The Long and the Short of It
_
Basics
How do you turn your story into a whole book?
I hear few questions as frequently as this from aspiring writers. Most often the query is delivered in an exasperated, half-marveling tone, as if my ability to write books is a mystic and alien attribute. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s often said that every person has one novel in them. This saying, like most in regard to writing and story, is bollocks. I firmly believe that every person has endless stories to tell. It’s only a matter of getting them out. Doing that, however, seems to cause many writers a great deal of trouble, especially when they envision the final form of their story as the novel. Writing eighty or a hundred thousands words for one story strikes some people as daunting; others believe that, for them, it is literally impossible, like climbing Everest entirely while walking on their hands.
I disagree. I firmly believe that any story can be turned into a novel. All it takes is some persistence in creativity, openness to new options, and a bit of skill in narrative composition. In this essay I’ll share three significant techniques (one of what not to do) that can be used to elaborate and broaden any story so as to deserve a whole book. But before we jump in, I think we should address just what a book or novel is.
Long vs. Short Narrative
The simplest way to differentiate between long and short narrative forms is to concentrate on the desired effect. Where short narrative creates, as Poe named it, a “unity of effect”—one where every element of the story seeks to further a dominant impression, concept, or emotion—long fiction seeks to communicate distinction, variety, and evolution. As a rough rule, consider anything that is best read in a sitting a short narrative, whereas anything that doesn’t lose something when read in multiple installments a long narrative. (This addresses only a single story, not episodic arcs or anthologies, which work a bit differently.)
The first step in turning your story concept into a novel is to determine if it is meant to be a novel. This seems obvious, but I cannot stress how important is this step, or how often people skip it. Why are you writing this story? What is it you want your readers to take from it? If the answer to this question is, in fact, a single answer, an overriding, unified point, then your story isn’t and shouldn’t be a novel at all. Your story will best be told in a short narrative form.
Trying to utilize the novel form to create unity of effect is destined to failure. Story is as rhetorical as language, as are narrative forms—because of this, we cannot escape the connection between form and function. If the story you want to tell is best served by a short narrative form, embrace the form and the unique possibilities provided therein. Longer is NEVER better in story. Added components and complexity allowed by length can make a story better; the length itself never does.
So before you do anything else, determine if the story you want to be a novel agrees with you. Does it see itself taking three hundred pages to tell, or would twenty do just fine? If the answer is twenty most certainly will not suffice to achieve what you want to communicate to your reader, then move on to the next tab and we’ll address tip #1 on how to build a concept into a novel: Success, Failure, and Reassessment.
Tip #1: Reassessment
The first technique in broadening a story so that it fits the novel form is to reconceptualize how plot reveals character. In my experience, writers who have the natural tendency to conceptualize ideas fitting a short format consider the conflict of their story in terms of success and failure. The nature of the problem is directly tied to a particular action or course of action on the protagonist’s part that reveals her character, and so when this single line of attack comes to fruition—either victory, defeat, or some combination of the two—the story is over.
The novel works differently. A single line of attack or action is rarely sufficient to fill all those pages with text. Instead, character is revealed by action—thought, dialogue, and activity—followed by patches of reassessment. This is perhaps best known in several screenplay plot structures embraced by Hollywood, such as Michael Hauge’s six stage structure. Each of these structures mandate that the protagonist fail at least twice (often three times) in accomplishing the underlying objective of the story. Each failure demands that the character reassess the situation, consider herself and her actions, reevaluate her aims and the obstacles facing her, and then devise a new strategy.
Such reassessment would destroy the unity of effect in short narrative, but it is a powerful technique for providing the complexity and prolonged evolution of character and situation that novel readers crave. This is the first step in building your story toward a full-length book. Consider your protagonist’s motivation, the need powerful enough to break her routine and move her into Campbell’s supernatural, and her opposition. Then conceptualize her first attempt at achieving her need and have it fail. Given the failure, what would be her next recourse? Develop this strategy and have it fail as well. By the time you have conceptualized a third plan of attack you will have provided a wealth of different scenarios and situations in which your protagonist can reveal herself. She will have dealt with the unexpected and failure, which always results in a reconsideration of self-concept. The characterization that takes place in a short narrative has now been drawn out, broadened and deepened, and made more complex.
