Growing a short story into a novel

From consulting editor Alan Rinzler's blog - The Book Deal

Do you have a short story work-in-progress that just doesn’t want to fit into 10,000 words or 25 pages?
Is it bursting at the seams? Does it feel incomplete and frustrating to read? Does it inspire only polite smiles and eye contact avoidance from readers you know?
Then you may have a recalcitrant short story that could be transformed into a successful novel.
A case in point
A writer client of mine, a young author who had already published a collection of short stories, came to me with a new work of about 12,000 words that was giving her a hard time.
“I can’t fold in the backstory, and every new scene seems to require more characters and relationships.”
Our editorial process became a slow march through the pages, during which we identified many spots where more explanation seemed necessary. We struggled to confine ourselves to the original tightly compressed narrative arc fraught with ambiguity and deliberate incompletion, but both of us found the next draft hard to understand and ultimately unsatisfying.
So after some major discussion to consider the goals and potential structure of the piece, we went the other way: expansion, amplification, fleshing out, going back and going forward with more story and character development. The manuscript grew and grew like Alice in Wonderland after swallowing the cake marked “eat me”, until it became a novel of 85,000 words.
Getting from short to long
Expanding an incomplete short story into a novel involves a variety of tools and techniques according to the specific needs of the original piece. Here are some suggestions and guidelines that may help you along your way. And if you’d like to work with a developmental editor on this project, check out my advice for finding a good one.