# Determining the scope/length of ideas



## J Anfinson (Sep 15, 2013)

I thought it would be interesting to know how others determine whether their idea is broad enough to turn into a novel, or better written as a novella, or short story. 

I'm not sure that I've come up with a novel length idea yet. As I write, I find myself moving through the plot faster than I intend to and knowing I could never get a novel out of it. So I'm just wondering: Do others know whether they've got a novel before they start writing, or does everyone go through the amount of trial and error I seem to be going through? *

My biggest problem is always pacing. Been reading a lot to try and absorb how it's done, and the progress with that is slow. Maybe I'm just impatient.

Anyway, I've tried searching the site about this and haven't found anything specifically addressing this, so if it's just another dumb question then I apologize.


*I've tried in-depth outlining. Makes the writing boring, IMO.


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## wehttam (Sep 15, 2013)

Sometimes I get an idea that I'm sure would work in a short story, but when I actually write it, the story doesn't have any real oomph. Other times I've felt like I had a real novel on my hands, only for it to fall apart before the second act. Then again, I've never written a piece of fiction that I was really satisfied with, so I think the only thing my experience could tell you is that effort and editing are what really makes a successful piece.


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## Jeko (Sep 16, 2013)

> I thought it would be interesting to know how others determine whether their idea is broad enough to turn into a novel



I use the following criteria:

1) Can I be bothered to write a novel out of this?

If yes, it can be a novel.

If no:

2) Do I care about getting bothered?

If yes, maybe it could be a novel.

If no, an exercise it shall be.


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## popsprocket (Sep 16, 2013)

I'm completely and stunningly rubbish at short fiction. All of my ideas are spawned with the intent of being a full novel.

To determine if they would be enough, I keep extrapolating on ideas until I can see if there's enough characters and conflicts and plot threads to get 100k out of.


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## Sintalion (Sep 16, 2013)

Honestly I just write the story and concern myself with word counts after I'm mostly done. That's what I do for genre and chapters, too. When I edit, that's when I watch my word count and do things such as make sure that my horror is scary and such. 

Whether or not I go from idea to manuscript generally depends on if there's a keyboard in front of me. I never ask myself if it could or couldn't be a novel. It's more instinctual for me. I do only work on one project at a time, so usually ideas are shelved until I have conpleted the previous thing.


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## luckyscars (Sep 16, 2013)

Unless certain, I always assume ideas as novels first. That way I allow myself to 'think big' with the idea, explore all characters and scenarios with the widest scope possible. I find its a pretty immediate call as to whether or not it is a novel, and if it is not then a short story would be the next port of call.


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## Tettsuo (Sep 16, 2013)

Sintalion said:


> Honestly I just write the story and concern myself with word counts after I'm mostly done. That's what I do for genre and chapters, too. When I edit, that's when I watch my word count and do things such as make sure that my horror is scary and such.
> 
> Whether or not I go from idea to manuscript generally depends on if there's a keyboard in front of me. I never ask myself if it could or couldn't be a novel. It's more instinctual for me. I do only work on one project at a time, so usually ideas are shelved until I have conpleted the previous thing.


This.

I just write.  After all is typed, then I think about where it'll fit.


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## OurJud (Sep 16, 2013)

J Anfinson said:


> As I write, I find myself moving through the plot faster than I intend to and knowing I could never get a novel out of it.



Oh, man! Do I know this problem. I've always said that, no matter how complex a story or plot - even if the synopisis is given to me by someone else - I could tell the whole story in about 20,000 words.

This should tell me something, but like you, J, I find myself studying novels to try and see how it's done. How _DO_ you stretch a story, ANY story, to 80,000 words?

In the past people have said that if I'm struggling in this area, it's because the story I have simply won't sustain a novel, but I don't buy this.

The only reason I can come up with, as to why I struggle in this area, is because I have a tendency to _under_write, rather than _over_write; my scenes are too short, my sections of dialogue exchanges too brief, not enough internal world, etc, etc, etc.

It's far easier to remove material you _don't_ need at the end of a draft, than it is to add material you _do_.


