Why Can't I Write More Than 20,000 Words?

Your problem might be that you're hitting the dreaded middle. If you write without an outline, chances are you've thought of a great inciting event but haven't filled in any of the details. You might even have an end picked out, but you don't know how to get there.

There are a lot of good online resources on how to plot a novel. You might benefit from some greater structure, even if these methods can seem a bit formulaic.

Hope this helps.

It could be a number of things (this is a person by person issue) but it may have something to do with your plot and/or organization.

Some people can write off the top of their head, others require a detailed outline. I fall somewhere in the middle, but I'll share something I did once that worked great at getting me past the middle.

After you have the basic plot (the characters, what you roughly want to happen), you can do a basic chapter-by-chapter outline. Determine your goal for the chapter and how it will contribute to the grand finale or character development. Then you can start writing bullet points. At first it may seem boring, but then you can look at the bullet points for the scene(s) and determine how to create tension and conflict. In others words, what will keep the reader reading? If you get X amount of chapters down the line and get stuck, you can go back and change things without re-writing thousands of words. It's also an easy way to go back and add in a subplot if you need one.

Of course, having all the basics of writing down pat helps too. Both of Donald Maass's books are very informative, and might help you with any other number of problems you have in getting past the middle and onto the good stuff at the end!

Have you tried expanding a story you feel has a completed plot arc?

The dreaded middle thing is for real and it can drive you so insane that you never finish anything. Make sure you LOVE LOVE LOVE what you've chosen to make into a novel and you'll find your way. I don't mean to be vague, but that's how I finish projects -- I don't work on anything I know I can't be 100 percent behind.

ryanswofford said:

For some reason, and I have no idea why, I have never been able to write a novel (60,000 words), no matter how hard I've tried. I mean, I can make it to 20,000 words, which is a small novella, but I want something big and powerful - you know: a novel.

So does anyone have any tips on how to fully complete the narrative arc of a full-out novel? And what am I doing wrong by never being able to make the mark?

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My own personal problem right now is keeping a novel at 60k. Both of my completed MS ended up at 112k and 113k respectively. The publisher read one and said, "Hey this is great, now trim it to 80k!" I have recently finished a 3rd, which is out with my beta readers.. A personal victory at 84k!

My advice to you is that you are missing something.

- Cheating a character or two of story time
- Leaving out scenes that build your story better or inform us about a character.
- Setting your overall story goal too short.
- Missing an overall theme (think moral of the story.)

Best I can do without reading it.

Hope this helps,

John

Big question - do your 20,000 words make a complete work? Because it might just be your natural home, and if that's the case - well - I dunno. Maybe combine a couple of themes and see where that takes you? (Themes, not WiPs...)

Good luck. I'm a natural 65,000 worder, so (to some extent) I feel your pain

There's no magic tip.

You either have characters and story that will take 60,000+ words to relate or you don't. If the characters have no goals or difficulties to overcome there is no story to tell.

Read books of the type you wish to write.

I don't have a lot of experience, all I've written so far is one fantasy novel.
It started as a short story and I knew that I wanted to extend it, but at first I had no idea where I wanted it to go.
So I started playing with another novel, a brand new idea that is pretty much dead now, but while focusing on this new project my old one began dominating my brain with new ideas.
It sounds really odd, but that's how it happened.
When I was done with it, it was a total of about 50k words. I have an amazing friend who is interested in the fantasy genre and he started editing it with me.
After editing, my novel was 73k words. There is a lot of things that you will want to add, like I had to put in 3/4 extra chapters to strengthen the main events and the characters.
I hope this helps a bit.

A few possibilities I can see:

-You're naturally a novella writer. In which case, keep on going, you're fine.
- You're telling rather than showing. Works with lots of telling tend to be shorter because it takes up less space. 'He was angry' compared to 'He clenched his fists at his side and gritted his teeth' for example.
- You are not including enough conflict, or the conflict is resolved too quickly. Keep adding problems preventing the characters from reaching their goal. Ensure the conflicts naturally stem from each other.
- You have too few subplots. This can be fixed by fleshing out secondary characters and giving them goals that complement or conflict with the main characters, and following their stories as well. Perhaps SC1 is in debt and the actions of MC are preventing them from paying it off, leading to danger for SC1.