Be aware as you consider different actions your protagonist may take to resolve the story’s conflict that distinction and differentiation are paramount. You don’t want your different strategies to be slight variations on the same theme. Each line of attack is meant to put the character in different places, force her to use different skills and overcome unique challenges, and confront her with a wide range of emotions. If your plot consists of three main protagonist actions that are too similar, not only will the plot events themselves be uninteresting—especially toward the climax of the novel—but less reassessment will be required on the part of the character, meaning less of the character evolution that readers so crave. So be sure that when plotting out your story, craft protagonist actions that stretch them and show different aspects of their personality. Have them take their failures seriously—seriously enough to reevaluate their own approach to problems.
There is one other plot option in forcing character reassessment: hollow success. Rather than having the character fail in her attempted action, allow her to succeed only to discover that either the plan of action is incapable of resolving the conflict after all or that their victory does not satisfy. This hollow success is used numerous times in Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE, such as when Pierre joins the Freemasons. The initial validation he finds in the order soon evaporates under the assault of his complex and traumatic life. If you truly want to force a character to reassess her life, give her exactly what she has always wanted and then ask her why she isn’t happy. Fighting for something and being malcontent when you receive it tells us something about a person—who they were, who they are, and who they now want to be. Fighting for something and being happy with the result is okay too; we call it the end of the story.
As you craft your plot to include important areas of reassessment in addition to standard action, you will find that the length of your story will grow quickly. Deal with each try and fail/succeed pairing in the detail it deserves, and you’ll be wondering how you ever kept a story shorter than three hundred pages.
Tip #2: Increase Your Cast
Anyone who doubts that interacting with more people creates more complexity—manifest as length in story—please consider the life cycle. A young woman moves out and is on her own. All her concerns, her goals, her activities and the like are formulated according to the dictates of her own personality. (We’re not assuming the heavy influence of parents or friends.) She has a job and hobbies and such that complicate her life, but in terms of what motivates and influences her, there isn’t much complexity. She is who she is.
Now add a husband. Suddenly everything she was doing before becomes far, far more complicated. Her job affects her spouse, and he affects her occupation. Suddenly every area of her life has another facet, and keeping everything straight and well-balanced has become much more difficult. Now let’s add a mother-in-law who knows exactly how everything should be balanced, and is eager to share her helpful knowledge. Then, just for fun, let’s add a child.
See? It’s a universal fact—or as widespread as we humans can reach: people complicate things. If your story needs more length, then it needs more content. If it needs more content, then it needs more conflict. If you need conflict, find a person or, in this case, add a person. It is remarkable how quickly the possibilities of human interaction grow as we add individuals to a situation. Take the example above. We start with a singularity, a situation where, without the world acting upon our protagonist (and a reactive character is never good), she is very unlikely to ever change or do anything remotely interesting. Now we add the husband and create, for the first time, a relationship. As every relationship is the result of two or more people, it is far less static than individual identity; an added bonus is that individual changes always necessitate change in the relationship as well. By adding a single person we’ve taken a monotonous situation and put it into dynamic flux. But now watch as we add the mother-in-law. Suddenly we have four relationships: protagonist/mother-in-law; husband/mother-in-law; protagonist/husband; couple/mother-in-law (and yes, this is a very different relationship from either of the spouses alone and the in-law). One more person increased the count from one relationship to four. Now we add the child and the total jumps to 18!
This doesn’t mean that every relationship available has to be fleshed out or even addressed in your story. It does, however, give you plenty of options to use when you want to add complex and rich content to the idea or concept you’re looking to build upon.
