Editing Tips for Underwriters | When Your Book Is Too Short

hello everyone alexa dunn here and today i am going to be giving you tips for underwriters i already did a whole video with tips for overraters where you write way too much and you have to figure out how to trim and focus but this is the opposite problem you draft really really lean you wrote your book and it's only 30 000 words and you're like it's a novella but no it's it's a novel what do i do or hey perfect for nano fun fact in most cases 50 000 words is not a novel it is in some genres categories but you have to expand far beyond 50 000 words for it to be a meaty novel so what do you do i actually have even more tips for this one than overwriters and at first i thought it was going to be the opposite i tend to overwrite so i was like i can give tons of advice for overwriters i have experience but then i really challenged myself to think about underwriting and think about underwriting in my own work i have had some books that when i thought about it yeah they were 70 000 words but they ended up much longer so clearly parts of them were underwritten so i was able to draw on some of my experiences with the ivies which is the one that i'm thinking of but also critique partnering and betaing and mentoring some slightly shorter books where i did have to give tips on fleshing things out and so without further ado i'm just gonna jump right into it so underwriters this one is for you but actually to that point i did mention the overwriting video that sometimes even overwriters can underwrite sections of their books so i think both of these videos are helpful for everyone so my first big tip to underwriters is to really think about how much internalization you have on the page you probably have very little that's a very clear and obvious place to skimp when you are underwriting fast drafting and internalizations means like feelings thoughts character reflection if you just go from plot point to plot point action to action you're inevitably going to be lacking these things but first i want to talk about it on a scene level you need to look for opportunities where things happen and your character just bumps along and never stops to reflect like not even a line that's the thing this can just be a line here and there every once in a while a paragraph of how are they feeling what are they thinking always bearing in mind of course you're not just vomiting extra stuff onto the page this should align to their character wants their character needs the overarching as well as sub conflicts stakes etc but adding these little moments of character reflection reaction maybe even little lines of backstory flashback these are going to do so much work for your book to help the reader connect to your characters really care and it's just going to generally flesh out and beef up your book in particular and i am going to go into more detail about these as bigger scenes rather than just like little moments but if you're writing a romance or a mystery arc in particular and you don't have these things and if you fast drafted an underwritten draft you probably don't definitely add them the readers expect a character involved in a romance or a mystery or similar to stop and think about what is going on semi-regularly so to that end the next question you ask yourself is your book all a plot and no b plot or very little b plot and definitely no c plots well you got to add those and they're not easy i in fact have avoided making videos in a plots b-plus et cetera because i find them trickier to talk about easier to talk about with a specific book but in essence your a plot is your main plot the character starts here goes here and ends here you should have a b plot you should have subplots things that happen in and around your main plot they all feed together you shouldn't have extraneous subplots but inevitably underwritten books lack enough subplots i've definitely seen underwritten drafts that are all a plot and no b-plot and in particular i've seen this in thrillers and when you have that kind of thing it's like well great yeah technically they bumped along and did a thing but it was way too easy that is the essence of this problem think about what happens in your book your thirty thousand forty thousand fifty thousand word book from start to finish it's probably too easy there's not enough conflict you don't have subplots subplots thrive off of conflict things happening that make things challenging or difficult obstacles to overcome new places to go to new information to glean from new things to react to thinking about those emotional reactions so concrete tips on what to do if you realize you're all a plot adding a b plot in many books is as simple as adding a romance plot romances are very very commonly b plots in non-romance books romance books of course your a plot is your romance speaking specifically to thrillers one of my favorite genres often in addition to a romance subplot you also get your investigation subplot that is the b plot in one because often the investigator character who forms the b plot the person who helps the main character to do things on the side from the main arc is often also the romantic interest they don't have to be but that's a very easy solution so let's say you have a mystery story and you have your investigator and they come in and there's a murder and you bump them along through the plot add a foil character who they have a little bit of romantic chemistry with for some reason they insert themselves and have a reason a good reason to help that main character investigate that thread is your b plot you're inevitably going to be complicating in a good way your act two so that more things happen there's more misdirection don't be afraid of misdirection you should have purposeful threads particularly in that middle of your book where your characters do go on detours they feel reasoned in the moment you always need like a foundation for why a thing is happening again you don't just add stuff willy-nilly to make your book longer but it's maybe not the right direction but it inevitably points them in the right plot direction that's what subplots do and b plots in particular should intersect with the a plot thoughtfully c plots d plots those additional subplots those can dead end as long as they dead end in a way that still acts to propel your character toward back