture, and subplot in the second draft.

My first draft is way short. Getting better in revision.

C.R.

by_the_way said:

My problems are definitely with telling, not showing, and with being impatient to advance the plot, which I usually have outlined beforehand.

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I'm not sure this comment will help, but the bolded above may be a portal into your frustration. Just because you have "outlined beforehand" doesn't mean you are required slavishly to fill in that outline, using a write-by-number method. Keep your brain alive for digression, for ideas that might arise outside your outline. Planning is one thing; creating a scaffold you can't diverge from is quite another.

I tend to write long in first drafts, and trim later. I think writers who confine themselves to writing short are engaging in a form of self-censorship.

caw

I struggled with "short writing" when I first started, my creative writing teacher said I was writing one dimensional. I needed to look past my initial story line and think about whats going on around my characters, what they are seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, tasting. He recommended a writing practice using all of the senses. It helped me quite a bit. Good luck!

Here's a fragment from NEVER FORCE:

* * *

Blackout.
Loud aircraft roar.
Night light up on Amos lying naked as before.
The roar fades to random clicks from dimestore frog-clickers scattered all about.

AMOS:

Sitting on the long, grey-brown bench, picking at the crusty grey-brown paint so thick it picks off like scabs. Eating lunch; feeding revenge. Alone in the sun on the grey-brown bench on the filthy, rutted asphalt.

(Amos curls up for sleep. A DREADFUL CHORUS appears.)

DREADFUL CHORUS:

Sometimes in the evening I've the feeling I'm concealing all the inside awful feeling I feel.

(Frog-clickers click once together. A shadow begins to cover Amos.)

I shudder under covers behind latched plastic shutters while the terrors of the night outside congeal.

(Another big click; the shadow grows.)

* * *

You can see I'm for writing from the inside-out. If we don't write from the inside-out, how will our insides get out?

This play won a Special Award of Excellence from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. I know it's hard to believe, but hey...it was the Sixties!

: = )

I do the same thing. I would say it's the description, but it's not. It's the details.

First things first: Description is not boring. From general comments I've seen over time here, people think it is, like it's a writing exercise a teacher assigns. It's only boring if you make it boring. The best descriptions do more than describe what something looks like. They can bring in foreshadowing, ratchet up the mood, enhance suspense, show a character's emotions, etc.

I'd also recommend not waiting until revision to add it. If you run too short because it's not there, it will be painful to pull the entire story apart and revise it to add it.

However, you can write all the other stuff in the scene first, then go back over the scene and add the description. I usually end up charging through dialogue and have to go back to build out the description. With practice, it gets easier to get it into the story during the initial writing. But you have to practice those muscles and not ignore them.

Tips:

You open a scene, get a description in of the scene somewhere near the beginning. If it's a place the character has gone back to, then the description should involve what's changed. Have the characters interact with the setting (i.e., your characters should not enter a restaurant, sit down down, and then nothing else happens in the restaurant).

Look a photographs and videos to help. Even try assigning a day to the scene and look up the weather. Having this will force you to make decision about whether it's raining or cold, and that will all come out in the description. I even look up pictures of the characters. Anything that will help.

Use the five senses every 500 words. Yes, taste is going to be the most evil thing on that one because you'll have to come up with other options besides eating (it is possible, but very hard). Almost always when I've tried putting in the senses, I end up adding to how a character reacts to what's happening and expanding on it.

Have fun! This is place where your voice can really come in the details you choose.

by_the_way said:

when I try to slow down, I end up getting hung up on description

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What do you mean by that?

Do you get hung up describing how the event unfolds?

Or do you get hung up describing moonlight and trees?

Big difference.

I always write short. I tend to just get the basics of the story out in the first draft. After that, I go through and foreshadowing everything out. Adding details like descriptions (i weite visually and tend to forget the other senses, so i add smells, sounds, add more texture) or adding subplots, adding whole scenes that I feel add necessary information to keep the story moving, or foreshadowing to a later events so they don't come as a complete shock ("how long has he been carrying that ax?")

I'll go through the draft several times, fleshing more and more out as I go along until I reach my word count goal.

Then I start to do the grammar and continuity editing.

Linda Adams said:

First things first: Description is not boring.

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Description is everything to me, and wish I did more. Per Strunk and White, the best writing appeals to the five senses: it "calls up pictures." It's what folks mean when they say "show, don't tell."

Best poem I've heard recited was about an oily puddle on some blacktop. This was in a workshop and never got a copy, to my regret. Incredible detail about the various colors in the water, shape and size, taste and smell, etc. There was nothing else: just detailed description of the puddle.

As it happened, the person reading the poem - the author - had been a prisoner of the state for many years, and this was a puddle he had contemplated while sitting on a bench inside an outdoor exercise yard. It was clear from the poem that the puddle, left over from a rain, represented the natural world and the freedom he didn't have. Very powerful.

Why is most so-called poetry dreck? Beyond the pervasive end-rhyme schemes it's because people announce their feelings instead of describing what's in front of them.

My first draft is almost always too short. I always have to go in and flesh out the important scenes and chapters on revision - but I don't usually know what's really important until I have gotten through that first rough draft.

I don't worry about it too much at that stage. My rough draft tends to have a lot of telling and little showing. It's the second pass through when I'm getting it ready for my critique group that I add in the depth. Then, after they've gotten ahold of it, they almost always find an even deeper emotional core that I didn't see, and I end up revising again to bring those things out.

I also always write short. I think of my first draft as an annotated outline. On subsequent drafts, I get more and more inside the bodies and minds of the characters (depending on POV of course).

I add sensory details.

Perhaps your issue is one of pacing. Look at Maryn's examples above. The second is much longer, but the pace has slowed. Perhaps she added too much. There are a million middle grounds. See below. (with thanks to Maryn.)

The man with the gun fired again. Thank God he's a lousy shot, Joe thought, then, Damn it, this guy wants you dead! He raced toward the trees. Joe's heart hammered in his chest, his lungs burned, and his throat went raw. The leafy shadows remained distant. His legs trembled, threatening to quit, just like he'd quit the gym, but he made it to the edge of the woods only a few steps behind Eric. He struggled for breath, for control enough to whisper. "Why is he trying to kill us?"

Pacing is about how many sentences there are and how choppy they are among other things. I'm certain many threads cover this. You can cut, add, move and rephrase a million ways until you get what your story needs. Consider using a paragraph as an exercise and see how many ways you can say the same thing and how many details you can add or subtract.

Good luck with your revision.

I write what I love reading. I love reading what I love reading because it has rhythm and flow, is neither too long nor too short. It's written just the way I like it. So I write the same way.

I do this too, because i get excited to tell the story. Don't sweat it, your first draft is allowed to suck. Sometimes, you just have to get the madness out of your head and onto the page. Then, editing is where you make it make sense. add dialogue, description, change telling parts to showing, blah blah blah

I also write short and then flesh out the prose. My first draft is what others may consider an expanded outline. I'm not sure it's the style or a learning process. I noticed lately my writing is getting more detailed with the longer sentences on the first try.

The link from Beachgirl to comment 8 was amazing. You could print your manuscript and go through the same highlighting process so you know where to add some missing elements for balance. When I revise, I make sure every chapter utilizes plot, character, conflict, theme, and setting. Doesn't always come out like a math equation, I assure you, but all the components should be there.

I'm the same. It's a common affliction.

Easy to fix with editing! But never pad. NEVER, NEVER PAD! If it's short, it's short. I have plenty of novellas.

why is that a bad thing, it means you get to the point.
If you write chapter by chapter then go through it again after a week or so then it might be easier