13 Tips To Help You Lengthen Your Short Story

Writers Write is a writing resource. In this post, we give you 13 tips to help you lengthen your short stories.

In a previous post, we discussed shortening your story. Today, I’m going to talk about lengthening your story.

Most writers tend to overwrite and then cut back, but some writers under-write. This is often the case with writers who write for a living, like journalist and copywriters. Their entire story will be told in 750 words when they need 2 500 words.

My first draft of a short story is usually very short, around 250-500 words. I need to get the idea on the page first. Once that is done I must figure out if I can lengthen it. Sometimes a scene is simply that, just one scene, but I need to increase my word count. What can I do?

First I need to figure out what I have left out. I know I tend to skip setting and description in my first drafts so I look there first.

You can increase your word count in two ways:

Make changes to your writing:

You can make structural changes to your writing that will increase your word count:

Pacing: Slow down the story.
Tension: Add to the tension, by dragging it out and writing slow motion moments you will be able to add value. A time constraint, like a ticking bomb or the imminent arrival of guests, is a handy device as well.
Sentence length: You need variety when it comes to sentence length, but longer sentences will help you up the word count.
Add adjectives and adverbs: I’d rather say, make your descriptions stronger, by using strong nouns and verbs, but a few adjectives and adverbs will certainly add to your word count.

Make changes to your story:

And then, you need to make changes to your stories to increase your word count:

Scenes: If your story is very short you will probably only have one scene. Figure out what scene came before and what happened after. This will help you add two scenes.
Backstory: This may be an opportunity to hint at backstory. You can even use a flashback.
Add characters: Is your character alone? Perhaps he needs to phone a friend, to help him carry the corpse.
Add setting description: This is what I tend to leave out, but don’t go writing travel brochure. Make sure the details you are integral to the story.
Add character description: This may be an opportunity to add layers to your characters and flesh them out.
Add a subplot: If you are writing a longer short story, as in 4000 or even 7500 words you can consider a subplot.
Dialogue: Use dialogue to add backstory and strengthen motivation
Dramatise events: This may be where you can delve in to the events that shaped your characters or the events that upset them. Write it out.
Emphasis, symbolism, and foreshadowing: Experiment and add some layers.