When you add characters to lengthen and enrich your story, keep a few things in mind. First, only characters can be involved in relationships; cardboard cutouts cannot be. If you increase your cast by adding undisguised functions rather than whole characters—doctor, best friend, rival love interest—your story will be shallow, and readers will notice the thinness. Any characters you add to the story, both major and minor, must be fully fleshed out individuals with enough about them that is interesting and genuine feeling to justify the role they will play in the story. Never, ever create a character who is a mere device; if you need a character to make something happen, then they must have a reason for doing so. They must have their own objectives and fears and investment in their actions. Only by doing this will the added breadth and length of your story maintain the potency of the original idea.
Another technique to consider when adding characters is to have them fill more than one function in the story. For example, what if our mother-in-law suddenly lent the couple money and became a debt holder over them as well as family. Adding to the function or roles of the characters you already have in the story is a great way to add complexity without resorting to shallow characters. Giving a smaller cast of characters more complicated roles and interaction provides intimacy with the characters, a genuine feel (because real people are always relating based on numerous functions), and the expanded scope that you are searching for in your novel.
One last idea on adding characters: make certain that none of the characters do their job too well. Story is conflict, and so any character who provides a purely positive, constructive relationship with your protagonist is going to drag your story down like an anchor. For every character who assists the character in any way, through action, thought, or emotion, make the protagonist pay a price. Every major character in your story should make the protagonist’s life more complicated and, at times, more difficult. If you ever add a fairy godmother, she’d better come complete with pejorative rules about midnight term limits on magic, or else you’ll have ruined your story.
So step number two when building a story idea toward a novel: add more characters, but only if they are fully fleshed out individuals who can interact in many different ways, some of which are certain to be anything but helpful. Because people complicate things, adding just a few characters to your cast, sometimes even a single one, can make a short story grow to truly epic proportions.
Tip #3: Subplots
That including subplots will expand the length and complexity of a narrative is self-explanatory—so much so that I only address this to offer a few cautions. First, subplots can NOT make something shorter than a novel into a novel, at least, not a good one. If your primary narrative is insufficient to achieve a novel’s purpose, adding subplots will only unbalance a flimsy construction even more. The exception to this is a plot that is equally shared between two distinctive plot pathways, but that doesn’t count as a subplot. Subplots are always subordinate to the main plot, both in terms of significance as well as time devoted to the writing of the passages. They serve to provide reinforcement or contrast to the main plot; they do not function on their own. It is for this reason that they cannot make up for a deficient central plot. If your central narrative isn’t a functioning novel, subplots can’t save it.
If, however, you have a narrative that functions as a slim little novel, adding subplots can effectively add scope, breadth, and depth to the story. As always, you want to craft your subplots to emphasize contrast. Look for distinction in every way, in terms of setting and plot events certainly, but most significantly with characterization. A subplot shouldn’t only give us experiences the protagonist could not have, but also understanding and emotion that she could not have felt. The great value of a subplot is to add the feel of multiplicity that we encounter every day in the real world. If your subplots don’t add distinction and the sense of great variety and possibility in interpreting events, you’re most likely either writing the main plot from a new point of view or your subplot isn’t necessary.
One final caution: don’t ever consider the writing of subplots a necessity. Too often aspiring novelists feel that it is the lack of subplots that is keeping them from realizing the potential of their story and holding them back from finishing that first, elusive book. This is not true. If you can write a fully functional novel with subplots, you can certainly do so without them more easily. If you cannot write the first, you cannot write the other. If you are struggling to finish a fully fleshed out book, concentrate on the tips already covered. First, make certain that your story really should be a novel and not a short story. If you determine that, yes, the story is most suitable for a full-length book, then craft your story so as to force your character to periodically reassess herself and her actions, and to make new plans accordingly. Then consider the characters in your story, how you could add to their number or, my recommendation, make the characters you have serve more complicated functions, including those that add to rather than help resolve conflict. These techniques can take any short story idea and grow it until it deserves hundreds of pages. Only then, once it is already worthy of its own book, should you consider adding subplots, and only when each subplot serves to enrich the experience in a way that can be communicated no other way.
By following these tips—1) Determining if your story truly is a novel; 2) Adding assessment and character complication; and 3) Avoiding subplots for length—you should be able to grow any idea into that long awaited and desired novel.
