 What's shaking writers? Welcome back to another video. I hope your writing has been going well. Feel free to let me know how it's going in the comments below. Personally, I've been doing pretty well. I found something recently that I've been thinking about quite a lot. In making a start on a series of like episodic fantasy that happens to be, well, the plan is for them to be pretty short books, around 50,000 words. I've found that this is a writing style that I think I was kind of made for. What I'm talking about today is what I've always considered my biggest flaw when it comes to writing. It's been the biggest hurdle that I just can never seem to overcome. And it's something almost specific for first drafts. I'm talking about underwriting versus overwriting. Even if you haven't heard of these before, I'm sure you can figure out what they mean by their names themselves. Underwriting essentially being someone who finishes a first draft of the story and they find that the word count is a lot smaller than it should be versus overwriting, which is the complete opposite. They finish their first draft and it's like 700 pages long. Most people I know who fall into one of these groups are overwriters. That's pretty much what you'll see all the time online. Most advice that you receive from professionals after finishing your first draft is that you need to cut out a bunch of stuff. And this might still be true for people who underwrite as well. But I've always seen this happening and thought to myself like, is there something wrong with me as a writer? Why am I never overwriting? It seems to be something that everyone does, but not me. And not just am I not an overwriter. I'm an underwriter, so I'll plan to write like a, let's say for example my psychological horror book that I wrote, A Welcome Descent. I planned for it to be around 70 to 80,000 words and the final product is that. But after the first draft it was probably barely 50,000 words and I feel like I expanded on all of the things I wanted to expand on. It was a really, really tricky thing because having something that is essentially finished, you know, first draft finished anyway and thinking to yourself, I need to add stuff into it is really difficult. Don't get me wrong, though. I am kind of glad that I'm an underwriter rather than an overwriter because when I do have to look for stuff to cut out, it's a horrifying experience. Sometimes even cutting out small things from your story can cause like a ripple effect that just affects everything else and then you find yourself having to go through and make just an insane amount of changes to the point where you're almost just rewriting the entire book. And that's not mentioning the fact that it would just be hard to cut stuff out because it's stuff that you've put your heart and soul into. It's time that you spent, you might find yourself cutting out a chapter that you spent weeks on. While I still do find myself always cutting stuff out after the first draft, I've never had it so bad that I need to like actually go through and actively look for things to cut out. It's more so I see things that I know don't work and I'm like, I'll just change that or remove that. I have never had the experience of finishing the first draft and saying this is too long. I need to go back and look for things to take out. I think being an overwriter would be harder than being an underwriter, but being an underwriter is still very difficult. I mean at the end of the day, if you are self publishing, you can pretty much make the book as long as you need to, but I think there is a lot of importance in at least aiming for specific word counts depending on the genre and the format of the story that you're telling. Again, for example, the series I'm working on being episodic, I think episodic stories absolutely work better in shorter form because episodic stories by their very nature are meant to be released more frequently. They're meant to be something that the reader can experience in shorter sittings as opposed to you know, an epic fantasy that follows like one major plot line that the reader can dedicate a lot more of their time to. I think in aiming for specific word counts for the story that you're telling, it can shape your story in a way that ends up being better. You'll find yourself like kind of structuring it in a way that's like, okay, I need this to happen by this point. I need this to happen by that point. And you end up spending a lot more time and dedication in fine tuning those portions of the story. That's my experience anyway. That's what I've been doing. I am rambling a bit, but my major point here with this video is that my biggest flaw as a writer has always been underwriting. Committing the sin of underwriting isn't the worst thing I've ever done as a writer, but it is one of the things that has been almost impossible for me to overcome. Every single time I do a first draft, it's always much shorter than I intended. And I got to a point ages ago where I just accepted it, and it's actually not a huge deal really. A huge plus of being an underwriter is that theoretically you're going to finish the story a lot quicker. And finishing the first draft is always the hardest part of writing a book. But let's dive a little bit deeper. So there's a lot of reasons that someone might be an underwriter or an overwriter, right? And I've been thinking about why am I an underwriter? What is it specifically that I'm doing that is resulting in my word count being lower? And in reading back through my first drafts, I found a couple of things. And the really interesting part of this is that again, they aren't things that are necessarily a problem in the first draft. If anything, they are sometimes a boon. So one major thing that I do is that I do not do a lot of character focus on my first draft. I kind of cruise from major event to major event in the story, like action focused events, things that actively push the plot forward, rather than spending a lot of time on moments where we learn about the characters and we get a chance to empathize with the characters. There's not a lot of that in my first drafts. And those are things that are very, very important for a story. So it is important that I go back and I add those on the second draft. But that's one of the things that I've