Look for evidence of any of this in your writing, and also try swapping your usual writing style - if you're normally a plotter try writing without one, if you're normally a pantser try plotting out the next one. Forcing yourself out of your comfort zone often helps.

If you're less of a planner, you might find National Novel Writing Month useful. (There's another discussion going on about it here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=253808)

For me, I had never written more than 20-25k in original fiction before my first NaNoWriMo. (I did have a 40k fanfiction I'd written once -- go figure.) So my first year, I pretty much kept making things worse and worse for the characters until I finally got far enough in that I could start bringing things to a conclusion. I won't say the resulting novel was stellar. Actually, it was pretty bad. But I did prove to myself that yes, I can write something that's 50k long and have it be one cohesive story.

Another NaNoWriMo year, I planned out the opening, the big ending, and what the midway point would be and wouldn't let myself write that midway scene until I hit 25k. This actually worked out about right. The first half had a bit of its own plot arc and the MC got a small victory after that, but the big overarching problem still wasn't solved. That made the book a lot stronger than its predecessors, imo, and after that year, I had a lot less problems with thinking of "stuff to happen" to hit that 50k mark. I started forming plots in my head that actually needed 50k to be told.

The following NaNoWriMo was the year I actually wrote a book that started getting agent requests, although it's been edited so much at this point, calling them the same book might be a stretch.

Anyway, it's a ton of learning and a ton of writing words that you know will never see the light of day. But if it's a method that works for you, it might be worth a try.

Hope this helps.

If the story is good at 20K, then leave it alone. It's a long short fiction, prob a novelette or something. Polish it up and try selling it.

There was a day when a writer wrote a story and didn't worry so much about length. Shorts, novellas, novels, serials, etc. A story was the length it needed to be. Now we worry about a novel being at least 80K and it can't be over 110 unless perhaps it's scifi or epic fantasy or whatever.

But if you must flesh this 20K gem out, add a subplot or extra description or go back and make sure you're not simply 'telling' everything. Read your dialogue aloud - can more be added that would help the story, and simply not add unnecessary stuffing?

I write all lengths, short, medium, long - whatever the story takes. So far I'm published in three lengths, short story, novelette and novella, but my longest novellas are slightly longer than 20K. They have all been published as 'short fiction' without regard to the nomenclature that separates short fiction into other categories.

Here's another idea, set it and any other 'short works' aside. Gather up three or four of them and try selling them as a collection.

jaksen said:

There was a day when a writer wrote a story and didn't worry so much about length. Shorts, novellas, novels, serials, etc. A story was the length it needed to be. Now we worry about a novel being at least 80K and it can't be over 110 unless perhaps it's scifi or epic fantasy or whatever.

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A bit OT, but I think that day is returning. I wrote a novella in the early '90s and was told that the length was essentially unpublishable (never mind the other genre and story problems it had!). Now, you can put out any length whatsoever as an e-book.

That said, I agree with the other PPs that plotting may be the OP's big issue.

The late Kate Duffy used to advise novice writers to chop off the first three chapters of the manuscript. Those first three chapters, she said, were frequently backstory and 'I have to tell the reader about' and 'this reveals the character', rather than the story actually happening.

So look at your 20K words. How much of that is explaining how granddad's map to the Dutchman's Mine got lost in 1892 or why there are werewolves in Chicago or how John will never trust women again because of his first wife?

One way to assess your 20K is to pinpoint the Inciting Incident. The Inciting Incident (a) must take place on stage (b) in the 'now' of the story. It must (c) contain the protagonist and (d) be absolutely essential to the story. Leave the I.I. out and the story doesn't happen.

Mark that I.I. point in the ms.
Remove all the words before it.

Go through the words after it and remove anything that isn't chronologically after the Inciting Incident.

Remove anything that isn't
dialog or action that happens on stage,
internals about what is happening on stage, or
description of what is happening on stage.

Generally speaking, the wordage you have left is the story you've written.

If you keep sticking at 20K words, it might be because you're a whiz at imagining worlds, but don't yet have the hang of writing the story that unfolds there. Good at nest building, so to speak, but not yet so good at raising chicks.

The only trick that works is to reach twenty thousand words, and then keep writing. Length is a choice, stopping is a choice, and continuing until you hit the length you want is a choice.

