Your plot is too neat. Increase your word count and crank up the conflict.

This might be one of those posts where the whole idea can be summed up in the title, but it never hurts to elaborate a bit, right?

What it comes down to was this: I was working on a thing once and after tying “The End” I kind of looked at the story and said, “That’s it?”

It wasn’t so much that the word count was a lot lower than what most agents would consider for that type of novel (which it was), but also that the story just felt too…neat. Or maybe a better way to put it: too linear.

Yeah, that was the biggest problem with the novel in question. Every scene went from Point A to Point B with very little deviation at all. This is actually one of my most frustrating writing problems. While I do prefer to outline and plan ahead, often that planning can take out the spontaneity that makes fiction interesting.

So there are actually two problems here:

1. Word count is too low.
2. Plot is too dull.

You know, you always hear writing advice on how to cut, what to cut, why to cut, “kill your darlings”, and how your first draft is too long. But you don’t always hear advice on how to increase your word count. And believe me, there are times where that is necessary.

And adding more descriptive writing, pointless dialogue, or slice of life scenes are not the way to increase that word count. No, what I’ve decided is that to fix the first, I only have to fix the second.

Back to that problem, about the plot being to linear, the best way to fix that is to throw in more twists and turns. One of the quickest and most interesting way to do that is to crank up the conflict.

Yes, the story needs to go from Point A to Point B, but that path doesn’t need to be so easy. This is where you can add enough conflict to make things more interesting and seem less linear, while still sticking to your original outline or plot points.

You don’t even have to do anything huge. If your character is late for a meeting, give him a flat tire. If he’s in a fist fight (and supposed to win) give him a nasty cut on the forehead so his eyes are covered in blood and the melee is more challenging.

In other words, add some challenge, add some conflict, add some depth, and mess up that plot that seems too neat.

Thanks for reading, and if you’ve got any tips on increasing your word count or increasing your conflict, leave a note in the comments section and let us know.