The problem as I see it is I asked the wrong question. I asked for advice on Novels, and I got novel-specific answers, when what I really meant,
what I should have asked, was advice on conceptualizing plots bigger than a short story can tell, because that's what I can't seem to do. My mistake not being clear enough on the onset.
To give you an example, here are the plots of some stories I've sold:
- Obsessed fan and celebrity stalker summons the ghost of the celebrity he is obsessed with, so he can be with her. It does not end well.
- A giant parasitic wasp lays eggs in a man's stomach; the pupi don't just eat his insides but take control of his body to protect the other pupi in their gestation period from predators. Here's the blow-by-blow of that from his PoV. (That wasp exists in nature btw; eek)
- A hitman is sent to kill someone, only to discover too late his target is really a vampire and he was sent as the vampire's surprise birthday present.
If I took every bit of advice from this thread and tried to make those ideas novel length, they'd fail miserably. No matter how much character, depth, tension and layers I throw at it, that is just not a big enough to build a novel on. There's no room for extra obstacles and subplots. It's not interesting enough to be a novel, and quite frankly no one is going to be interested in reading 300 pages about a celebrity stalker. But most of all of that characterization and layers distract from it, because the point is the twist ending or the events of a single scene. The ideas I have generally can be resolved within four scenes because there's no room for expansion in them.
What I am looking for is direction on creating a
plot that requires a lot of steps, that cannot be tackled in a short space. Take for example, "One man takes down an empire." You cannot show that in a short story because it requires too much setup, too many events have to happen to reach that resolution. That is a Big idea, it has a large Scope. I want to think on that level, conceptualize ideas with enough room For a subplot or multiple steps or growth.