Jamesaritchie said:

The only trick that works is to reach twenty thousand words, and then keep writing. Length is a choice, stopping is a choice, and continuing until you hit the length you want is a choice.

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what?

I've written 60,000 words before, but right now I'm at the 20,000 mark in my current WIP and I've hit a brick wall. I think it's quite natural in the middle. You might have become uninspired or lost your passion. Try to remember why you started writing this for in the first place - what sparked that passion in you? What was it about the idea that had you gripped?

Maybe you didn't plan enough, and you're stuck. In that case, start planning again. Write a later scene if it helps.

Good luck.

I read the comments and suggestions just now and they're good. Yep. Good advice. So why do I imagine you sitting there, staring at your screen, thinking, I know this shit. I can't do it.

I wrote a novella: 17,000 words and reality hit me like a damn sledgehammer: I'm going to play hell selling this thing as is. I need to make it longer. I need to write at least 60,000 words. So I kicked it around for a while. I realized that I was kind of paralyzed by the idea of fleshing out this--whatever it was.

My problem was, I wrote the thing and I thought it was done. I resisted considering that it wasn't. Then I thought, what if. . .

That's the key, I think. What if. Look at what you wrote, and think to yourself, what if A happened? What if B did this? What if X, Y, or Z happened before. It doesn't hurt to kick around some what ifs, see if anything clicks. Another idea: Think of the story you'd like to read, the characters, plot, give yourself permission to consider alternate plot lines. Maybe another character thrown into the mix. Alternative endings, alternative beginnings.

Don't sell yourself short. You have a great imagination, right? Give yourself permission to consider the possibilities.

Personally I think story ideas come in different sizes. I personally have difficulty with short stories because I'm not in that habit of looking for or producing ideas that small. The size of the idea is determined by the number of elements involved (I think of these as the threads in the story's tapestry) and the number of contortions necessary to get from the origin of the problem to the solution of the problem (I think of these as the type of pattern you are weaving - something like argyle takes more back and forth movements of individual threads than something like stripes). So, IF you are producing a complete story arc in 20 pages and IF you are already showing instead of summarizing and telling the same story in more words would just be padding, then it might be possible you are starting with too small of an idea.

Plotting, plotting, and more plotting. Make a beat sheet and stick to it.

Mm. I feel ya, brother. *fistbump* I tend to get stuck at 40k or thereabouts myself.

One thing I realized somewhat recently about myself: I sometimes write with the idea of a sequel or multiple books in a series. When I do that, I plot out the the "first" novel in my head and save various other plot points for the "next" one. Guess what? That cuts my word count in half. So to make it work better, I had to make the decision to tell the ENTIRE story in one book, without holding anything back.

Another thing I discovered about myself somewhat before that: I'm flimsy on descriptions. I forget to map out the setting or tell readers what my characters look like. You might not need all that, but in the cases of folks like us, you can always pop in whatever you think you might need, and then trim it back later.

Failing that: throw a wrench in the works. Someone gave me that advice during NaNo one year, and it stuck wonderfully. Is the Big Bad defeated? Bring in his son/daughter/spouse/apprentice to finish the job. Set something on fire. Kill off an important character. Bring someone back from the dead. Run the car off the road. Pick up a mysterious hitchhiker who knows more about the plot than he should.

Just a few ideas.

But I do agree with previous posters that 20k isn't a death knell anymore. I have one manuscript that won't move past 50k, and it seems like a good fit, so I'm going to seek an e-publisher for it. Go with what feels right for that story.

This is a quick reply but

1. Not enough plotting
2. Not enough showing (too much telling)
3. Not enough character development or secondary characters
4. Not enough scenery changes
5. Not enough themes/issues

ryanswofford said:

So does anyone have any tips on how to fully complete the narrative arc of a full-out novel? And what am I doing wrong by never being able to make the mark?

Click to expand...

Very likely, the problem is your structure. Maybe you have a beginning and an ending and no middle. Try mapping out your scenes to see what you have, because that puts a different perspective on it. Sometimes the gaps become very apparent.

Planning is the answer.
The problem, however, is that planning sometimes tends to take out the inspiration. The story has been built, it is done, time to move on--irrational, but typical.