: Re: How can I add depth to my story or how do I determine if my story already has depth? I am new to writing. I wrote a lot when I was a kid and teen. I wrote my first book at 6 and then

@Eichhorn147

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A good way to ask if your work has meaning is to ask this simple question:

What is this story about?

With this in mind, a shallow story pops out like a sore thumb; the extent their answer can go to is 'It's about good people who are kind defeating bad people who are selfish' would be a good example. Or to use an actual example, say, Twilight:

'It's about a wallflower girl getting romanced by a hot mormon demigod vampire'.

This alone shows there's little going on beneath the surface. On the contrary, my most recent unpublished novel was actually overwrought, meaning it was equally bad, but unlike Twilight, also unmarketable. When asking the same of 'The Tale of Amerei Gemcutter', the answer looks something like this:

'It's about a girl coming of age, escaping a neglectful family, learning a skill, then settling on a new family while understanding the balance between accepting her desires while doing what's right, while also having a man learning to balance reason with assertiveness, getting over his abusive family and past, and accepting his worthiness to become a parent.'

This is way too much for one story, and the publishers were right to reject me as overly ambitious and rambling. Contrast with something like Terry Pratchett's Mort, which is:

'It's about a teenage boy getting an insight into the nature of death, fate, and duty as he gets an apprenticeship with the embodiment of Death'

Or perhaps my latest novel-in the works:

'It's about a woman who was raised in a cult getting exposed to ideas beyond her paradigm, and how she matures to cope with this.'

The answer to this simple question says a lot about the story's depth and quality.

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