From Novella to Novel

I wish I had your problem. My books always seem to run too long.

You don't want to add 'filler' (unnecessary description, scenes that aren't important to the plot, etc.) to make your novel longer. You'll have to add actual content, either a separate sub-plot or more twists and turns in your main plot. (A totally cliche example of a sub-plot would be a developing romantic relationship between two characters while they're trying to solve a series of murders).

What you mentioned doing (looking at a summary of the story and character arcs) might be a good idea if you feel you haven't developed your characters well enough. If you feel your characters and story are already developed well, then subplots or complications to your main plot are the way to go. You could try doing some of both too.

How much editing have you done yet?

It is possible as you edit through the work you will find plots and characters to adjust here and there upping your word count.

Some stories are only meant to be novellas. There's nothing wrong with a short novel.

Of course, since they're a tough sell, I doubt that's the answer you want.

Does any of it read flat or seem too undeveloped? Do your characters seem unrounded and two-dimensional? Can you bring out more of the characters and the development of the main story arc, or is the main arc about as developed as it can be? If so, maybe you can try to see if there are any subplots hidden in there that you can bring out?

Hope To The Horizon said:

I wish I had your problem. My books always seem to run too long.

You don't want to add 'filler' (unnecessary description, scenes that aren't important to the plot, etc.) to make your novel longer. You'll have to add actual content, either a separate sub-plot or more twists and turns in your main plot. (A totally cliche example of a sub-plot would be a developing romantic relationship between two characters while they're trying to solve a series of murders).

What you mentioned doing (looking at a summary of the story and character arcs) might be a good idea if you feel you haven't developed your characters well enough. If you feel your characters and story are already developed well, then subplots or complications to your main plot are the way to go. You could try doing some of both too.

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And I wish I had your problem. I always write too tight. I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side.

I have the same problem as KansasWriter. I don't have any subplots that I want to add. Luckily, there are many more twists and turns and frights I can add to my ghost story. I just have to think of them.

Some of my tales are too short for publication with a major publisher as well. If there aren't any plot lines or additional conflicts to add, you'll eventually have to sit down with yourself and decide whether the story deserves to be published. If so, then there are avenues to explore...but just realize they won't be seen as "published" by most agents and publishers out there. It will get them in front of readers, which should be the biggest goal of a writer.

You should really try to add more words...unfortunately, some turnips (and stories) just don't have any more blood to draw.

Seems to me there are two separate issues:
1. Whether you have a novel-sized story
2. Whether you tend to write sparse or wordy

Some wordy writers can reduce wordcount 20-30% simply by tightening their prose, without cutting any story at all. I don't have as much familiarity with sparse writing, but my gut feeling is you probably wouldn't get gains of a comparable magnitude. One place to look, though, would be if you often tell where you need to show. Fleshing that out properly adds a lot of words.

The simple fact of the matter, as several have said above, is that some stories can only be so long. If you go in and consciously attempt to pad the story to get it up to some artificial word count you're only going to hurt the story and probably your chances of it ever seeing publication.

However, and it's a big however, you can go through the story line by line looking for plotholes and scenes and situations which need further expansion. Let me give you an example - in my first real attempt to write a book I set myself a conscious goal of 50 thousand words. I literally blazed through that book hitting 50 thousand words on or about Day 26 or 27, but it wasn't done. I forged ahead and by Day 35 had finished the book and hit 65 thousand words.

Now, that still wasn't large enough to make a novel in today's publishing world, but who cares. I finished it! Every idea got into the book. All my research got into the book (too much of it really). I set that book aside and had the satisfaction of knowing I'd finished it.

But I also knew the book wasn't done yet. Six weeks or so later I opened the manuscript back up and started going through it line-by-line. I found major plotholes and areas of info-dumping that were just awful. I started the rewrite. Four and a half drafts later and the book is up to 80 thousand words and still growing because there were entire scenes left out that created humongous continuity issues. The book looks like it will finish a 5th draft at around 85-90k words. After that there will be a 6th draft and that will likely mean cutting the whole thing back down to around 80k.

80k is still kinda' small in today's publishing markets where authors publish massive tomes full of drivel, silly character descriptions, and tons of info-dumping.

Here's the truth of the matter - skinny and tight is better than bloated and wordy. You've got a nice tight little novella. There are markets for novella's. You finished it. Pat yourself on the back, set that puppy aside for a few weeks, and get to work on your next piece.