How do you turn your story into a whole book?
I hear few questions as frequently as this from aspiring writers. Most often the query is delivered in an exasperated, half-marveling tone, as if my ability to write books is a mystic and alien attribute. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s often said that every person has one novel in them. This saying, like most in regard to writing and story, is bollocks. I firmly believe that every person has endless stories to tell. It’s only a matter of getting them out. Doing that, however, seems to cause many writers a great deal of trouble, especially when they envision the final form of their story as the novel. Writing eighty or a hundred thousands words for one story strikes some people as daunting; others believe that, for them, it is literally impossible, like climbing Everest entirely while walking on their hands.
I disagree. I firmly believe that any story can be turned into a novel. All it takes is some persistence in creativity, openness to new options, and a bit of skill in narrative composition. In this essay I’ll share three significant techniques (one of what not to do) that can be used to elaborate and broaden any story so as to deserve a whole book. But before we jump in, I think we should address just what a book or novel is.
Long vs. Short Narrative
The simplest way to differentiate between long and short narrative forms is to concentrate on the desired effect. Where short narrative creates, as Poe named it, a “unity of effect”—one where every element of the story seeks to further a dominant impression, concept, or emotion—long fiction seeks to communicate distinction, variety, and evolution. As a rough rule, consider anything that is best read in a sitting a short narrative, whereas anything that doesn’t lose something when read in multiple installments a long narrative. (This addresses only a single story, not episodic arcs or anthologies, which work a bit differently.)
The first step in turning your story concept into a novel is to determine if it is meant to be a novel. This seems obvious, but I cannot stress how important is this step, or how often people skip it. Why are you writing this story? What is it you want your readers to take from it? If the answer to this question is, in fact, a single answer, an overriding, unified point, then your story isn’t and shouldn’t be a novel at all. Your story will best be told in a short narrative form.
Trying to utilize the novel form to create unity of effect is destined to failure. Story is as rhetorical as language, as are narrative forms—because of this, we cannot escape the connection between form and function. If the story you want to tell is best served by a short narrative form, embrace the form and the unique possibilities provided therein. Longer is NEVER better in story. Added components and complexity allowed by length can make a story better; the length itself never does.
So before you do anything else, determine if the story you want to be a novel agrees with you. Does it see itself taking three hundred pages to tell, or would twenty do just fine? If the answer is twenty most certainly will not suffice to achieve what you want to communicate to your reader, then move on to the next tab and we’ll address tip #1 on how to build a concept into a novel: Success, Failure, and Reassessment.
Tip #1: Reassessment
The first technique in broadening a story so that it fits the novel form is to reconceptualize how plot reveals character. In my experience, writers who have the natural tendency to conceptualize ideas fitting a short format consider the conflict of their story in terms of success and failure. The nature of the problem is directly tied to a particular action or course of action on the protagonist’s part that reveals her character, and so when this single line of attack comes to fruition—either victory, defeat, or some combination of the two—the story is over.
The novel works differently. A single line of attack or action is rarely sufficient to fill all those pages with text. Instead, character is revealed by action—thought, dialogue, and activity—followed by patches of reassessment. This is perhaps best known in several screenplay plot structures embraced by Hollywood, such as Michael Hauge’s six stage structure. Each of these structures mandate that the protagonist fail at least twice (often three times) in accomplishing the underlying objective of the story. Each failure demands that the character reassess the situation, consider herself and her actions, reevaluate her aims and the obstacles facing her, and then devise a new strategy.
Such reassessment would destroy the unity of effect in short narrative, but it is a powerful technique for providing the complexity and prolonged evolution of character and situation that novel readers crave. This is the first step in building your story toward a full-length book. Consider your protagonist’s motivation, the need powerful enough to break her routine and move her into Campbell’s supernatural, and her opposition. Then conceptualize her first attempt at achieving her need and have it fail. Given the failure, what would be her next recourse? Develop this strategy and have it fail as well. By the time you have conceptualized a third plan of attack you will have provided a wealth of different scenarios and situations in which your protagonist can reveal herself. She will have dealt with the unexpected and failure, which always results in a reconsideration of self-concept. The characterization that takes place in a short narrative has now been drawn out, broadened and deepened, and made more complex.