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## Sintalion (Sep 16, 2013)

OurJud said:


> Oh, man! Do I know this problem. I've always said that, no matter how complex a story or plot - even if the synopisis is given to me by someone else - I could tell the whole story in about 20,000 words.
> 
> This should tell me something, but like you, J, I find myself studying novels to try and see how it's done. How _DO_ you stretch a story, ANY story, to 80,000 words?
> 
> ...



My philosophy is that the first draft doesn't have to be chock full of extra stuff you have to delete. Because of how much work I put into the editing stage, my first draft tends to be much shorter. I get all the ideas and main concepts down and that's pretty much it. It's dirty and raw. For example, my current project comes in around 96k. My first draft was done in about 30k, start to finish. In that first draft I wrote done everything I could that kept the story along (and made some notes where I knew I definitely needed support). In the subsequent draft, I expanded the scenes and characters as required. Then I read the entire beast, swept through with a purple pen, until it barely resembles what I started with. Once my edits are in and the story feels mostly full, then I start wondering about word count and such. 

I'd still be on 15k if my first draft had to have a novel word count of about 96k. A lot of people take their time in draft one and that's fabulous, but not for me. I don't have any trouble expanding; editing comes naturally to me, so I just roll with it. I paint rooms the same way; trim around the ceilings/floorboards first, and move on to the bulk of the walls after.


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## Sam (Sep 16, 2013)

All of my ideas have enough scope for novels if I want to give them enough scope to become novels. An idea is a foundation which becomes a house if the idea is fleshed out.


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## Terry D (Sep 16, 2013)

I don't know if I can help with the OP's question, but I'll tell the story of my first novel and how I came to know it _was_ a novel. I was sitting at my typewriter staring at a blank page wanting to start a new short story--almost everything I wrote back then was short fiction--but I was drawing a blank. My thirteen year old son came into the room to visit. Since I like to write short fiction to prompts, I asked him what I should write about and he said, "Write a vampire story." _Oh, great_, I thought. _Vampires have been done to undeath_. My son then left the room, but not before adding, "And set it in a cave." Being an old spelunker, that thought started the wheels turning in my head and I quickly had an idea for a story about two young men who find a vampire trapped in a cave and must escape from a place where it is forever dark.

As I started the story with the two youths being led to the cave by a mysterious old man I had a nagging worry. _How did the vampire get trapped in the cave_? These sort of logical conundrums in fiction bug the snot out of me as a reader, and I try very hard not to let them creep into my writing. I needed to know the backstory. The solution that presented itself to me was to have the vampire sealed into the cave by local residents many years before my story opened. That backstory unfolded itself very quickly and very clearly in my mind. It was with the depth and breadth of that backstory that I knew the tale was no longer capable of being told as a short story. The original opening scene of the short is still in the book (about 1/3 of the way through), but the entire novel came in at 118,000 words.

My point is, I suppose, that the content of your idea, the sheer volume of the concept, should give you a clue as to it's length.


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## Kyle R (Sep 16, 2013)

J Anfinson said:
			
		

> does everyone go through the amount of trial and error I seem to be going through?



I did. Months and months of trial and error. Now I've found my most comfortable approach and I'm happy with it, but there were a lot of growing pains, frustration, and confusion along the way. It's part of the process. Don't let it discourage you! :encouragement:


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## J Anfinson (Sep 16, 2013)

KyleColorado said:


> I did. Months and months of trial and error. Now I've found my most comfortable approach and I'm happy with it, but there were a lot of growing pains, frustration, and confusion along the way. It's part of the process. Don't let it discourage you! :encouragement:



At least I've managed to write a novel's worth of chapter one's over the past year. To everyone else, thank you. It sounds to me like I've got a combination of pacing issues and not coming up with enough material beforehand. I'll try further brainstorming.


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## FleshEater (Sep 16, 2013)

Material is such a vague word when discussing a novel. Focus on moving a character through the story, and work on defining the characters. Narrowing "material" might make it easier.

Write your first draft moving a character/s through a story. Then ask yourself, "Who are these people?"


