Are You Doing TOO Much In Your Story

I wanted to take the time to talk today (wow, amazing alliteration there) about a comment I frequently use in rejections. Authors trying to do too much in their stories. Surprisingly, this is a mistake many authors make.

Now, when I talk about too much, I am referring to two different mistakes. The first is a plotting issue and the second is just the voice and the writing.

In terms of the plotting and trying to do too much, I am talking about authors who feel the need to add in a lot of different subplots and conflicts to the story. For these authors, I am sure they are thinking, "there isn't much I can do with this conflict so let me add in this twist to really raise the stakes." While this might sound like a reasonable approach, every time you add in a new conflict, you are pulling your character and your story away from that central thesis and take-away you established when you started the book.

Let me explain it this way using something I see a lot of in women's fiction.

The main character is finally at this point that her last child is getting ready to head off to college. Woo hoo! Finally an empty-nester. She has devoted her entire life to making sure the kids had everything they needed with sports, music, after-school activities, the right toys and games, a great education and so forth. But now she is faced with, what is she to do now?

This is a good start... but...

Now she realizes that she might not have enough to write about so she adds in that her other child who may be a junior in college is now going to be a drug addict, and her husband is going to lose his job because he was having an affair, and why not throw in her going to the doctor, they find a lump and now she is not sure if it is Cancer, and her parents are needing to go into a nursing home....

STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!!!!!

You really don't need all of that extra stuff. Let her spend the time just remember who she is. Keep her family sane and stable.

Now, the other issue of too much stems from just "too much information." I see this a lot in historical authors who feel the need to give us the background to all of the events that led up to Waterloo including the political, social and economic layers of all of the countries. Let me just remind you of how much you really loved reading those history textbooks in high school.

The key here is give us enough to keep the story moving. Sure, you enjoyed the research and maybe you needed it because you were not smart enough to pick a topic you understood and had to do the research, but your readers do not need it, nor do they want it.

Always stop and ask, before adding that next block of information, "Do my readers need this?" or "Does the story need this?" or "Does this really do anything to move the story forward?" If not, don't write it.