Fleshing or Padding

A commenter raised an interesting question:
I have written a story that is 17,000 words. I love the story and enjoy it every time I read it. To add more words just to make it longer, feels to me as though it would be filling the pages up with useless words. But, that said, I know publishers would not be interested in my story because of the length. How do I add on without making my story draggy?

Sometimes it's possible to interest a publisher in a story of this length. In literary fiction, collections of short stories and novellas can succeed—especially if the author is also known for novels. A story collection can often fill the gap between two longer works.

In genre fiction, it's tougher. But SF and fantasy, at least, have "theme" anthologies where the story length can be anywhere from 500 words to 20,000. Anthology editors often invite submissions from unknown writers as well as stars.

But let's say you love the story and really want to see it published as a novel. How would you expand the story to four or five times its present length?

In your shoes, I'd open a blank file in Word and unleash my inner editor to write a critique of the story—not a condemnation of it, but an exploration, putting my inner editor's thoughts about the story into sentences and paragraphs.

This procedure, for me, is so successful it gives me the creeps: My conscious mind starts feeling like a stenographer, taking dictation from someone down in the basement of my brain.

So I'd ask my inner editor about the theme of the story, and whether the story could explore the theme more deeply or widely.

I'd also ask about elements in the first few scenes: Were they thrown in just as details to lend verisimilitude, or could they be expanded? That childhood friend of the heroine—she disappeared after page 7. What if she stuck around and got involved in the plot? The small-town culture gets described in two paragraphs; maybe we need to dramatize that culture, use it as a motivator and source of conflict throughout the story.

The climax of the story would be important, but I'd let my inner editor type away about how the story builds to that climax. Could we build more characters and incidents into the story to increase the impact of the climax? Or could we treat the climax itself as just one more step in a much longer plot, with another 50,000 words of "sequel" featuring an even bigger climax near the end?

My inner editor would also ask me why I wanted to do all this, so I'd have to come up with some good answers—just as if I were pitching this story to a paying editor. And maybe I'd finally realize that the story had integrity at 17,000 words and just wouldn't work at any other length, longer or shorter.

If that made it unpublishable, fine. It's still a good story, and it's taught me something; I'll tackle the next project, even if it's a novel, with more skill and confidence.

Comments

[cheryl]

WOW! Thank you so much for your reply. As I was reading it I started thinking about how I could add an unexpected element to my plot, just to juice it up and have the reader go "ooohhh, now I wasn't expecting that!" Thank you for jump starting my brain again.

[Matthew Bugg]

A VERY timely piece of advice for me as well. I've got a project that I feel would make a lights-out novel, but it doesn't appear as if I can stretch it beyond 60 pages. This may just be the ticket.

[Steven]

Good points. I've read epic novels that when I get to the end, I wish the story would continue because I loved the characters that much. I think any story can be expanded by digging deeper and fleshing out those characters, and who knows, you may end up with characters that you love or hate much more than when you first began. And the story will be better for it.