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## J Anfinson (Sep 16, 2013)

FleshEater said:


> Material is such a vague word when discussing a novel. Focus on moving a character through the story, and work on defining the characters. Narrowing "material" might make it easier.
> 
> Write your first draft moving a character/s through a story. Then ask yourself, "Who are these people?"




To me, "material" means the plot, sub-plots, character backgrounds, and everything in-between. Your advice seems sound enough, I sure ask myself that question a lot while I'm brainstorming this stuff, but I can't get answers. Maybe you're right, and that's something that might be easier to answer after the basic story is laid out in front of me, no matter how short it ends up being. It just sucks when you're not even through chapter one and you're already at a point you imagined would be in chapter two. I've always heard it's easier to write too much and edit than to try and add a bunch later. If I keep writing my current WIP it will be a novella for sure, and that's not how I imagined it. Frustrating. Oh well, giving up isn't an option.


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## Newman (Sep 17, 2013)

Sam said:


> An idea is a foundation which becomes a house if the idea is fleshed out.



Exactly.



J Anfinson said:


> My biggest problem is always pacing. Been reading a lot to try and absorb how it's done, and the progress with that is slow. Maybe I'm just impatient.
> 
> Anyway, I've tried searching the site about this and haven't found anything specifically addressing this, so if it's just another dumb question then I apologize.
> 
> ...



Which is where the outlining comes in. The outline informs your pacing.


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## Morkonan (Sep 19, 2013)

J Anfinson said:


> I thought it would be interesting to know how others determine whether their idea is broad enough to turn into a novel, or better written as a novella, or short story.



In my opinion, a lot of that depends on what sort of story you want to write, first. For instance, if you just want a straight plot-piece, a novella might be best. But, if you want an epic or lots of subplots, you need something with more meat on the bones.

In other words, it's NOT the idea, itself, that determines the length of the story. It's the length of story you want to write on that idea. If you want to write a short about some little dwarf guy that finds a ring, you might push it into a novella for kids. But, if you want to write an epic that has all sorts of subplots and high-stakes gambits going on, you might need three whole books...

I'm not sure that I've come up with a novel length idea yet. As I write, I find myself moving through the plot faster than I intend to and knowing I could never get a novel out of it. So I'm just wondering: Do others know whether they've got a novel before they start writing, or does everyone go through the amount of trial and error I seem to be going through? *



> Anyway, I've tried searching the site about this and haven't found anything specifically addressing this, so if it's just another dumb question then I apologize.
> 
> 
> *I've tried in-depth outlining. Makes the writing boring, IMO.



There's no such thing as a dumb question. Questions can't be dumb, they have no brains.

Again, what sort of story do you want to write? What sort of format best serves the sort of story that you want to tell? The length of a story/book lends a character, all its own, too. What sort of clothes do you want your story wearing?

For instance, let's say you want to write a story about a troubled young girl who is becoming a "young woman" and going through all that adolescent/post-pubescent/young adult angst so commonly associated with teenagers. Let's say she's always been sort of an outcast and, now that she's becoming a young woman, it appears that she has super-powers. The school dance is coming up and some people are going to attempt to play some adolescent pranks on her for some laughs... laughs that will abruptly push them in the very real adult world of life and death. Are you going to write "Carrie", or are you going to take this a bit farther, making it an epic story about what happened to this young woman after she basically murdered all her classmates and then goes on to become a powerful Wall Street tycoon?

Where does your story _end_? Does it end at the "First Hurdle", which happens to wrap your plot up rather quickly? If so, consider the short or add a bit more to it and make it a novella. Does it end after several hurdles are overcome and yield the realization of a goal that may not have been apparent to the protagonist in the beginning of the story? That's more novel-like. But, even if it seems to suit one format over another, that doesn't mean you can't add or subtract from it in order to make it fit the format you _want_ to write.

Plotting may not be for you. But, what you really need to know is where you are going. You need to have a good idea of where you want to end up before you can arbitrarily decide its length. It takes a necessary amount of space in which to put words that can be read and which will make enough sense to a reader to be worth reading. If it's just a sequence of events, it's a "story" and you won't likely need a full novel's worth of space. But, if it has events within it that have cause and effect relationships, then you have a "plot" and you might need quite a bit more room than a "short" would lend you.


