Novel Adding words

I have a 10 page short story I want to make into a novel, but everything I add seems to be just a boring filler.

 

Then why would you want to turn it into a novel?

 

You may need to retool the story, not just add to it. My WIP started as a (very) short story I entered into a contest here in the forum. If you were to read both the original story and the now-much-larger work, you’ll see how they’re related, but they are much different works.

 

Okay, @Wreybies gave a much more helpful response than I did. Apologies. I don't think it's unusual or bad to try out an idea in a short story, but then you have to realize that it won't be the same story anymore if it's a novel. Think of your short story as more of a springboard than anything else. You can either keep the story going and write what happens next or you've got to put yourself in the mindset that you are writing a different story now. Don't hold yourself back by ten pages.

 

I dunno what word count ten pages translates into -- I'm guessing either in the vicinity of 7500w, or around 3000w? -- but you're going to have a hard time beefing a short story up into a novel without adding a lot more content. Don't think words. Think subplots, think events, think emotional beats. Depending on genre your novel needs to be (at a low estimate) about 50,000 words if not double that. You're not going to get there with line edits -- you need to work on adding more meat to the story itself.

What is it that makes you want to expand this into a novel? It might well be a perfectly serviceable short story, and there's a market for those.

 

I have written several short stories and put them together in a booklet. I know my new story love with more than one person has a new twist and not the run of the mill ending. If I can make it into a novel, maybe I could make some$$$$ that I couldn't do with my short stories collage. I know I will have to spend a year or more to do this; wrote short stories in a month. Thanks for "adding subplots and events" suggestion instead of "more words."

 

Make it non-boring filler, then A lot of stories can be said to have "boring filler" between an interesting beginning and the climax at the end. If you only want to know what happened. The Harry Potter story can be a 10 page story of a boy whose parents were killed by a bad magician, but he goes to magic school, becomes a magician himself and kills the bad magician. JK span it over several large volumes, though, where all those big events were broken down into little events. There's not only a scene where Harry goes to his magic school. There are several scenes about his life before he learns he's special: there is the scene with the news arriving, then there's a scene where he goes to the train station and there's a scene where he's travelling on the train to Hogwarts. You can call that filler because the main thing is "Harry goes to Hogwarts" and some people might have found certain parts boring. But that's how books are made and that's how they differ from novels. There are more characters and more stuff happens. Whether the stuff that happens is boring or not is up to the author. Harry's train journey to Hogwarts could have been boring, or skipped entirely, but JK included all those interesting little moments between characters, and the readers also got a glimpse at really interesting magic items, so that part wasn't boring.
Another thing to add is sub-plots. That's a separate story involving the characters. Some crime thriller writers include a love story that has nothing to do with the solving of the crime. Many pages get dedicated to how the two main characters go about their relationship. They may go to a restaurant for a romantic dinner, or stay home and talk about their childhood. If a reader only wants to know how the crime got solved, then those relationship scenes would look like filler and will be boring. But another reader may enjoy every word because they liked your characters and didn't mind getting to know more about them, including stuff that has nothing to do with the main plot.

 

For me, a short story is a skeleton. A short story reminds me of those minimalist japanese ink paintings that capture the bare essence of a scene. It works because you have limited words to create your plot and then flesh out the bare minimum to draw the reader into your story. Once you start heading into novel/novella territory, a lot more character development needs to be done through subplots. The minimalist paintings, while beautiful in their own way, lack the complexity of a full-blown oil painting, such as a Renoir or a Monet. If done well, the complexity adds to the richness of the art in the same way that a good novel does. If you find yourself in the skeleton mode all of the time, it might be an idea to explore some of the articles on worldbuilding and character development.