What Does Underwriting Mean to You?

Stuart Dren

Stuart Dren

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I underwrite. Or to put it in clear terms, I tend to initially fall short of my word target for novels. My current WIP is 34k and aiming to hit the third act too early. I've decided that, given its particular nature, I'm okay with it landing on 70k instead the 80-90k I shoot for.

Do you think underwriting even deserves its own term? Or is it just a structural/planning/pacing deficiency? Or perhaps you think that every story has its own natural length that should be embraced?

I'm leaning towards it being a conceptual issue, but I want you to know all y'all thoughts.
 
Stuart Dren said:
Do you think underwriting even deserves its own term? Or is it just a structural/planning/pacing deficiency? Or perhaps you think that every story has its own natural length that should be embraced?
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A few months ago I watch Princess Mononoke for the first time. For a myriad of different reasons it took me many many years to watch this masterpiece. Watching it, made me look more into Hayao Miyasaki and how he came up with the story and concept and how he incorporated his imagery to this film. When I learned that he personally amended many of the cels used to make this film I realized the dedication and skill required to create something spectacular.

One thing that I didn't know was that his studio; Studio Ghibli, pitched it to Hervey Weinstein to distribute it across American and the Western world, and Weinstein ordered Miyasaki to cut the 2hr 13 minute run time to 90mins. Miyasaki refused and sent Weinstein a sword to indicate 'NO CUTS.' It worked and the film was left to its original length and how Miyasaki imaged it.

For me, there are cultural differences in story telling between the East and West (and sorry for this long winded answer to your questions) but I don't think there should be a target to tell a story... brilliantly. Cutting is needed to make it more concise etc... but the length of the story, how a writer plans and structure in revealing the story to a reader should feel natural and if the story climaxes 20k short of the 'target' then it finishes 20k short of the target.

I prescribe to the view that if you change one thing (note change and not add) it affects everything after.

Removing a word or a line can alter the ambience and flow to a passage and the same principle goes to adding. Add something and it can push the narrative towards another direction and you lose that core message you wanted to give the reader. Is this a good thing? Well if it is to reach a number then no. If adding and altering the message actually gives you and a reader a happier outcome then great... but you should not add for the sake of a number.

The structure, flow and messaging of the story is very important to me and this can be lost through needless addition. I would only classify a story as being underwritten if (let's say) a main character stands with our hero and there is little to no detail about them as they act as a voice to the protagonist. It can be said that under developing a character is a deliberate choice but, again personally, if something is left undeveloped or making me ask for more for clarity, then this is underwritten.

If I am reading about a Fantasy world and I am struggling to form a picture of this world... that is underwritten, but if feedback from a reader points to the story reading well etc... and the only issue is that it missed a word target... then it misses the word target. A reader's reaction is far more important than keeping to a word count.
 
I don't know. If it's meant to be 70K it's meant to be 70K, no? Or 80K, 100K, 500K, which would obviate the concept of underwriting? Unless it's deliberately lacking (too short) or overly padded (too long), in which case, it probably sucks?
 
Underwriting is a thing, just as overwriting is a thing. Falling short of your word-count expectations isn't necessarily a sign of underwriting, though.

It could be that there just isn't enough story to support a longer word count. It could be that you overestimated how big the story would be.

If your word counts are consistently low, that probably suggests that there is something else going on. Maybe you are summarizing too much. There could be important bits that you've related in the space a few paragraphs that would be better shown as one or more full scenes. This is a pretty common issue. Writers will start a scene, often the opening scene, and tell the reader about the events after the fact instead of just starting earlier and showing those events in detail as they are happening.

Another possibility is that you're focusing too much on dialogue. There aren't enough descriptions and character thoughts to flesh it out. There may be entire scenes, or long parts of scenes, where it seems like the characters are just talking in a white room.

It could also be that you are rushing through certain parts. This is something I struggle with at times, more so at the end of scenes. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and rush toward it. Invariably, I have to go back to those scenes and add a bit, so the scene ending has the desired pace and impact.
 
Homer Potvin said:
I don't know. If it's meant to be 70K it's meant to be 70K, no? Or 80K, 100K, 500K, which would obviate the concept of underwriting? Unless it's deliberately lacking (too short) or overly padded (too long), in which case, it probably sucks?
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I suppose I see the need to lower the target so significantly mid-flight to be a case of underwriting. Wise artistic decision or meek coping strategy? Unintentionally lacking -> it probably sucks. Adding padding to meet a word count -> probably chaff.

What's lacking could be exploration of the theme, actual novel in the book. Maybe I'm missing 20k words of impact. Of course thinking too much about that is just being neurotic.

Banespawn said:
Underwriting is a thing, just as overwriting is a thing. Falling short of your word-count expectations isn't necessarily a sign of underwriting, though.