toward the b or the a plot the next thing to think about and it actually kind of ties in here do you have characters that you introduce early in your book and they just totally disappear either completely from the book they never show up again or they show up in act three but they're gone for like a massive chunk of the book i see this most often happen with characters like parents friends colleagues now in some cases you have an extraneous character who doesn't need to be in your book at all but in other cases you have actually handed yourself those subplots that you need to add to your book think about how to take those characters that you have set up in the beginning and then they disappear why did they disappear oh my character doesn't need them to do this thing well then you're to invent a reason for that character to come back and do something with your main character that's still going to tie into the main plot so for example let's say it it's a y a oh it doesn't have to be a y but let's say it's a parent character and you have them in the beginning for for setup and establishing character and maybe some light conflict in stakes but then they disappear you can add in a subplot give that parent a reason to come back in act 2 once twice maybe more and actively create issues for the main character this can work across genre in something like y.a it's going to be more obviously let's say the parent shows up and is like why are you sneaking out of the house and then ground them and it's a conflict that the character has to work around to get back to the main plot maybe it's a subplot of them learning to stand up to their parent or what have you in a different genre where you know the parent where everyone's an adult maybe it's a subplot with uh the parent is just more and more forgetful and suddenly you have a character who has to deal with a parent where something's wrong maybe they have dementia or something else and maybe of course you come up with a clever plot twisty thing that it's not dimension and it somehow separates expectations to tie into the main plot it really could be anything to bring those side characters in to give them something to do in the book another really great example friends this happens a lot you establish them in the beginning because normal humans have friends and so you want to have the character feel grounded in the social world then the friends disappear because they don't have to do with the main plot that you're writing again find a reason to use them i've seen this in thrillers or mysteries again that have mostly a plots and very few b plots use that friend character as the investigation sidekick give that friend character access to something or a piece of information i mean you could use this in sci-fi you could use this in fantasy that is critical to the main plot but it becomes a sub plot pulling that character in and giving them a reason to interact with your character more and you're gonna have to write all of that extra material so let's say you have a mystery plot whether it's in a mystery thriller sci-fi or a fantasy well all of a sudden the friend character you introduced but didn't really use what if they work at the bank and all of a sudden you're like uh-huh i could use this in my heist plot maybe i'd had it part of my a plot where there's this convoluted way that they accomplished this thing i'd already written well if i change it to the friend having that access well now i have to thread that friend better through the book so that when we get to there they don't just show up out of nowhere to help the character solve a problem you're adding word count to your book then you are adding a subplot with a character who's going to be critical to a plot point that already existed and this brings us back to that question you asked yourself is everything too easy do things happen too easily is it very convenient that everything in the a plot just happens again you're going to use these sub characters whether they were introduced early and you figure out a way to use them or brand new characters you can invent to create subplots and subplots that introduce conflict generally underwritten books simply lack enough conflict usually there can also be the case where your story is jam-packed full of conflict but you're missing all of that in between stuff the reflective moment so it's possible that that first tip solves all your problems and you just add word count by adding a ton of reflection but it's also possible that things are too easy not enough happens and that's why your book is so short and generally the solution to this is what we just talked about it's taking characters who disappeared creating new characters and basically throwing them in the path of your main character to create problems or in some cases solve problems but inevitably what's fun is by finding new solutions to something you have a new variable it'll often create new conflicts and issues like for example that friend helps with the bank heist but let's say that friend gets caught and all of a sudden their life is ruined and you have a friend fight i trust you authors to come up with much better examples than these ones i have on the fly part of things being too easy is you have to challenge yourself in terms of that main character and that a plot and really think about the choices you've made and sometimes this can mean really re-jigging something in your character in your setup in order to add more complication more sub flats even if it means a bit of a change so the example i can give you for this for the ivies it was so the draft was like 70 000 words 74 000 words which doesn't sound underwritten but what i ultimately ended up doing in the final book is about 85 000 words in part because of these changes but i had had something in my setup in my main character where i had her go into the main thrust of the mystery with a lot of knowledge a lot of very specific knowledge in that particular plot her friend is murdered and she hones right in on a reason and she's like it must be this of course there are lots of subversions of reversals that were in the book but at my editor's suggestion she was like what if olivia your main character knows a little less about this other thing that is a given in the first draft if she knows less about that thing she's gonna have to find out all of those things that you had her know