What to Add to a Novel

A lot of the how-to-write discussions focus on what words to cut out of your manuscript. There's a good reason for this, since wordiness is a sin of many newbie writers. But the other side of the coin is that first you must add.

What to Add for an Engrossingly Great Novel

• Grab their attention. Entertain your reader every page. Add, add, add.
• Hold nothing back. Show your everything. Readers want to see your inspiration.
• Add something amazing. Then think of something else, too.
• Add the X-factor. Your brain on fire.
• Reverse it. Whatever the plan or situation, the opposite is more entertaining.
• Add everything you were saving for the sequel. More ideas will come.

Main Fiction Elements to Add

• Add something unique. Why is your book a must-read? What about it is different or exciting?
• Add deep characters.
• Add a great plot. Or at least have one.
• Add a great setting. Describe it vividly.
• Add themes. Whatever they are.
• Add a vivid fictional world. Could be a small town or a small planet.
• Add your unique writing style. You have one. Stop copying famous authors; write your story.
• Add a standard plot structure. Follow the rules. Until you don't.

Add Interesting Stuff

• Add heart.
• Add humor
• Add perverse situations.
• Add educational stuff. People want to learn about submarine sonar.
• Add behind-the-scenes stuff.
• Add interesting characters.
• Add quirky characters.
• Add annoying characters.
• Add those grown-up scenes. Or not.
• Add romantic tension.
• Add suspense.
• Add intelligent scenes.
• Add variety in settings and scenes.

Character Features to Add

• Add heroes, heroines, and villains.
• Add character flaws to the protagonist(s) (redeemable ones)
• Add nice traits to villain characters
• Add showing (not telling)
• Add a sassy heroine (independent, strong-willed, etc.)
• Add a grumpy, emotionally-distant, detached, brooding hero. It's not a cliche.
• Add names for secondary characters.
• Add surnames.
• Add an underdog. Often, it's the main character.
• Add physical descriptions, but with subtlety. Hair, eyes, height, etc.
• Add backstory. Not too much, and as a drip-feed.
• Add motivations and goals for characters.
• Add cliched character types. Then twist them.
• Arc every major charactor.
• Arc some secondary characters, too, if you can.
• Add a twin. Do you really have to? It's been done.
• Amplify all character traits. Nice becomes near-perfect. Nasty becomes unspeakable.
• Add characters different to each other.
• Add characters different from your good self. Stop writing stories about authors. Nobody cares.
• Add opposite characters.
• Add competent and incompetent characters (or apprentices).
• Add a sidekick or two.
• Add a mentor.
• Add a foil.
• Add personal reasons for the hero to hate the villain. And vice-versa.
• Add unimportant characters. Then give them a name.
• Add a medical condition. Except not insomnia, amnesia, depression, multiple-personality, or autism. They've been done.
• Add a hobby.
• Add a secret. Make it dastardly.
• Add different speech patterns. The heroine says "oh" but the hero says "ah."
• Add unique turns of phrase. Specific to one character.
• Add a pet.
• Add vampires. I hear they're romantic.
• Add distinct character names. Not the same first letter. Not all the same number of syllables. Not rhyming.
• Add nicknames. But not everyone's allowed to use them.
• Add endearments. "My little cabbage." Readers will love-hate it.
• Add jealousy.
• Add envy. It's not the same thing.
• Add love. Amplify.
• Add anger. Then make it vengeful grievance anger.
• Add sibling rivalry.
• Add parents. Make them differently annoyingly wonderful.

Add to Dialogue

• Add lots of dialogue. It's the basis of "showing" not "telling."
• Add witty banter
• Add jokes. Rework the entire scene for one great punchline.
• Add arguments.
• Add questions.
• Add exclamations.
• Add body language beats to dialogue.
• Add setting beats to dialogue
• Add prop interaction beats to dialogue
• Add emotional reaction beats to dialogue
• Add trailing off (ellipsis)
• Add interruptions (em dash)
• Add misunderstandings.
• Add subtext to conversations. Or pretend you already did. Nobody will notice.

Add to Settings

• Add a great setting.
• Add details to your descriptions.
• Add all of the five senses.
• Add visual images.
• Add sounds.
• Add smells.
• Add tastes. Food, usually.
• Add touch and texture.
• Add other senses. There are weird ones.
• Add atmosphere. Nobody knows what it is.
• Add society rules. Nasty ones. You're the boss. Dystopias should be dystopian.
• Add magic systems.
• Add cool weapons. Try to think of something other than medieval Europe or Egyptian chariots.
• Add planets and comets.
• Add mountains and valleys.
• Add gothic elements.
• Add unique scene settings. Venture beyond the hero's apartment and the nearby cafe.
• Add travel settings. Cars, boats, planes, trains. Cable cars. Vernicular railways. Snow-shoes. Comet rings. Small unstable moons. Spaceships. Hovercraft. I digress.
• Add activity settings. Walking the dog, jogging, pitching a client, cramming for exams, doing a hobby together, whatever.

