Deepening and widening -creating richness in the narrative

This week I've finished writing the first draft of Genehunter.  The book was originally called Geneship, and was a very sparsely written standalone novel of 80,000 words.

Now the new Genehunter is just half of that original narrative.   I've split the story in half, and made two books out of it.  The original belongs to what I call my 'misguided YA novel' period, when I was churning out very briefly-sketched books with no emotional richness.  I had the mistaken belief that YA books would be simpler, and not need all that complicated emotional and descriptive development that adult books do.  I was so wrong about that.

So how did I turn one book into two?  By deepening and widening the story.  The deepening part was  discovering more about my main characters.  In the original I had Aris's parents still talking to each other.  But that gave me a story problem when Oran's ship lands on the far end of the continent where Aris's team is working.  The obvious thing would be to call the ship and speak to him to find out what he was doing there. And that would give me no journey to the ship, and no story.

So in the rewrite Aris's parents split up years ago, and don't talk to each other.  Now when communications fail with the ship Aris has a reason for travelling to it.  She needs to speak to the ship, and also has the motivation of going to find her father. And the ship also carried four renegades that may be up to bad things.  She needs to ask the ship what they're up to as well.

That was the deepening bit done.  The widening part was adding two new viewpoints, both of them  antagonists.  One is the Interstellar Transport Authority's Chairman, and the other one of the renegades he's sent to Deon.  Adding the Chairman allows me to tell the reader what his problem is, without telling my main characters.  

The second antagonist is one of the renegades the Chairman has sent to Deon.  He's a boy from the poor side of town, who got caught stealing food for his starving mother and sisters, and was transported to Deon.  He allows me to write about the injustice and harsh treatment the Wastelanders of Earth receive.  My first draft rewrite runs to 81,000 words, and there's still a bit of deepening and widening to do.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com