originally and it added a whole subplot to the second act that really added texture it helped the pacing and the tension because all of a sudden instead of just one arc there was a whole other one i had to layer on top of it and the pacing goes this to the character finding out new things there was all this new stuff for her to react to because instead of kind of knowing something and being a little kind of embittered to that thing that she knew now i had to factor in shock shame guilt anger think about what is too easy for your character in your underwritten draft and if you change one little thing about their perspective about their knowledge their relationship with a particular character all of a sudden you have new conflicts and subplots to layer into the story the main thrust my main a plot and b plot didn't change but i essentially added i fleshed out the b plot and kind of added a c plot so another thing that underwriters tend to do like they talk about it they admit it is they draft the book and they write all the scenes they want to write they write all the fun exciting scenes and they'll skip what i hear them refer to as the boring scenes so here is where i challenge you underwriters to rethink those boring scenes because if you find them boring and you don't want to write them and i call these scenes functional filler it feels more like filler they are inevitably a little less exciting than the exciting scenes they might be those reflective scenes those emotional breathing moments scenes they're less exciting so it is more fun to write an argument than it is to write the reflection after the argument or the dark moment after someone dies but your book isn't complete without that and that often is what is missing in an underwritten draft that is all plop pop pop plot action exciting fun scenes so first you have to write those scenes i mentioned the emotional reflection and reaction within existing work but you might have to add entire scenes or entire chapters or possibly even many subplots to have those moments and if you're like oh i don't want to write that it's like boring it feels like filler you have to find ways to make it more exciting it shouldn't feel boring or like filler to you because if it feels like that to you to write it two things you either just have to like get better at writing them i've gotten better at writing those scenes over time in part by finding ways to make them more exciting but two slash b if you find it boring your reader will too but that doesn't mean you get to skip those moments so my tip here is to identify where you need them look at your story beat out your story use the blake snyder beat sheet and see what is missing and then find interesting places to set those scenes that you weren't previously excited to write give an interesting element to the weather or the scenery the architecture fashion i mean we're about to talk about description find something that makes you excited to write the scene read some of your favorite moments of emotional catharsis from books and think about what excited you about those scenes those are functional filler scenes and you have to find ways to write them because just adding functional filler if that is what you were lacking that's probably 10 000 words added to your draft or possibly more so yeah are you lacking description this is possibly another problem you have as an underwriter it really depends on the kind of underwriter you are but this tip might solve a lot of problems for you as well first really take yourself to task do you have white room syndrome white room syndrome is where basically your characters when they are talking and doing things might as well be in a white room because you don't describe anything you do not anchor any of those scenes in kind of spatial relations you never kind of give the reader a sense of where they are where physically what physically they are doing are they touching things are they sitting are they standing are they walking is there weather you give them very little to kind of hold on to add all of that stuff it doesn't mean become a purple prose scenery chewing writer but it does mean you go scene to scene and really think about have i described this well enough can people visualize where they are and what is happening with the what is happening let's say it's a dot you have a lot of dialogue scenes is it all dialogue tags very few action tags that are going to anchor the reader physically in the space so that they can create a mental image do you have a scene start and then here's the thing you have all the visuals in your head they just haven't made them onto the page let's say you know that the character starts on one end of the room standing by a table and they by the end of it they've crossed to the room and they're sitting on a settee but if the only thing that makes it onto the page is at randomly in the middle of the scene she sat down on the set t the reader's like from where where were they what is this space you gotta add that so another thing that if you have skimped on it and it's just not your favorite thing to do you can learn to enjoy it you gotta add all of that specificity of detail i highly recommend you become friends with pinterest you become friends with images because the this is my cheat for adding very specific detail i actually enjoy writing very specific detail to be fair think about in all of those scenes and settings and places what's the architecture think about the five senses how does it smell how does something feel obviously what does something look like if that if visuals are your go-to it can be a breeze on someone's skin fashion describing what people are wearing or how the clothes in their body feel these are great little details that you can add to something that are going to flesh out your narrative and just give the reader more to chew on and the thing is don't think of adding all of this description adding all of these the sensory details as filler i think that some underwriters are like oh god that's just so frustrating all description should be functional as well description should be a reflection of your character your pov character the lens through which you're telling the story the details that you choose to share should say something about character they should say something about the world and you can also use them to add to and drive conflict even if it's