How Big Should Your Story Be?

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Welcome! I'm K.M. Weiland, the award-winning and internationally published author of acclaimed writing guides such as Structuring Your Novel and Creating Character Arcs. I mentor authors on story theory, technique, and all the wild and wonderful highs and lows of the writing life!
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This week's question is from @andyclark3530: "I’m wondering if you have any tips for determining if your story is likely too big. I’m looking at this from a short story perspective, but it can be a consideration for a novel as well. Lotr in 200 hundred pages wouldn’t have worked."
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Опубликовано:

3 янв 2024

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Комментарии : 29

@BibleQuestShow 6 месяцев назад

I've been watching your videos on and off for the last 10 years. Last year I wrote my first screenplay for a pilot of a Christian kids animation. I just wanted to say thanks for the videos you make. You always presented the knowledge of story writing in a way that made it feel accessible to me, someone who was not naturally a writer, but wanted to learn. I'd love to show you the pilot to get your feedback, if you have the time to view. Could I email you a link to view a preview?

@franlyons5091 6 месяцев назад

Congratulations on your screenplay!

@andyclark3530 6 месяцев назад

Congratulations!

@edubs9828 6 месяцев назад

It's always a great day when you sit down at your computer, getting ready to write, and you have something new from @KMWeilandAuthor waiting for you! I'm so pumped to work on my project now. Thank you for all of your helpful lessons.

@ib12us 6 месяцев назад

Amazing how things come up when I start to question myself on writing. Several stories cropped up in my head and as I thought of them I wondered how long they might be. Short, mid, or long ones. Thanks for the tips on how to weight them.

@TheZetaKai 6 месяцев назад

Synchronicities are real.

@robinmcfarland3226 6 месяцев назад

Your four considerations about story length helps me consider the weight each element needs to tell the story. Offering flexibility gives me wiggle room to develop the story and later edit to balance the elements. This was timely for me as I am wrapping up my first novel. I am glad to have found your site.

@AEmiliusLives 6 месяцев назад

I've been having a similar issue. I've written a short fantasy story that I want to animate, but by now I've inflated it with a lot of lore that I might only hint at here and there, and I'm sort of satisfied with it 'cause it's a little story told in a big world, but I feel like it can be too much 😅

@rolanddenzel-authorcoach 6 месяцев назад

I dug myself a bigness rabbit hole when I decided my book should be book 1 of a series. I should probably just go back in time and write the book, then deal with the consequences of my decisions during book 2 😏

@joevaldez6457 6 месяцев назад

Terrific video, Katie. One of my favorite authors Sara Gran gave me some great advice which was when it comes to writing a new book to leave the door open to writing many different types of books. We might think we want to to do a Tolkien trilogy when a great standalone takes shape, or that we want to write a quick short story and a series reveals itself. The muse may take us somewhere completely different.

@TheZetaKai 6 месяцев назад

This is where even the most cursory outline can save a pantser from their muse taking them in a direction that they weren't prepared to go. An online is where a story's scope can be set, well before feature creep can rear its time-wasting head. If you're allergic to plotting ahead of time, then I won't try to convince you to change your style, but I will say that even the most scanty of outlines can nail down the scope of a story (among other things) before the first word is written.

@TheZetaKai 6 месяцев назад

I've had similar struggles with the scope of my stories. I'm writing my first novel, an epic fantasy trilogy, and I had an entire subplot in the third book that I had to cut. It was awesome, and I loved it, and I will definitely reuse it someday, but it just didn't fit with the rest of the book(s), so I had to kill my darlings. Writers get so attached to their stories, and I am no exception, but this story would benefit from a more focused, cohesive narrative, without such a significant tangent, no matter how cool it "might" be.

@rodschmidt8952 6 месяцев назад

can you make that subplot into a whole other story? a sequel, maybe?

