How do you make a novel longer? I have been working on a novel for many years. I thought it was finished at 67k words, but pub want 100k.?

Lucy

Without seeing your writing it'd hard, but Brandon Sanderson did a piece on low word count and he said that you shouldn't add a new sub-plot or switch to telling/showing, instead look at what you all ready have and simply add more too it. Look at the relationships in your novel, could you add more conflict? Look at the characters goal, could you add another step right before they achieve their goal?

Shazy

Easy. Example ... The frog sat croaking on the edge of the pond in pouring rain and both of the Willson children begged their mother to let them bring it indoors out of the weather. The bright emerald green tree frog sat croaking on a smooth rock beside the edge of the pond in the garden. It was pouring down with torrential rainful and both children, Joshua Willson who was ten years old today and Sally, his seven year old sister were jumping up and down very excitedly while they kept on begging their exhausted frail mother to let the pair of them run outside across the bridge, through the mud, retrieve this amphibian and return to bring it indoors into the families home, yes even to allow it to live in their bathtub so that it was safely out of the wild wet weather. *** You can expand most stories with more discriptive words and details. Sally blinked her big blue eyes as she cried over poor Mr Greenery. *** LOL

MsBittner

Without having seen your writing, I can only suggest the most common cause of writing short: telling instead of showing. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with just stating the facts: Mina's car wouldn't start, so she took the bus to work. It was crowded and stopped so often she arrived late. In every novel or story, the author has to decide what's not important, and therefore okay to tell, and what matters more, in which case it should be shown. How? Get inside the character's mind and body and go through the experience with her. --- Damn it to hell. She must have left the headlights on. Newer cars turned them off automatically if the driver forgot, but working at slave wages meant driving her old Honda forever. Now the battery was dead. Wasn't there a 7:30 bus on Elmwood? She hurried to the bus stop, regretting her beige suede pumps only when she'd gone so far she'd miss the bus if she went back for athletic shoes. Seven twenty-five, time enough to fish through her purse for change. The bus stopped and its door sighed open. Mina mounted the steps. "Good morning." She dropped the exact fare into the coin counter with a feeling of triumph. Everybody was going to work downtown, of course, so there were no seats. Mina moved to the back and reached up to grab the rail as the bus lurched into traffic. Her shirt came untucked and cooler air washed across her side. The driver went only one block before the bus stopped again, admitting three passengers, and again two blocks later. In no time the standing room filled, then became crowded. Someone near Mina had body odor, and several people must have put out their cigarettes when they boarded. She detected the sweet smell of weed on a woman who looked like an office worker more than a pot smoker. The older woman wearing way too much perfume masked some of it with a fruity coconut abomination. Someone stepped on her toe. Her good suede shoes! She waited for an apology that didn't come. "Excuse me?" she said. People turned and looked at her without curiosity. "Someone stepped on me." The passengers shrugged and looked away. It happens, their body language said. Get over yourself. The bus stopped downtown a few minutes after nine, four blocks from Mina's office. Everyone who worked downtown had to make their way out before she could escape, practically climbing over a pair of teenagers who stayed in the aisle even after seats were available. Ten after nine! Her boss was going to kill her. She trotted down the broad sidewalk, her toes wedging painfully deeper into the suede shoes. --- That was showing. You feel like you took the bus to work with Mina, right? The author could have added more detail, given her even more helpless frustration, or had her make deeper and more telling observations of the other passengers, if either one served the plot. Many, many more words are involved in showing compared to telling. What scenes in your novel could benefit from changing from tell to show?

Therese

Don't do it. I read a lot, and find that many books could do with a bit of savage editing. If you indulge in gratuitous padding, in most cases your reader will recognise it for what it is, and end the book on a sour note. You are doing nobody, least of all yourself, any favours if you add unnecessary waffle.

Kai

Change all conjoined words like "it'd", "I'm", "wouldn't", etc, to the original words that they represent, i.e. "it'd"-"it would"-"I am", "wouldn't"-"would not", etc.

Banana

I always find rereading it can make it easy to find places to add an extra scene or more description. I always come across a spot where there could be a more detailed explanation if a room or a person or a fight. I wish you good luck I know that's a lot to add. If you need help pm me

Stephen

Unless you're established, no publisher will touch a novel at 100k.

Madeleine

I think Lucy gave you a very good answer and I just wanted to add to what she said on adding new characters and subplots. They can feel shoe horned in, because if they were that important that would have been there from the start. Equally just adding word with description or switching to telling/showing is also advice I've heard a lot and it's not really the best way. Once you get an edit he may just strike them out. Expand on what you all ready have, like Lucy said. I hope this ishelpful and good luck. P.S also to go of what Tina said, ask your publisher

Tina

Do you mean a publisher has seen it and wants more words - can you talk to them and ask which parts they think need expanding? Or do you mean publishers in general and are you sure about this?

iansand

Insert a unicorn as a subplot. You can't go wrong.

Voelven

Add a subplot and maybe your descriptions will give you a bit of leeway as well? What you don't want to do, though, is to try and bloat it through longer descriptions that don't serve a specific purpose, especially not for as much as 33K. Also look at your ending. Do you end on a high note? Is there space for a wind down?

Steven J Pemberton

Well, there's always self-publishing, which doesn't have any stupid arbitrary restrictions on story length... Don't try padding it by adding more words, because your editor (when you get one) will tell you to take them out again. Add subplots or additional characters. This is difficult to do in a way that doesn't make it obvious that you added them just to make the story longer, because everything in a story should affect something outside itself. If you can take something out without altering the rest of the story, you probably should, so if you're going to add something, you can't just drop it in and expect the reader to accept it - it should be connected to things before and/or after it. That means rewriting existing scenes, not just adding new ones.

PW1,Church of the WalkingStick

I have the same problem; got mine to about 66k but the minimum they'd accept was 80k. You could try adding details. Describe the settings and people in more detail. Depending on what voice you've written in, you could add some backstory here and there. I think readers have gotten a bit lazy; they want authors to do too much of the work for them instead of letting their imaginations fill in the blanks.