micro conflict like maybe the dress material is scratchy and then just that just adds a little detail maybe a detail that's important maybe a detail that isn't important but it definitely added something some kind of tension to the scene while also adding visual specificity or sensory specificity again it's not about going overboard but a little bit goes a long way go through your whole manuscript and look for these little opportunities and even if you're only adding 5 000 words across a 50 000 word manuscript if you're also doing this alongside all that other stuff next thing you know you have a novel so next i am going to just pepper you with questions suggestions for things that possibly might be your problem as an underwriter going basically structurally through a novel so first the beginning are you starting in the right place have you started right on action have you thrown the reader straight into the inciting incident well maybe you need to add a little bit of build up it's okay to have a bit of build up to the exciting thing that happens in the book the beginning of the book should essentially establish the status quo of your world of your character the way things are also what that character wants so that when you throw in that thing that crazy thing that inciting incident the thing that makes things change the reader has enough to grasp onto to care but also so that they kind of know the basics so that as you move through the book you're not dragging or pacing in other parts of the book by bringing up info dumping or backstory so this means looking for opportunities right at the beginning of your book that actually allow the reader to settle into your world settle into your characters and so you can add some scenes or possibly even chapters before your inciting incident or even after there should be stuff that happens after the inciting incident but before the break into two that is where your character is going to make a choice that propels them into the main action of the book that can also be a place to add emotional reflection establishing scenes with some of those characters that you may be dropped later or you've added so that you can use them for subplots essentially anything that's going to be important later in the book you do have to find a way to work it into act one so really hone in and think about is your pacing essentially too fast in your first act breakneck pace is good in a book but usually in other spots in the book i talked about moments of reflection i talked about sub flats i talked well i mentioned subplots and investigations this is a great place to discuss red herrings and reversals these are momentary setbacks these are things that get that are going to happen in your act to starts and stops where a promising direction happens and then it's like oh no that is not the right thing and these are aspects of adding subplots conflicts etc so in act 2 you should have a bunch of these little things happen it shouldn't be too easy to go from the break into two to your midpoint so that's going to be something big that shifts in the middle of the book it shouldn't be too easy to get there and it shouldn't be too easy after because there's stuff that happens after a big twist in the middle and your climax there's actually a lot of stuff that happens between your twist in the middle and your climax and i think a lot of underwritten projects skip a lot of that and that is where your subplots and extra conflicts and characters are going to come in handy so for example let's say you have a romance and your big middle twist is a betrayal it shouldn't go straight from the betrayal maybe your character reflects a tiny bit but then there's a climactic escalation and a happily ever after you skipped a lot of stuff you need subplots you need other people who are meddling in things you need other things for your character to focus on as they barrel toward that break into three and then the climax i know a lot of this structurey stuff is like what so i will link below to some videos where i talk about structure i particularly have done this in relation to thrillers and romances because that is where i have the most experience and those might help you know some of like all that stuff that you're supposed to have in your act too but a reversal essentially and not having enough of them means you don't have enough moments in act two it's basically building tension it comes to a point and then it recedes and then you build tension again there should be lots of those kinds of exciting stops and starts readers want those things they don't want it to be too easy but it also shouldn't be by the way maybe you have just like awful thing awful thing awful thing because you can't have too much conflict so to speak that's where you're missing those reflective moments or like little moments of win after something you have a setback you should have some kind of moment of triumph reversals you reverse kind of the mood and the feeling so just essentially make sure you have enough of a push and pull an emotional tug going through your act too enough things need to happen so i already mentioned like do you jump right from your midpoint to your climax consider that because there's a major beat that has to well there's a lot of beats but there's one major beat that has to come between that and this might mean you an underwriter need to study story structure a bit it's called the break into three so there is going to be that kind of moment that again is going to propel the main character to make some kind of choice or do something that inevitably propels them toward the climax so you need to make sure that you have that moment and very often it's actually the work of the subplots that is going to create that most often it is the b plot what i've seen in some underwritten books the ones that are all a plot and not enough b-plot is technically that moment exists but it's not supported enough it feels too easy and thus basically everything happens too fast and the climax is going to feel unearned speaking of the climax after the climax comes the finale and i have harped on this in many many videos many people underwrite this section of the book you can also tragically overrate it endings are very very hard but this is an emotional reflection moment really look at your finale your climax going into your finale have you written a scene