Not long ago I finished a draft of a novel. It felt thin in spots. It’s hard to describe perfectly, but rereading it, I found myself thinking, “There should be more there” about some pages and scenes. In some cases, I’d written dialogue but it wasn’t revealing a character’s thoughts. Or, the dialogue lacked context in the form of setting or actions that the characters took while they were speaking. The draft was also shorter than I wanted it to be. It was under 50,000 words.
I decided that the main goal of the next draft would be to address both the thin spots and the length. Happy with the plot, adding a subplot or another character seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I think I was influenced by the Oulipo group’s larding exercise.
If you’re facing similar concerns with a complete draft of yours, try this:
- Determine the number of words you’d like your final draft to be. This number is your goal.
- Subtract the number of words of your current draft from that goal. This is the number of words you lack.
- Divide that lack by the current number of pages of your draft. The resulting number is your target number.
- Read through the draft again. Add—in some way that helps your draft—your target number in words to each page.
For example, let’s say you’d like a draft to be 50,000, but it is currently 45,000. The difference between those numbers is 5,000. Your 45,000-word draft is 85 single-spaced pages. Divide 5,000 by 85 and you need to add about 59 words to each page to reach your goal.
The crucial thing is finding ways to add those sixty words that help the draft. For example, I reviewed ways of making setting interesting and my characters’ backstories before I started. The words I added improved characterization and setting as a result.
Writing Fiction 