Add to Plot

• Add the big twist ending.
• Add tie-ups for all plot threads. Even the minor ones.
• Add conflict.
• Add threats. Make them existential. Even if they're not.
• Add a ticking clock. Cinderella disappears after midnight!
• Be mean to your nicest characters. They deserve some conflict in their lives.
• Add rising action
• Add a semi-climax (and fail badly)
• Add the mid-point intensification. Avoid the dreaded Saggy Middle Syndrome.
• Add the mid-point reversal. Don't just fail; mega-fail.
• Add the "all is lost" moment. Make it impossible to escape. The hero is doomed.
• Add the climax. All is won. Somehow.
• Make the ending earned. The hero wins by using something he learned in an earlier failure.
• Add the resolution.
• Add falling action.
• Add a sub-plot
• Add foreshadowing. So long as it's not a spoiler.
• Add misdirection.
• Add red herrings.
• Add a Chekhov gun. Fire it.
• Add problems. Then some more. Still not enough.
• Add plot reversals. Two steps forward, ten steps back.
• Amplify all plot crises. Your heroine loses her job, her boyfriend, and her house on the same day. Next day, cancer misdiagnosis.
• Amplify all positive outcomes. Your hero gets the girl, wins the lottery, and also the Nobel prize.
• Add slower chapters between fast ones. Give readers a breather.
• Add good chapter starts. Usually, start in the middle of something.
• Add abrupt chapter ends. Dissonance works. Mic drop endings are good. Curiosities. Suspense. Questions, also.
• Add fixes to plot holes
• Add "blurring over" of the plot holes you can't fix.
• Start "in media res." Avoid Slow Start Syndrome. Your heroine shouldn't wake up and brush her teeth.
• Add save the cat.
• Add kick the dog.
• Add the Happily Ever After (HEA). In whatever genre. Nobody wants the hero to die.
• Add romantic elements.
• Add paranormal elements.
• Add a baby. But not two.

Add to Writing Technique

• Add specific verbs.
• Add specific nouns. No more "it" or "things."
• Add adverbs. Don't listen to the doubters.
• Add bigger, better, gooder words. But remember that the thesaurus is a frenemy.
• Add French words.
• Add Spanish words.
• Add tone. Google it first; I had to.
• Add italics for thoughts. But only for important thoughts.
• Add onomatopoiea. Learn to spell it first.
• Add alliteration. Your English teacher will love it, but its probably pungently puerile in a novel. It's actually author intrusion.
• Add metaphors. Great in literature, but apparently they're bad in genre fiction. Who knew.
• Add similes. They're just wannabe metaphors, but are as easy to write as a rotting corpse on a bright summer day.
• Add symbolism. That dead dragonfly on the windshield was symbolic of their beautiful relationship gone awry.
• Add motifs. Just find your symbolism paragraph and cut-paste it somewhere else later in the story. Same symbol twice, voila, it's a motif.
• Add euphony.
• Add cacaphony.
• Add rhyme. Only a little, and not in a full-length novel (if overdone, it's also author intrusion).
• Add assonance and dissonance.
• Add different sentence structures.
• Add longer, flowing, beautiful sentences. Descriptions of a sunset are nice if you find better adjectives than "nice."
• Add one-word sentences. Make them jarring.
• Add exclamation marks. They're underrated.
• Add a few semicolons. Some people like them.
• Add a few em dashes around subclauses. Your book won't win any awards without them.
• Add bolded text, big fonts, colorful lettering, illustrations, underlining. But only if it's a children's book or an edgy comedy.

The Last Additions

• Add a nice cover. It should convey the genre.
• Do an ebook. No exceptions.
• Add a "request for reviews" to your backmatter. It helps, but even so, the average rate is 1 review per 500 free ebook giveaways, or 1 per 100 if paid.
• Add an ad about your author website to your backmatter (and/or frontmatter).
• Add a call to signup for your author newsletter and/or socials to your backmatter or frontmatter.
• Add an ad about your free "bonus chapter" as an enticement to sign up. You can write it later.
• Add an ad about a free "deleted scenes" or "alternative endings" PDF document as another newsletter signup enticement.
• Add a "coming soon" ad about the sequel in your backmatter. (Yeah, I know, you haven't even started it.)
• Add a copyright statement to the frontmatter. Although, don't worry; it's still yours if you forget.
• Add a disclaimers section to the frontmatter.
• Add any credits and attributions to the frontmatter.
• Add a sequel, prequel, alt-quel, para-quel, or some other quel to your schedule. Next year is wide open and your second book will be easier to write.

Final Advice on What to Add

You add all these things sparingly. You're walking the tightrope to mastery over a chasm of mediocrity: balance is key.

Oh, and there's also some stuff to cut out of your novel.