Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Avoiding the "Too Slight" Label

Have you ever been told by an editor or someone else that your story is “too slight” and wondered what that meant? What does it mean when a story is slight? When editors say a story is too slight, typically it means that the story is too flat or one dimensional. It can also mean that the premise is too weak, your characters have no depth, or that there’s simply not enough going on in your story. Often the too slight label occurs because the story focuses primarily on the action of the story or primarily on the story’s characters. In other words, it doesn’t work on multiple levels.

Some things to work on in order to avoid the “too slight” label include, crafting your story such that readers can get multiple meanings from the storyline, developing an engaging blend of both external plots and internal plots, and creating believable characters that are multi-dimensional.

While I’ll talk in more detail about these subjects in future posts, what are some other things can you do to create stories with more depth and avoid the “too slight” label.

No comments:

Post a Comment