In a few weeks go back to that novella and see where you can easily pad it out to fix continuity issues, where you left out important scenes, where character description and dialogue can be fixed, etc., etc., etc. Maybe you'll have to cut it. Maybe you can expand it. Maybe it's perfect just the way it is. Be patient and fix the problems as they come your way in your writing. Chances are extremely high it's going to take you 2-3 years to sell it if you sell it at all.

Impatience and frustration and worrying about some supposed word count limitation are big time killers of a writer's inspiration. Take what comes your way and run with it and don't worry about some artificial word count. Stories have a way of making themselves the lengths they're meant to be.

FennelGiraffe said:

Seems to me there are two separate issues:
1. Whether you have a novel-sized story
2. Whether you tend to write sparse or wordy

Some wordy writers can reduce wordcount 20-30% simply by tightening their prose, without cutting any story at all. I don't have as much familiarity with sparse writing, but my gut feeling is you probably wouldn't get gains of a comparable magnitude. One place to look, though, would be if you often tell where you need to show. Fleshing that out properly adds a lot of words.

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Thanks for the advice, Fennel.

Actually, though, in my case- one of my strong suits is showing not telling. So that's not the problem here.

I have been brainstorming and I am coming up with some good ideas to add more substance to the main plot. (not filler)

Thanks to the OP for her original question and to all who have replied with suggestions.

I have this problem too, and it doesn't seem to be due to too much telling, and it doesn't seem to be due to me shortchanging plot or character arcs.

So I keep working on my novelette and my novella and my maybe-novel, and hopefully one of them will be a publishable length. And hopefully I'll be able to establish myself so that I'll be able to publish these novelettes and novellas in a form that people might pick up at a bookstore, and they won't languish on the online store of a niche press. If that doesn't work, of course, I'll be checking out those niche presses.


--Not knocking niche presses or e-pubs. It's just not currently part of my Plan.

Danger Jane said:

So I keep working on my novelette and my novella and my maybe-novel, and hopefully one of them will be a publishable length. And hopefully I'll be able to establish myself so that I'll be able to publish these novelettes and novellas in a form that people might pick up at a bookstore, and they won't languish on the online store of a niche press. If that doesn't work, of course, I'll be checking out those niche presses.

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Mmm personally I miss the days you could pick up a good novella. And when short stories were profitable. Not that that I was alive then, but you know.

kuwisdelu said:

Mmm personally I miss the days you could pick up a good novella. And when short stories were profitable. Not that that I was alive then, but you know.

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Yep. I like a good elegant novella sometimes, even just a short novel. 50,000 words is a really nice length.

Danger Jane said:

Yep. I like a good elegant novella sometimes, even just a short novel. 50,000 words is a really nice length.

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Ditto, but they are a hard sell. And yet, every few weeks I see a novella being reviewed in Entertainment Weekly, and most are by first time authors.

Really, tell the story as it SHOULD be told and market it accordingly. (And remember -- novella length is perfect for screenplay adaptation. )

Oh, my agent suggested to another writer friend of mine, whose mystery was coming in around 55K, to add in another murder and perhaps some additional suspects to increase word count. Not sure of the OP's genre, but I liked the idea and toss it out there in case it helps anyone else.

I have just sent four novellas of about 40K each to a publisher with the idea that they could be sold as one book - a collection of YA stories about the same MC over a period of a couple of years. Or they could be sold separately.

You've had a good shot at this and it's turned out at 50k. Now you're thinking about reverse-hacking it, padding plot and sentences and description so you'll have enough words for optimum length, whatever that might be. There's the distinct possibility that you'll end up with a bloated mess.

Or you could just go and write a new novel from scratch, taking the knowledge you've gained from writing this one and hopefully writing a better one.

I know which one I'd prefer to do.

kuwisdelu said:

Mmm personally I miss the days you could pick up a good novella. And when short stories were profitable. Not that that I was alive then, but you know.

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Yes! I wonder why publishers are so against taking novellas nowadays.
Wiki mentions: "Animal Farm", "Turn of the Screw", "Heart of Darkness", "Of Mice and Men", "The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde." And those are ony a few goodies.

I realize publishers believe that readers don't want to shell out lots of money for a novella or really short novel. So-uh...why not lower the cost of the book? Would it be so terrible to do such a thing?

Personally, I much prefer a tight, solid read to many of the bloated books out there.

I read somewhere that determining if a work is a novella or a novel isn't merely the length. A novella focuses on a single issue.

I'm trying very hard to add real content to my novella because I'm realistic enough to know how difficult it would be to get it accepted. First novels are hard enough! But, but...if it turns out I can't enlarge it without filler...then I will definitely leave it a novella and cross my fingers.

