: Re: How to add depth to writing - turn a story into a book I've had a few 'great ideas' for books. I'm a big sci-fi fan, especially Michael Crichton. I'm not sure if that's relevant but there

@Phylliss352

Vote Up Vote Down

You haven't posted excerpts of your half-a-story-in-six-pages draft, but I can already imagine some of the things you're probably not doing that novels inevitably do:

"And then X happened" is a whole scene, and the author ensures we can visualise its setting, and the characters' activities and relative placement within it.
The progression of a scene is liable to occur via a fair few lines of dialogue, some of which are part of a paragraph that makes clear what's happening during the speech.
Every appearance of a character is either true to what they've been established to be or part of how we know who they are. The latter occurs not only in their introduction, but also any key part of their character development. What's more, events unfold according to character traits, which might result in stumbling blocks other characters have to overcome.
Writers don't tell us characters' mental states; they let us infer them through the behaviours we are shown. This usually takes more words, but that's not why we do it.

Redo your planning phase, but this time work out how the above would be accomplished in the scenes, not just that X would happen then Y then Z.

(0)

Login to post a comment!