How to increase word count without making a story boring? from r/writing
How to increase word count without making a story boring?
>>My current word count is 25,000 and I need to get it up to at least 65,000. Right now, I'm focusing on adding more descriptions and going further into the characters' thoughts, but I worry these are slowing down the pace of the story. I personally get bored when an author does both of those things. Any suggestions? Tl;dr OP needs idea to increase word count.
What I do in this situation is start asking "What if...?" questions, then having my characters act out those what ifs and see where it goes.
I'll take a scene that feels like it could go somewhere and I start asking questions about it:
I've done every one of these questions and they've always helped me make my main character's life hell. :P
I'll write and write and write and write, maybe 1,000 or 2,000 or more words, full free flow with no clue what direction it'll take. When I get to the end of the scene, I'll go back and read it, while tossing questions like the ones above at it. Next thing I know, I'll be writing the next scene. The question will have inspired me to toss another person or item or event into the end of that first scene, and I'll write it out to see where it goes. I'll write and write and write until I reach the result of that change. Then I'll start throwing around some more "What ifs?" Wat if it started snowing? So I'll write it snowing and see how the characters react. Wait, what if it had rained instead? I'll go back to where it started snowing, write a new version of that scene now with rain and see where it goes. Then I'll look at both scenes and determine which one better fit the way the story was going. I'll use one and save the other as an indea file to maybe be used in something else later.
I love this type of method for fleshing out stories because it adds interesting events and puts in new subplots, and takes the story down winding paths of adventure that I had not originally planned on it taking, and does so without out just adding fluffy descriptions to fill up space. It gives my character something new to do, something that sidetracks him and takes him off the path to his main primary plot goal. Now he not only has to reach his goal, but he has to first get back on track so he can reach that goal
The TL;DR of it is: Your character needs to get from point A to point B, so let's toss in X, Y, and Z, to trip him up and see how he climbs over these stumbling blocks I've thrown at him. If your character is getting to his end goal too quickly, he needs more roadblocks to work around and make it more difficult for him to reach his goal. These roadblocks are also called side quests and sub-plots.
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