Be aware as you consider different actions your protagonist may take to resolve the story’s conflict that distinction and differentiation are paramount. You don’t want your different strategies to be slight variations on the same theme. Each line of attack is meant to put the character in different places, force her to use different skills and overcome unique challenges, and confront her with a wide range of emotions. If your plot consists of three main protagonist actions that are too similar, not only will the plot events themselves be uninteresting—especially toward the climax of the novel—but less reassessment will be required on the part of the character, meaning less of the character evolution that readers so crave. So be sure that when plotting out your story, craft protagonist actions that stretch them and show different aspects of their personality. Have them take their failures seriously—seriously enough to reevaluate their own approach to problems.
There is one other plot option in forcing character reassessment: hollow success. Rather than having the character fail in her attempted action, allow her to succeed only to discover that either the plan of action is incapable of resolving the conflict after all or that their victory does not satisfy. This hollow success is used numerous times in Tolstoy’s WAR AND PEACE, such as when Pierre joins the Freemasons. The initial validation he finds in the order soon evaporates under the assault of his complex and traumatic life. If you truly want to force a character to reassess her life, give her exactly what she has always wanted and then ask her why she isn’t happy. Fighting for something and being malcontent when you receive it tells us something about a person—who they were, who they are, and who they now want to be. Fighting for something and being happy with the result is okay too; we call it the end of the story.
As you craft your plot to include important areas of reassessment in addition to standard action, you will find that the length of your story will grow quickly. Deal with each try and fail/succeed pairing in the detail it deserves, and you’ll be wondering how you ever kept a story shorter than three hundred pages.
Tip #2: Increase Your Cast
Anyone who doubts that interacting with more people creates more complexity—manifest as length in story—please consider the life cycle. A young woman moves out and is on her own. All her concerns, her goals, her activities and the like are formulated according to the dictates of her own personality. (We’re not assuming the heavy influence of parents or friends.) She has a job and hobbies and such that complicate her life, but in terms of what motivates and influences her, there isn’t much complexity. She is who she is.
Now add a husband. Suddenly everything she was doing before becomes far, far more complicated. Her job affects her spouse, and he affects her occupation. Suddenly every area of her life has another facet, and keeping everything straight and well-balanced has become much more difficult. Now let’s add a mother-in-law who knows exactly how everything should be balanced, and is eager to share her helpful knowledge. Then, just for fun, let’s add a child.
See? It’s a universal fact—or as widespread as we humans can reach: people complicate things. If your story needs more length, then it needs more content. If it needs more content, then it needs more conflict. If you need conflict, find a person or, in this case, add a person. It is remarkable how quickly the possibilities of human interaction grow as we add individuals to a situation. Take the example above. We start with a singularity, a situation where, without the world acting upon our protagonist (and a reactive character is never good), she is very unlikely to ever change or do anything remotely interesting. Now we add the husband and create, for the first time, a relationship. As every relationship is the result of two or more people, it is far less static than individual identity; an added bonus is that individual changes always necessitate change in the relationship as well. By adding a single person we’ve taken a monotonous situation and put it into dynamic flux. But now watch as we add the mother-in-law. Suddenly we have four relationships: protagonist/mother-in-law; husband/mother-in-law; protagonist/husband; couple/mother-in-law (and yes, this is a very different relationship from either of the spouses alone and the in-law). One more person increased the count from one relationship to four. Now we add the child and the total jumps to 18!
This doesn’t mean that every relationship available has to be fleshed out or even addressed in your story. It does, however, give you plenty of options to use when you want to add complex and rich content to the idea or concept you’re looking to build upon.