identified. And what I've found since identifying it is in my writing, when I'm writing now, I am actually spending a bit more time on the characters. Although it has been a huge help that my goal for this first book is only 50,000 words, because it's so much, it's just so much better suited for my writing style. It's actually crazy. The way I naturally pace my writing is just so, so much of a better fit for shorter books. Anyway, that was the first thing I identified is that I'm not doing enough like character moments. The second thing I've identified in regards to me being an underwriter is a bit more of an issue, a lot more of an issue. In fact, it's something, it's this insecurity I have with writing, where I feel like if I sit in one place too long in the story, if I'm not moving the characters from one location to another, I get worried that the reader is going to get bored. And I've been doing a lot of reading of fantasy like other authors fantasies recently, I've been doing a lot of reading. And what I've kind of noticed is that they have no fear in just spending a lot of time in one spot with one thing happening, whether it's a long conversation or characters doing something together, they will spend a lot longer there in that moment than I would be comfortable doing. And that's something that I definitely need to work on. Because although I feel like I am best suited for a fast paced story, it can get a bit exhausting for readers sometimes when you're just hopscotching from thing to thing to thing to thing, you know what I mean? I hope that makes sense. I'll give you an example. Let's say that a group of fantasy adventurers walk into a tavern and start having a conversation about where they're going to go next. Most authors could spend like an entire chapter there like 20 pages or something like that in that tavern, in that conversation, in that back and forth, and still have it be riveting for the reader because they're giving the reader interesting information, they're setting the foundation for what to expect in the rest of the story. And it's something I'm trying to work on now. But if I had written that tavern scene, I probably would have had them in and out within five pages. And I guess it kind of goes back to me not focusing on the characters as much as I should. But the problem is my insecurity, I get very concerned while I'm writing those scenes that don't involve action, that people are going to get bored, so I just race through it. And it is a problem. It's not just important for the reader to feel like they're sitting in with these characters, but rather they're sitting in with the world. You don't get to get a whole lot of feeling for the world in a fight scene, you know? Like fight scenes are exciting and they're fun, but you aren't really like sitting there and experiencing this fantasy world around you. I find myself wondering if there exists writers out there that do not fall into the category of being an underwriter or an overwriter, because that would shock me. I cannot imagine writing the first draft and just having it be where you want it to be in terms of word count and length. Every single book I have written thus far has been much shorter than I had hoped, and I have had to go back and add things in. And I guess that brings me to my next point, and that's how I actually padded out once I go back. So as I said, I've identified the issues. So what I'll usually do is, first of all, I'll look for the chapters that are shorter than the others. I'll read through it. I'll see if there is anything I can add there specifically. But after that, what I'm looking for is the quieter moments, moments where its characters having a dialogue or its characters in a more emotionally intense scene rather than an action focused scene. I will expand on their dialogues and their conversations a lot more, and I don't just mean like adding in pointless fluff, but more so expanding on the things that they are actually saying, the important things. I'll add a lot more of their personality to these scenes with what they're doing during the conversations. A nervous character might be pacing around and picking at things, you know, that kind of stuff. And one of the big things that can add a lot to your word count without really taking away from the story itself is finding certain locations throughout the story that you haven't, I guess, described in a lot of detail, maybe just adding a bit more in. My favorite type of fantasy is fantasy that actually doesn't focus too much on telling you what every single thing looks like and what every single person looks like, what they're wearing, what their haircut is. I don't care about most of that stuff, especially if they aren't major characters. But that has also been a bit of a detriment to me to the point where sometimes I don't give enough of a description to actually make the reader feel like they are visualizing this fantasy setting that I'm putting in them, putting them in. So that's what I usually do when I want to pad up the story a bit more with a bit of a bigger word count. I'll add to the conversations, I'll expand on the stuff that's important within those conversations, add a bit more description for the places that need it. And if I still want to build up the word count a bit, I'll find a way to weave some lore building into the actual story. So not just like info dumping it on you from the narrator, but it might be one character learning from another character about a huge part of the lore. Lore is something that should be important and interesting to the reader as well. So that's always a good go to if you can make it naturally weave into the actual story. Anyway, yeah, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to do an unscripted kind of casual chat about something that I've been thinking about a lot recently with my writing and that is underwriting versus overwriting. Again, I'm glad I fall into the underwriting camp. I don't know how you overwriters do it, but hey, let me know what you think in the comments below. Let me know are you an underwriter or an overwriter? More importantly, what are your methods for correcting that? What do you do after your first draft to kind of balance it out a bit? Good luck with the writing, and hopefully I'll see you in the next video. Catch ya.