By Joe Moore
“I’ve cut this rope three times and it’s still too short.”
Despite the corny old carpenter joke about miss-measuring, it’s something that does happens from time to time when writing a book. You’re under contract to deliver a 100k-word manuscript and your first draft is 10k short. What do you do? Do you “pad” the writing—go in and add a lot of stuff just for the sake of word count. Padding usually involves “staging” or additional extraneous actions by your characters as they move around the “stage”. But doing it too much will call attention to the padding and wind up getting sliced out by your editor. Intentional padding is not the answer. But there are some legitimate ways to increase word count without bloating your story.
One suggestion is to build up your story’s “world” by conducting additional research and adding a few bits and pieces of atmosphere throughout. Let’s say your scene takes place in Miami Beach. Your character is having breakfast on the balcony of her hotel room overlooking the Atlantic. Without slowing down the story, add a few lines about the history of the hotel. Since most of the hotels on Miami Beach have been around for decades, certainly something might have happened years ago at the same local that could reflect on or be pertinent to the story’s plot or situation.
Another method is to utilize your character’s five senses. Are you making good use of them? Sitting on that balcony, your MC must be able to smell the fresh sea breeze and hear the gulls calling from overhead. Or she notices the ever-present container ships slipping along the horizon in the Gulf Stream. Could be that she can feel the film of salt coating the arms of her chair. How does her freshly squeezed OJ taste? You don’t want to use all 5 in every scene, but engaging the senses is a great way to expand the prose and take advantage of an opportunity to further develop your character.
The skill in expanding a manuscript is to do so without appearing to pad the writing. And you want to avoid going down a new rabbit hole and suddenly winding up with too many words such as introducing a new subplot. Always consider the two basic criteria for any additional words: they must either advance the plot or further develop the character. Otherwise, they don’t belong.
What about you? Have you ever come up short on contractual word count? How did you expand the story without it becoming blotted or obviously padded?
Timely post, Joe, because I’m ready to edit the second draft of my WIP now. Time to go back and make sure I’m deep enough into the MCs senses and scenes. Another thing that I like to do that adds word count without padding is to give my MC an interest, a hobby or even a obsession (like making chocolate candy :)–something he/she can do that will reveal a little more about character, background and motivation.
As an editor, I don’t fuss it, Joe, not for 10K words. If the ms is heavily over or under, it can be a cause for discussion, but as long as the book is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, 90K instead of 100K doesn’t concern me. The most important thing is what’s good for the book.
Rebbie, that’s the right approach–build character or advance the plot.
Thanks, Neil. After all, what’s 10k among friends? 🙂
I like to play with dialogue. Do the words they’re speaking really capture their nature? Or are they saying something that anyone would say?
Sometimes being more specific can flesh it out, without saying something over and over.
Joe, you describe a problem that is exactly the opposite of what I face. As I get to the end of a book, my negotiations with my editor go more like, “I know the contract says 100K, but 125K is okay, too, right?”
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
I’m usually an under rather than an over gal and I don’t generally fuss with it – once the story is told, it’s told and I find trying to add words just pads it out. I do, however, go through and make sure I’ve added the level of richness: detail, character development, landscape etc. that I wanted. Sometimes that gives me scope to add some extra words but it int he end it usually doesn’t make much difference to the word count.
I’ve never had a problem with a short word count. If the book is right a few thousand extra or less words won’t make it better. Adding is usually harder for me than subtracting. I finish when the editor says it’s done.
I always come up short–usually 25K under on a first draft. It’s always a battle getting the word count to come up, because as I try to bring more words in, I’m also editing. So sometimes, I add something, and the word count still goes down.
Some things I’ve tried:
I always look for scenes where I just didn’t develop it enough. I’m currently trying to bring the book up 15 pages (hurrah! A major milestone for me; it’s now only 15 pages), so I got to this one place and thought, “I want these characters to have an argument.” There was a lot of tension in the scene, and the two characters have a strange relationship–the fight just fit and helped set up the ending better.
I’ve also tried eliminating the word ‘was’ from the narrative (not the dialogue though). I got the idea from David Gerrold–who actually wrote two entire books without to be words–as a way to push to improve your writing. I figured it could only help me with the word count. By trying to eliminate was, I really thought about the sentences and how they could be changed. In many cases, I was also able to add more material–fifteen pages off one word.
I also did the word building Joe mentioned. Mine’s a contemporary/urban fantasy, so I tried to work more details in that were necessary to the story.
The thing I have to watch out for is that sometimes, if I’m trying to ping over, I end up with clutter. The clutter is just detail that isn’t necessary, but it makes the story feel overcomplicated. I ended up weeding a lot of it.
One I am really tempted to try in the next one is a second plot. The kind of story I’m writing would be suited for it (I got the idea from an editor who remarked that he would like to see more thrillers were two plots that eventually come together).
By the way, please don’t tell me my running short must mean that the story isn’t novel-sized. I get that a lot from people who haven’t seen the story. Most people would be surprised I’m not running way over. Mine is most definitely a writer issue, not a story issue.
This is rarely a problem for me- I usually have to trim 10-20,000 words. The first draft of my current manuscript came in a bit light (90,000), but by the time I fleshed out the bones it was 115,000 words- then I trimmed it back to an even 100,000.
Good tips, Joe.
Good post, Joe. I always have that problem, and in spades. I’ve written what I thought were novels that weighed in at 45,000 words, 49,000 words, I’ve even got one that’s a mere 38,000 words! These stories all feel complete and don’t feel at all rushed. I’m going to use your method in an attempt to stretch them out to a decent length.
One more to add:
Suspense. I was thinking, oddly, of a story that I wrote in high school that won a contest. The whole story was eight pages, and I spent most of those eight pages working the suspense of getting the guy downstairs to find out what a noise was. So, for one of my action scenes, where the characters have gotten away from the bad guy, I did the same thing, having them hide and try to listen for the him. Doesn’t work for every scene, but for the right scene, it can add a lot of tension–and more words!