Writing Advice: Reel It In

So, this is something I need to learn and I can thank my beta readers for pointing this out but I need to be able to reel in my story and here’s what I mean. I’m creating a cyberpunk story and it’s the first time in many years since I’m stepping away from my dragons (no need to fear if you’ve been waiting to read my dragon story, it’s coming but I’m creating another book series while I wait for that one to get finished.)

I accidentally added a bit too much of everything in my story and now I need to reel it in. I added too much lore, filler, and foreshadowing, I added everything except the actual plot.

Reeling it in is a common mistake, especially if you’re creating the first book in a series. There’s so much you want to talk about, show the readers, and set up for the next books where it feels like if you don’t do it, they’ll miss out and I’m here to tell you, reel it in.

Focus on the story first, then the characters. All of the lore you built, the world, the foreshadowing, none of it matters if your readers won’t enjoy the story. It’s very rare for someone to read a story just for the world-building.

Also, it’s much better to reel in a story than to fill it up. Reeling it in means you have too much stuff and you have to take things out. You can take things out a little at a time until your story begins to feel just right, but having to fill in your story is trickier since you need to create new content or expand on things you weren’t attending to and sometimes you might overfill your new story and now have to reel it in any way.

The only way you can figure out if your story is bloated is if you give it to beta readers. They’ll inform you what they find pointless and what kind of information they want to see get expanded upon. This kind of information will be up to personal taste so make sure to think over what they said and ask yourself “Why do they think that part of the story was unnecessary?” Or you could ask them that question as well.

Just remember, anything the reader deems not important, they’ll forget about it so you want to make sure everything in your story is not only important but the readers are aware it’s important as well. I know you’ve been dropping some clues as to what’s gonna happen in the next book, just make sure your readers are paying attention to the one they’re currently reading as well