Skinny story? Expand your novel without adding fat

You’ve written the end, but the book is thousands of words short of your genre requirements. First, know that many authors who write “long” will envy you. While that’s a nice thought, though, it won’t help you reach your word count.

Here are tips to flesh out your story without ruining it in the process.

DON’T –

• Write a ten-page prologue.
• Write a ten-page epilogue.
• Extend dialogue to elaborate on what your characters have already succinctly expressed.
• Add cigarette actions (detailed, insignificant actions like travelogues) to get your characters from one scene to the next
• S-t-r-e-t-c-h out the drama in each scene. (Think daytime soap operas.)
• Insert an additional chapter or two without careful attention to pace and existing structure.
• Write an elaborate, combative scene with twenty characters on stage.
• Insert 250-word scene-setting details in ten different scenes. Yep, that’s 2,500 words, but the pace of your novel will suffer and the reader will either fall asleep or scrawl those dreaded initials on the cover: DNF. Did not finish.

DO –

• Look at the beginning, the middle, and the end for areas with sparse detail or motivations that present opportunities to expand.
• Using patience, look through a lens of enhancing one of those sections, rather than looking for places where you can stuff words in any available “cavity.”
• Show, don’t tell. Are there incidents of hurried backstory that would be more effective if presented in a tightly written scene? If so, write a new scene. Do it “on spec,” realizing that it may not work. Avoid getting attached to a new scene that doesn’t enhance the story and deepen the suspense or conflict.
• After you’ve determined it can work, check to see if any prior or subsequent scenes need to be adjusted to accommodate the new action and/or dialogue you’ve written. If a gun fires in the added scene, for example, mention the gun before then. If a character gets injured in the new scene, reference that injury in scenes that follow as other characters notice the wound or as the injured character heals from the incident.
• Look at your protagonist’s and antagonist’s character arcs, then zero in on each of their turning points. Try this tip I learned from a Donald Maass workshop. Just before each turning point, crawl deep inside that character’s skin. Reread your character sketches with a razor focus on his or her fatal flaw and worst fear. With that refreshed awareness, write a scene that happens ten or fifteen minutes before the turning point.
• Look at your secondary character arcs. If your story has multiple POVs, and if it can deepen the story and characterization, consider adding a scene from a secondary character’s POV.
• Expand on a motif, a recurring element that has symbolic significance. It will appear multiple times throughout the novel. Think of the Heart of the Ocean necklace in Titanic, or the recurring dog in Harry Potter, The Prisoner of Azkaban.

If your novel is considerably short (say by 10,000 words), consider adding a subplot.

Consider a romantic subplot, or one involving a relative or close friend of the main characters. It shouldn’t just sit there, though. The new subplot should frustrate the main character and make attaining his short or long-term goals more difficult.

Whatever methods you use, write to enhance the story, rather than detracting from it.

I hope you find this list useful. Here’s to your successful expansion!