@TheZetaKai 6 месяцев назад

@@rodschmidt8952 I do intend to use it; I just have to find the right story to tell it in: characters that make it compelling, a setting that fits that plot, and themes that resonate with it. One day...

@t0dd000 5 месяцев назад

I'm at 135k and just hit the midpoint of my thriller. Oi. My focus right now is to finish it and only then solve the issue of my copious overwriting. And yeah, lots and lots and lots of showing. I get complimented on my clever description. Unfortunately, there's a lot of it. Heh.

@DaltonKevinM 6 месяцев назад

Andy is making me jealous. As a 100% pantser this is a concern of mine, but not about being "too big." Being a 100% panster is like playing poker with your characters, but everyone can see everyone else's cards - my characters know what I have in store for them. I ascribe to the belief that your novel should adhere to a singular theme, and anything that might be a second theme within the same novel ought to be a tangential exploration of the main theme. But how does one make the transition from short story to long? Is there an innate myopia that I must unlearn?

@TheZetaKai 6 месяцев назад

Who is Andy?

@rolanddenzel-authorcoach 6 месяцев назад

@@TheZetaKaiAndy is the person who posed the question!

@user-it6mu1pw9p 6 месяцев назад

Hi Katie. Just found out that you have a RU-vid channel. It's so helpful to hear your answers to the questions posed by your readers. I wanted to ask you, how would one blend two genres? For example, my story is a romantic mystery in an SFF setting. I have juxtaposed the mystery beats you provided with the romance beats you provided on your website but I don't know how to blend them. How do the corresponding beats relate to each other? Does the mystery pull them closer while the romance pulls them apart and vice versa or are they both in harmony? Is it amix of the two? I thought of the idea at the core of my story, which intertwines both the romance and the mystery elements. It is: how are the MCs connected to each other (they share a mysterious connection).

@immortaljanus 6 месяцев назад

I tend to remove the slow scenes that don't contribute to the plot of the novel. But if these scenes are good because they show characters doing mundane things, I will consider using them as freebies in the marketing once I publish.

@rodschmidt8952 6 месяцев назад

just make sure you don't give readers the impression that the whole novel is slow. Sell the Sizzle!

@victorcorrealivros 6 месяцев назад

Loving your channel! 🥰

@prenevost53 5 месяцев назад

Another excellent video, very helpful!

@danieljackson654 6 месяцев назад

Very helpful. Perhaps the self-indulgence factor functioned as my Wake Up call. I can see how the bigness of my story (with all its twists and turns) indulges my experience, let alone my fantasy. Like mist driven before the warming day, I see how this factor drags down my progress. Thank you.

@nealabbott6520 6 месяцев назад

for me, i never really worried about length. a story takes as long as it takes. i'd hate to pad a story just to make it longer of cut thing that may need just to shorten it

@Dark_Mishra 5 месяцев назад

7:37 The Chekov’s Gun rule has significantly helped me keep both words counts and unnecessary elements under control better. I enjoy epic fantasy stories/movies as much as the next person, but excessive uses of macguffins and/or red herrings can really bloat a story unnecessarily.

@MightyTimYoung 6 месяцев назад

Thanks, K.M. My story about a certain guy's trials and tribulations with his friends and lovers is really stretching out. I'm at 45K on my first draft with no end in sight! Appreciate all your tips.

@InnocenceVVX 3 месяца назад

Bit soft audio! Could use a bit more gain/normalisation.

@andyclark3530 6 месяцев назад

Thanks for answering my questions - I definitely appreciated it. I think I'm a little odd in that for short stories, I write to a target word count. Right now, I'm shooting for stories in the 1500-2500 word range, though I fairly often find myself slipping to around 3000 or longer. The really problematic thing is when I write a nice, tight little story coming inside my target range, go through a couple of revisions, and suddenly realize I'm at the mid-point of the story I should be writing. In a short story, this is not such a bad problem to run into. In a novel it would be a tragedy! Thanks as always. Bless you.