or a chapter a moment heck sometimes it's just a couple of meaty paragraphs where your character breathes they let out the breath they didn't know they were holding the reader needs this this is actually for the reader but you do it through the character you have to have that moment that beat that scene that chapter to let out a breath a reflecting moment you're tying up loose ends and then you can have your beautiful sunny wonderful finale scene but i very often find that this moment which i call the denouement is missing in underwritten manuscripts in rushed endings so my last tip same as it was for the overwriters you can't do this all by yourself give your book to someone else now my overwriters were going to ask their critique partners to tell them when they were bored now it's possible that same question can help you as an underwriter it's possible you've chewed the scenery in some places and don't have enough of something else but more likely the questions that are going to help you when you're getting feedback from other people on your underwritten project you need to ask them where things feel rushed where they were confused about character emotions like how did the character go from here to here you're missing emotional beats or kind of logical support really anything where they tell you a relationship felt too easy insta love uh just a romance happening too easily a mystery solved to easily ask them if they guess the twist any book that has any kind of mystery thread ask them those questions ask them to even check in with you as they're reading to give you their reactions as they're reading what they're feeling what they're thinking their guesses for what's happening if any of that's too easy regardless of what your book is romance fantasy sci-fi etc if they are telling you oh i bet this is what's gonna happen and they are bang on correct your book is too easy doesn't have enough conflict also ask them what characters did they notice disappeared what characters did they like but they felt like they didn't get enough from that can give you really good clues of like who you're under utilizing maybe you set them up really really well but then they disappear i generally with critique partners like to ask them to give me questions like any question they had while reading i want it this is going to help you whether you are an overwriter or an underwriter but especially for an underwriter this can help show you what is missing because i think something that happens with underwriting whether you are an underwriter or an overwriter because you can underwrite parts of your manuscript either way we take for granted details and things because we hold in our heads everything that's going on everything about the characters it's very obvious to us and we can skip putting that on the page because we're so excited by the story because we want to get it done maybe it's intentional that you're dirty drafting and underwriting maybe it's unintentional that you skipped over a whole backstory for example perhaps and so a character's motivations just don't make sense but you can use critique partners to kind of zero in on what is missing and then it's your job to add that stuff to the story and another thing that's come up in some of my other videos and i'll link down below to an entire video on it narration versus dramatization can also come up a ton in underwriting it's possible you're going a little heavy on narration which is when you kind of matter-effectly say what happens to move the story along but you don't have enough dramatization overwriters can of course have the opposite problem maybe you just have like a quick narrated line and there's an opportunity there to have an entire dialogue scene to kind of add richness and conflict to something is it too easy that they go from point a to point b with nothing in between you can look for opportunities to basically add scenes and chapters where previously you maybe had like a couple of lines to move the story along definitely look for those opportunities and even just on a micro level because you just you literally need to add more to the book maybe it's a line they kissed describe the kiss what led up to it how it felt in it i mean kissing's awkward to rate but like think about character emotions really i think it all comes back to character pov and lensing inevitably if your book is underwritten you probably don't have enough of the character of their observations of their feelings really the lens through which you were telling the story it should feel like their story they should feel fleshed out as a character and all the characters around them should feel that way as well and that includes making sure that there is enough conflict and stakes to what is going on that the reader feels the push and the pull always think about the emotional reading experience books that are essentially too quickly paced which is often the thing with underwritten work you don't get the emotional experience of reading that you want there isn't enough tension because there isn't enough push and pull and in between i hope this helped if you are an underwriter i hope i sparked an idea something that you can look at something that you can try and definitely check out my overwriter's video because it's possible you're overwriting some sections but underwriting others and vice versa i hope there are overwriters watching this as well these are lots of different solutions to different problems that you can either have overall with a manuscript or kind of on a micro level in bits of your manuscript let me know down below in the comments if you have any questions if you are an underwriter or you're very familiar with helping underwriters i would love to hear some of your best tips and tricks for tackling underwriting and give this video a thumbs up if you like and i will make more kind of instructional discussion style videos about craft and if you're not already subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that i post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 20,910

Rating: 4.9791665 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, underwriters, tips for underwriters, book too short, adding more to a book, adding words to a book, short book, book problems, book editing, editing help

Id: h6dbfeFQqc8

Length: 33min 11sec (1991 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020