I had to increase mine by 20,000 to suit a publisher with a stated policy of accepting novels of 100,000 minimum. When I went through the editing process, I "luckily" found that one character had been skimmed over too much and there was more character development that could be done elsewhere which wove neatly into the plots. Therefore entire project benefitted by the re-write/extension.
The earlier Jilly Cooper novels ("Octavia" for example) were, I believe, based on previously published short stories which is extension to the extreme but like all things, it works if the writer is good enough.
But - if it's really a Novella, it can't be anything else... mine can't there's just too much going on!

Write another novel, the sequel. Stick the two of them together.

It's much easier to cut than to add; but that said, there probably are some places where you can add richer descriptions, pertinent actions to dialogue, etc, and maybe another chapter or two, you'll still end up with a short novel in the end.

Maybe you could write a sequel, and if the story flows well between the two, you could sell it as one novel.

Dang, Prawn, I should have read to the end of this thread.

When I was first putting my novel together, what I found useful was to look at the whole story through the eyes of secondary characters. They often had takes on things that added real meat to the story, not empty padding.

I think your idea sounds like a decent one, personally. Writing down summaries of what's happened in the story can help you determine whether there are any weak points or plotholes, or areas you've overlooked that can be added to or developed. The thing you have to look out for, as everyone else said, is that what you add to the story is what really NEEDS to be added, and is not just filler to make it longer. Maybe the story is meant to be a novella and not a novel.

I once felt irritated that some characters in a novel of mine kind of disappeared a few chapters into it and didn't return much, so I tried shoehorning in a subplot involving them. It was SO AWFUL. It did not work at all. This isn't the same as what you're talking about, but it's similar. Their subplot was just not meant to fit into the story. Whenever I eventually rewrite it I'll have to take a good hard look and see whether they can fit in there in another way, or whether I should minimize or eliminate them from the story altogether. The key is that, no matter how much we want to fit something into a story, sometimes it's just not meant to be.

But summarizing what you've already got sounds like a good way to see if there's anything you've overlooked. If you find no holes, no weak points, then it must be a novella.

Last night, I had dinner with my main Beta/critic. He mentioned several areas where I could improve my 73K novel.

• The members of the criminal group are all killed off at the end. You haven't made me dislike them enough to enjoy the fact that they get killed. You need to develop these bad guys, show me what makes them worthy of their fate.
• In one scene you have the heroine dumpster diving for food. It didn't seen that she was that desperate prior to that scene.
• In another scene, you sent a bad guy to Detroit, just to get rid of him for two days. It would have been far more logical for him to pick up the phone and get the information. You need to justify this trip.

These are three areas where I can improve the character descriptions, justify the character's actions and improve the logic. At the same time I'll be adding several hundred words, possibly over a thousand.

Perhaps your story has some similar problems like this, where you can improve and expand.

KansasWriter said:

So...

In another thread I discovered that my 50,000-word novel is, in fact, more of a novella really. I did a search through the forums (especially the sticky at the top of this one) and discovered that, while opinion is somewhat split, the majority of people -- not to mention publishing houses -- feel that what I've got on my hands here is a novella.

I'm thinking this: I'll write down the main points of each chapter and see the story arc from a summarized perspective. Then I'll see how I can develop the story to make it richer and the characters more interesting.

Is this possible or advisable? Have any of you done this?

Thanks!
KW

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Kansas, I've found the easiest way to build more into a story is to add a new character with a new dilema. That way you can keep the rest of the story somewhat intact.

It could be a relative or neighbor. Make them quirky, put them in a terrible bind, or make them an obstacle.

I'd rather cut than add too. It's much easier.

Cutting is indeed much easier than padding, yes. I once cut a 55k novel down to 15k (now back up to 35k), but it has the potential to open massive plotholes (in my referenced case I stripped out a secondary storyline completely as it did not add to the main story very much at all). You have to be careful that in your cutting you don't strip out the flavor of the characters and the storyline along with the words.

I too long for the old days when a novel was defined as 50k words and a novella was 20k. It's likely that a publisher could make a bit of extra money by publishing two-for's or short novels like they did in the old days, but the big houses want BIG novels even though those cost them considerably more to print. There doesn't seem to be much hope of reversing the trend.

Remember that most of the classics where authors we all know and love made their bones are relativey short novels or novellas by todays standards. Starship Troopers, The Door Into Summer, Sixth Column, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Childhood's End, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and many, many more classics of fiction are all very short, very easy to read novels. The trend to massive tomes really appears to have started in fantasy in the mid-1980's and 90's, maybe with Robert Jordan, but I'm not entirely sure of that.