February 5, 2025
Are you worried about overwriting? When the inspiration hits, words, stories, and ideas for your book can flow like a waterfall, rushing out of your brain and onto the page. And before you know it, you have finished your book. But what if the book is longer than you expected or simply longer than most books in your genre – does it matter? Sometimes it does.
When a book is too wordy, too long for the genre, or generally contains a big dose of detail we call it overwriting. A writer may stylistically tend toward lengthy stories. Still, overwriting describes the habit of including too much in a book, making the book unwieldy for the average reader, and occasionally difficult even for the biggest fans.
One way to know if you are guilty of overwriting is to check our list of the five most common signs of overwriting. Don’t worry if you are, though, because we have some helpful hints to help you curb this writing challenge so you can turn your tendency to write a little extra into polished writing practices that will help you turn your next book into an appealing, polished manuscript.
Did you know that most genres have a length expectation that traditional publishers, readers, and self-publishing authors typically follow? If your book stretches way past these standard word counts, you may be overwriting your book. While it’s perfectly acceptable to write a book on the upper end of these norms, books with huge overages can be a turn-off to readers since those who love the genre already have a built-in expectation of how books should look and feel.
If you tend to write too much resulting in too-long manuscripts for your genre, try evaluating popular books within your genre for their exact length. Look over 10 or so of the most popular books in the genre and review their page length for comparison. Discovering where your book falls within these established genre norms can help you decide to make meaningful changes to your manuscript so readers will not be put off by the weightiness of your book.
Popular Genre Length Expectations
Dreaming up ideal scenes for your characters is part of the fun of writing, but including every single scene you can think of isn’t always a good idea. If any scene in your book doesn’t do something specific to move the needle forward in the story, you might be overwriting. When books include character actions that don’t help the reader to understand the plot, the dynamics between characters, or to get a better grasp of a character’s motivations or backstory, readers can be confused, get the wrong ideas, or even lose interest in a story.
If you suspect you are an overwriter in your book’s scenes, the first step in remedying this is to evaluate the purpose of each scene you have included in your book. Create a record of each scene along with what you want to accomplish with the characters and events it includes. You may find that some of these scenes don’t help support the overall purpose of your book and may be omitted without harming the story.
If you have overwritten some scenes and as a result, your book needs more content to flesh out your story and characters, use your scene record to decide what to include instead. You may want to focus on exploring the setting, creating backstories, and crafting small scenes that support character development in new scenes that are designed to contribute a specific element to your book.
If you have a list of characters a mile long, you might be an overwriter. While an intriguing cast list of characters is critical for an interesting, well-thought-out story, too many characters can be confusing to the reader and difficult to keep track of.
Take an inventory of each of your characters by listing out what scenes they are in and the purpose they serve in the story. Each character should play a unique role in moving the plot forward, creating character backstories, or developing a particular aspect of the story. When duplicate or unnecessary characters are found, look for ways to cut them from the story or combine them so your readers will have fewer characters to manage. Consider holding on to some of your characters and their scenes for future books or stories to get a jumpstart on your next book.
When your book’s plot takes too long to move forward, you may have overwritten your story. Have you ever watched a movie that seemed to just drag on, leaving you wondering when the next big scene is going to show up? Readers can feel this same way when a story’s plot moves too slowly because key scenes are too long or plot events are spaced too far apart. Momentum is lost, and readers can lose interest or forget what is happening with the plot or characters.
One way to see if you are overwriting your story’s pacing, enlist the aid of Beta readers to provide feedback on your plot. Once they have read your completed story, ask them specific questions about the flow and pacing of your story. If your readers think that your book’s plot is lumbering along, consider making changes to help speed up the story without losing too many of the critical details.
Look for locations where you can minimize descriptions, reduce the number of side plots, or remove events that don’t move the plot forward. Save those expanded details and written story blocks for future books, sequels, or stories in case you decide to use the same characters in the future.
Part of the fun in reading a story is being surprised by the twists and turns of the plot. But authors also like to toss in a few complimentary subplots that keep readers captivated, add to a character’s backstory, and create interest in secondary characters. But if your book includes more than a handful of subplots, you may be an overwriter.
Make a close evaluation of each plot and subplot in your book, including noting which characters are involved, how long it takes to resolve the conflict, and how each subplot contributes to the main plot line in the book.
Identify any subplots that are detours from the main plot and which ones are necessary to keep moving the main plot forward or have a unique impact on the principal plotline. Remove or combine a subplot when possible to streamline the story, keep the reader interested in the main plot, and help keep your readers engaged in the story without becoming lost in a less important subplot.
Writing a great book is more than just coming up with interesting characters and plot concepts and putting it all down in the form of chapters. Writers have to think about the reader’s experience, too. A too-long story, a plot that takes hundreds of pages to materialize, a mass of characters, or too many subplots can all keep the reader from enjoying an otherwise excellent story.
Looking for spots you have overwritten and streamlining those sections can take your book from hard to follow to hard to put down in the eyes of your readers. And when your book’s manuscript is just the right length and you have minimized the potential for overwriting, partner with a printing company like Publishing Xpress to ensure that your beautifully written story will end up as a gorgeous book, ready to get into the hands of your readers.
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