When you add characters to lengthen and enrich your story, keep a few things in mind. First, only characters can be involved in relationships; cardboard cutouts cannot be. If you increase your cast by adding undisguised functions rather than whole characters—doctor, best friend, rival love interest—your story will be shallow, and readers will notice the thinness. Any characters you add to the story, both major and minor, must be fully fleshed out individuals with enough about them that is interesting and genuine feeling to justify the role they will play in the story. Never, ever create a character who is a mere device; if you need a character to make something happen, then they must have a reason for doing so. They must have their own objectives and fears and investment in their actions. Only by doing this will the added breadth and length of your story maintain the potency of the original idea.
Another technique to consider when adding characters is to have them fill more than one function in the story. For example, what if our mother-in-law suddenly lent the couple money and became a debt holder over them as well as family. Adding to the function or roles of the characters you already have in the story is a great way to add complexity without resorting to shallow characters. Giving a smaller cast of characters more complicated roles and interaction provides intimacy with the characters, a genuine feel (because real people are always relating based on numerous functions), and the expanded scope that you are searching for in your novel.
One last idea on adding characters: make certain that none of the characters do their job too well. Story is conflict, and so any character who provides a purely positive, constructive relationship with your protagonist is going to drag your story down like an anchor. For every character who assists the character in any way, through action, thought, or emotion, make the protagonist pay a price. Every major character in your story should make the protagonist’s life more complicated and, at times, more difficult. If you ever add a fairy godmother, she’d better come complete with pejorative rules about midnight term limits on magic, or else you’ll have ruined your story.
So step number two when building a story idea toward a novel: add more characters, but only if they are fully fleshed out individuals who can interact in many different ways, some of which are certain to be anything but helpful. Because people complicate things, adding just a few characters to your cast, sometimes even a single one, can make a short story grow to truly epic proportions.
Tip #3: Subplots
That including subplots will expand the length and complexity of a narrative is self-explanatory—so much so that I only address this to offer a few cautions. First, subplots can NOT make something shorter than a novel into a novel, at least, not a good one. If your primary narrative is insufficient to achieve a novel’s purpose, adding subplots will only unbalance a flimsy construction even more. The exception to this is a plot that is equally shared between two distinctive plot pathways, but that doesn’t count as a subplot. Subplots are always subordinate to the main plot, both in terms of significance as well as time devoted to the writing of the passages. They serve to provide reinforcement or contrast to the main plot; they do not function on their own. It is for this reason that they cannot make up for a deficient central plot. If your central narrative isn’t a functioning novel, subplots can’t save it.
If, however, you have a narrative that functions as a slim little novel, adding subplots can effectively add scope, breadth, and depth to the story. As always, you want to craft your subplots to emphasize contrast. Look for distinction in every way, in terms of setting and plot events certainly, but most significantly with characterization. A subplot shouldn’t only give us experiences the protagonist could not have, but also understanding and emotion that she could not have felt. The great value of a subplot is to add the feel of multiplicity that we encounter every day in the real world. If your subplots don’t add distinction and the sense of great variety and possibility in interpreting events, you’re most likely either writing the main plot from a new point of view or your subplot isn’t necessary.
One final caution: don’t ever consider the writing of subplots a necessity. Too often aspiring novelists feel that it is the lack of subplots that is keeping them from realizing the potential of their story and holding them back from finishing that first, elusive book. This is not true. If you can write a fully functional novel with subplots, you can certainly do so without them more easily. If you cannot write the first, you cannot write the other. If you are struggling to finish a fully fleshed out book, concentrate on the tips already covered. First, make certain that your story really should be a novel and not a short story. If you determine that, yes, the story is most suitable for a full-length book, then craft your story so as to force your character to periodically reassess herself and her actions, and to make new plans accordingly. Then consider the characters in your story, how you could add to their number or, my recommendation, make the characters you have serve more complicated functions, including those that add to rather than help resolve conflict. These techniques can take any short story idea and grow it until it deserves hundreds of pages. Only then, once it is already worthy of its own book, should you consider adding subplots, and only when each subplot serves to enrich the experience in a way that can be communicated no other way.
By following these tips—1) Determining if your story truly is a novel; 2) Adding assessment and character complication; and 3) Avoiding subplots for length—you should be able to grow any idea into that long awaited and desired novel.