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## TheYellowMustang (Sep 19, 2013)

I actually go through the trial-error thing too, but when trial turns unto error it's usually not the main plot's fault, but rather a lack of interesting characters that can carry the story and entertaining sub-plots that help fill the chapters. 

If you end up fast-forwarding through the plot then the first tip that came to mind was to make a list of chapters and what you want to happen in each of them. There should probably be something in each chapter that moves the main plot along, and when the other characters and sub-plots start to take shape you can add them into the list too. But "mentioning" the main plot in each chapter is easier than it sounds. In some of the chapters in my WIP I only reference the main plot in a paragraph or two, while the rest of the pages are filled with drama and conflict related to other story-lines. 

Example:

Ch1: Harry is a wizard.
Last chapter: Harry has finished his first year at Hogwarts. 

Fill in the blanks: How does Harry find out about Voldemort? When is the sorcerer's stone introduced? How does Harry find out about it? Why is Snape mean to Harry? How does Harry become friends with Ron and Hermione? 

This is what I do, at least. I ask all the questions and then I place them in the chapter list. Then I write it, read it, hate it, re-write it, change some of the plot, re-write it, still hate it, read it again and love it, wake up and hate it etc etc.


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## voltigeur (Sep 19, 2013)

I outline my ideas so that I get to the end of the story before I decide length. I think it is important to have a clear beginning, middle and end. This prevents rambling. It doesn’t mean this is written in stone with no room for creativity but for me anyway it keeps me from rambling.  

My WIP has multiple threads running through the story an outline is the only way I can keep them straight so the reader can follow them. 

After outlining I have a good idea of how long the work will be.


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## Jon M (Sep 19, 2013)

Morkonan said:


> In other words, it's NOT the idea, itself, that determines the length of the story. It's the length of story you want to write on that idea.


Don't agree with this. For me, it _is_ about the ideas, exploring them with sufficient depth. Last thing I'd want is to write a story with some brilliant ideas and receive criticism that I'd squandered what I had, that it could have been better. 

I view my own story-ideas as problems to be solved. With an ensemble cast, for example, I'd have to spend a lot of time with the characters, fleshing them all out sufficiently. I must do this or my story suffers. Similarly, if I include a rape scene in my story, I'd better examine the after-effects, the psychological damage. The event is not particularly interesting, how the characters cope is. And if I don't explore this very weighty idea / event with good enough depth, again, my story suffers, it gets panned by critics, and people call me a bad writer.*

* unless there is a deliberate or obvious reason otherwise


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## Kyle R (Sep 19, 2013)

Lots of great comments in this thread so far. :encouragement:

For me, the length and scope of my story is determined by how many scenes I write. The more scenes, the longer the story. For my WIP I have eight scenes (plus some "internal" scenes), coming in at around 10,000 words, after some brutal cutting.

For novel-length stories, the number can run anywhere from 40 to 80 scenes on average.


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## J Anfinson (Sep 19, 2013)

Good comments, indeed. I'll be re-reading this thread over and over in an attempt to beat some of this stuff through my skull. Lots of wisdom here, I think.


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## Grape Juice Vampire (Sep 19, 2013)

Ideas are constantly running about in my brain to the point where I can barely keep up with them or even keep focused on the chapter I'm trying to write, so I don't use them as a gauge for length. I just write with the hope I'll eventually get to the end, knowing that my wip is an epic. I will say that having a rough idea of where the story is going and why it's going there has helped me.


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## Tyrannohotep (Sep 19, 2013)

I have found that it is easier to plot and write stories when I have a clear idea of how I want my characters to develop or what themes I want to communicate. The more the characters have to change over the story's course, or the more I have to say about a given theme, the longer the story.


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## Jeko (Sep 20, 2013)

> Don't agree with this. For me, it _is about the ideas, exploring them with sufficient depth._



For me, it's the number of ideas that end up getting thrown into the story. The deeper I explore an idea, the more ideas around that idea I get. Sometimes I know that my prose is suffering because I'm not introducing anything new, and only trying to milk the old for all it's worth.


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