I love this writing advice from Elizabeth Sims in her recent Writer’s Digest article, “Miscalculations & Missteps.”

In both children’s and adult writing contests, I’ve read many short stories that try to become novels, and writing that someone identifies as a novel but it REALLY should be a short story. How to tell if your characters/theme/plot is suitable for which genre?

“Take two unrelated heart-clutching moments, or two unrelated story points, or even two unrelated characters, and challenge yourself to come up with a way to link them.”

Do you have enough complexity to hold a reader’s interest for a novel? This exercise will help you discover the layers or depth you need for a longer work of fiction.

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Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff

Tags: Add depth to your novel, Elizabeth Sims' article in Writer's Digest, Is it a short story or should it be a novel?, Novel Writing, Short Story

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 5th, 2013 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Fiction, Novel Writing, Writing Prompts, Writing Technique. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.