Don't Ruin Your Story With Fluff

What ruins a story? Adding unnecessary "stuff" to your story. Now, I fully understand that when you are writing your story, you truly believe that what you are adding is needed. The reality is, you have ignored your central story line or you have someone who tells you that you should add something to your story. Sometimes, authors add this extra "stuff" just to get their stories to a word count they were shooting for. 

In the end, the story is ruined.

This last weekend, I was reading a project that I really thought had potential. The premise was great. And then it went downhill fast. The author, in an attempt to add depth to the story, and to try and bring in story ideas that I think they felt would make the story marketable, lost track of her thesis (central storyline). Since this was a romance, the focus was supposed to be on the building relationship between the hero and heroine. Now the focus shifted to other characters, other subplots which clearly are meant to be in other stories. 

Here comes the rejection.

As I said, authors add all of these elements for a lot of reasons. Let's talk about these:

ADDING REASONING FOR A CHARACTER'S BEHAVIOR This is the most common. The reality is that you can create a reason for behavior as simple as "this is their personality." You don't need to create some convoluted backstory to prove this. Keep it simple. Know your character's traits from the beginning and stick to it.

ADDING TO INCREASE WORD COUNT The odds are the author didn't plot and just wrote. This stems from not having a story that was large enough from the beginning. Sure, the plot might sound good but is there enough to go the distance? Probably not. Still, the authors start looking at their word count and panic. Add stuff. Nope. Maybe consider adding depth to world building and character development. More plots is not going to work.

ADDING ELEMENTS TO MEET CURRENT TRENDS This one has been happening more often lately. Authors are thinking if they add characters of diversity, plots that focus on diversity and even LGBTQ+ characters will make the story marketable. Just putting in characters or plot lines that have nothing to do with the central story is not going to make the book better. It's just "more stuff.

 So, what is the solution? Know your plot. Stick to it.