040: 3 Tips to Make Your Book Longer
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3 tips to make your book longer
Friends, if you've ever had the experience, where you get to the end of your rough draft, you're so excited you look at the word count, and it's way under where it needs to be. This is the episode for you, I'm going to be talking about how to make your book longer, I'm gonna give you three suggestions. And this is not just to add fluff to add filler words to add extra length. It's not like, I don't know if you ever did this when you were in school. But there were like all these ways to make your essays longer, where you would add like you would take out contractions and write each word individually. So instead of can to be like could not or cannot, or something I don't know, just all these ways to make the word count go up without actually adding adding any substance to it. So that is not what we're going to be talking about. I'm going to be talking about ways to make the book longer, that just make sense that they that make the book richer, that make the world richer, that help readers really get immersed in the story, add another layer to the story. So that's what we're focusing on not just making it longer for the hell of it.
All right. So the first tip I have is to really look at your pacing of the story. So I suggest going through and doing a read of the entire manuscript, once you get to the end. And look at the pacing overall of the book. And then make notes as you're reading of scenes or chapters or moments where the pacing feels off. And the pacing, remember is just the speed at which things happen in the book. So the pacing can sometimes be too quickly where things are just, we're just rushing through a scene. Or it can be it can be kind of a slower pacing, where we're really lingering in a moment. Sometimes it can feel too slow, where we lose some of the momentum and the tension and the urgency and the story. And we kind of spend too long in a conversation or a scene. So that's kind of what I mean by pacing. So I suggest Yeah, going through doing a whole read of the entire manuscript to see if overall the pacing, make sense. It's not too quick, not too slow. And then also just Yeah, making notes as you go to see if there are particular important moments where you might be rushing through, because we're talking about making your book longer, because your word count isn't where it needs to be. There's a there's a higher possibility that you have kind of quick pacing at certain moments.
You can also enlist the help of beta readers here to really give you notes on pacing, especially for important moments, if there's a really pivotal scene, if there's an important conversation, if something really important happens. We need to we need to linger there, the reader has to spend some time in there to absorb the impact of the scene. We can't just rush through it. And this is going to vary depending on people's style, obviously. So it's not like I can give you any specifics other than that. But yeah, don't be afraid to enlist the help of beta readers to give you feedback specifically on pacing.
Okay, tip number two is to consider a subplot. And a subplot is simply a plot that runs kind of parallel to the main plot of the story. It's kind of exactly what it sounds like. So for example, a subplot could be a love interest for your main character. And this is this is true if you are not writing romance because if you're writing romance, then the love interest and these two characters, you know the will they or won't they get together and then ending up together at the end of the book like that's the central kind of plot is the central central idea of the story. But for other genres, you can add in a love interest for the main character as a subplot. It's not a romance novel, that's not the main focus of the story. There are other things happening. But that's a way to do a lot of things really, it's a way for us to learn more about the main character. It's a way to have the main character go on some growth and a journey of growth in the story-for them to change for them to have other motivations or desires in the story. It can create conflict, it can really do a lot you know In a story in a way that makes sense.
So again, you're not just adding a subplot because it's random. And it doesn't make any sense for the character. This is something that's a deliberate choice. And if you do have some subplots already, like maybe do have a love interest for your story, see if you can flesh it out a little bit more, see if you can add some more scenes or add depth or complexity to the scenes that are there. Think about the role that that love interest is playing in the story for your main character. And just to reiterate, a love interest is just an example of a subplot, there are a lot of things you could do outside of love adding love interest, that's just one example. And my third tip for making your book longer is to look at your description and your exposition in the story. And just like everything else I've been sharing in this episode, a lot of this comes down to style and your writing voice. So I definitely don't want to tell you how much description you should be including in your story, or how much exposition you should have. That's That's every writer is different when it comes to how much of that they include.
And exposition, by the way, is just a fancy writing term that means kind of the background information on the world of your story and the characters that comes at the beginning of the story. It's just an important part of kind of the first part of the plot, really. So there are some writers who include a lot of beautiful description about what's happening, they include a lot of moments of a character reflecting on something, they include a lot of description of, you know, where the character is physically, the setting. And then there are some writers who don't who prefer to just provide a detail or two, and then focus a lot on the plot or focus a lot on the dialogue or something else. Consider as you do or read through your manuscript, whether there might be some points where you could include a little bit more description, or exposition, or maybe some interiority of the character. For example, if you are, let's say, writing a third person, you got a main character. And we see some of this main character's thoughts and feelings, but not a lot. You find as you you're reading that maybe it's kind of a just a rehashing of events, like you're just kind of telling the reader what happens. And we're not getting a lot of access to the character's head, to what they're thinking and feeling, how they're reacting to what's happening around them.
That can be a great opportunity to add some complexity to the character, and really give the reader an idea of what this characters feeling what they're thinking, like, let us see them process events. That can sometimes be the case of why someone's book is just too short, is that it's really just a recounting of events, this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And of course, if you are writing commercial fiction, where there's a lot of focus on the plot, and what happens, then that makes a little bit more sense. But even in plot, or even in commercial fiction, we still need to get some access to the characters, we still have to understand them, and see them respond to things that happen in the story. So those are the three tips to make your book longer.
And you know what's interesting, actually, about if you were gonna flip that and make it three tips to make your book shorter, you could kind of just reverse everything I just said, you could look at your pacing and see if there are moments where it's just too slow, we spend way too much time, in a certain scene or in a certain chapter, you could consider removing a subplot, if it's something that just doesn't make sense, and kind of weighs the book down. And you can also check your description, your exposition, your internal kind of processing of your character, because maybe there's just way too much of that that bogs down the story. And again, not to cramp anyone's style. I know every writer is different. But if you're listening to this, and you're like, you should do an episode about how to how to make your book shorter. Really, it's kind of just flipping those things. And of course, there are other tips, but just for the purposes of this podcast episode, I think those are three tips that are really good place to start. And again, I mentioned beta reader feedback at the at the pacing part of it, but you know, as always, feel free to get feedback from other writers just generally on the story and with specific questions about length of the book, like the subplot, the description, all those things that we mentioned.
Yeah. And if you are in the drafting process, and you're listening to this and getting stressed about your word count, please don't put too much pressure on yourself are too much weight on your word count and worrying that you might need to make your book longer, because you might get to the end of the road and realize, oh wait a second this book is 85,000 words. That's perfect for the genre I'm writing. You might To get to the end and realize you need to add about 20,000 words because it's just too short, you know, that could happen too. But you're really not going to know what you need to add and what you need to flesh out until you get the first draft written, you're not really going to have a sense of the pacing of the story as a whole until you get to the end. Now, in the drafting process, if you do feel if you get an idea, as you're writing that you're rushing through something, then of course, you can add more as you're writing. But I always just say, you know, focus on getting the first draft out and then you can figure out what you need to add in what you need to add another layer two. So don't stress too much about that if you are still in the drafting process.
I hope this was helpful, and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning in.