It could be that there just isn't enough story to support a longer word count. It could be that you overestimated how big the story would be.
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Most of those things you mentioned are possible. I'm leaning less toward it being the scenecraft and more towards it being the number of scenes and actual story elements.

Or it's exactly as long as it needs to be, you just overestimated the length.
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Sage words, not only for writing, and basically the thread consensus. For now I'll accept that if the elements weren't there in preconception, possibly they weren't meant to be there. There's always editing.
 
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Stuart Dren said:
Sage words, not only for writing, and basically the thread consensus. For now I'll accept that if the elements weren't there in preconception, possibly they weren't meant to be there. There's always editing.
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I have the opposite problem. My story conceptions are quite often too long for the word count target. It's not because it's overwritten, it's because I've planned a story that is simply too long. I had one where I cut out 60% of the plot and it was still threatening to overrun a 5000 word limit, so I had to merge two scenes and rush the end of it.
 
I tend to fall into the camp that most ideas can be executed in any word count utilizing different structural techniques. Trouble is, the technique itself might not fit the word count. A flash piece loaded with narrative summary will look weird. So will a 300K epic of immediate blow by blow. The other trouble with that is it's difficult to change horses midstream and alter the structure without doing a complete teardown. You kind of have to know beforehand what the appropriate word count is for style of preference. Or conversely, what style of preference is required to fit a pre-determined word count.

There's a thread going somewhere about Hemingway's iceberg analogy, which fits here to a point (get it... point?). Namely how much of the story is explicit versus subtextual.
 
WC is kind of like stepping on the scale. Unless you have a specific goal in mind, it's just a number. Similar to how you feel/function/look being more important than what you weigh, the WC should take a backseat to the story itself.
 
I have gone in both directions at times. Though personally I find it easier to edit up than edit down. By that I mean, on a read through, it's easier to expand on a characters thoughts, smooth out scene transitions, clarify subtext that was too subtle. Just be sure it's adding not padding. I find it much harder to look at a paragraph and determine it as entirely unnecessary to the core story, and removing it often requires tweaking other elements that rely upon it.

That said, I believe the length of a story should be determined by what is necessary to tell it effectively, provided there aren't external factors imposing a limit.
 
I interpret "underwriting" differently... to me, underwriting means to writing without regard to SPAG. I underwrite on my first drafts. I don't care about how it will look/sound. My priority is to just get the story out on the page first in whatever form that looks like.
I do a version of "underwriting" on here... i dont care about SPAG (not as much as i used to, at least) when typing on social media or here.

BUT, i do see and understand your version of underwriting. by this definition, i tend to OVERwrite. It is really REALLY hard for me to underwrite and always has been. Im usually the one cutting words to make the wordcount/page count. It was more so a problem in college, but the problem reemerged with this whole querying process and preferred genre wordcounts and what-not.
I dont give myself wordcount goals when i start writing, but goals do get established when trying to get published.
 
Damage718 said:
WC is kind of like stepping on the scale. Unless you have a specific goal in mind, it's just a number. Similar to how you feel/function/look being more important than what you weigh, the WC should take a backseat to the story itself.
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As a short story writer, WC is always a hard limit, if I want to try and get it published.
 
Stuart Dren said:
Do you think underwriting even deserves its own term? Or is it just a structural/planning/pacing deficiency? Or perhaps you think that every story has its own natural length that should be embraced?
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I think underwriting is a deficiency. It could be a deficiency in anything, just like overwriting can be too much of a myriad of things.

I would say, though, that stories are going to have a “natural length” based on content and plot. This is something I’ve struggled with a little in my head recently, wrapping up my trilogy, and it’s been a growing point for me. I was happy with the ending and how it ended, in a way, but in a different way, it wasn’t what I wanted for the MC. I wonder what the MC would’ve done if I had allowed him to go off into the sunset of a fourth novel. Problem is, the main plot throughout the trilogy has been wrapped up by the end of book three and there is nothing left of it to go on. I could let him go on with subplots and build a new main plot out of it, but the essence of his “story” would be gone. So I’ve hit the natural length of his story, and now it’s time for me to let it go (but I’m not going to stop dreaming up things that could’ve happened 🤠).

Likewise, when we complain of a series of whatever (book, movie, tv show) being milked to nothing, isn’t that the problem, that the natural length has been exceeded and whoever in charge isn’t seeing it and shutting it down at an appropriate point?

I also don’t think any story is hitting its natural length in the first draft. Personally, I have struggled with overwriting through all but one of the four novels I’ve written. And I’d venture to say the one with the “good” word count is underdeveloped because it’s the first book in the aforementioned trilogy, and I did not know the characters that well at the time of writing it and I knew the plot and themes even less.

I’ve just kind of given up at this point in hitting word count goals in first drafts. For me at least, I’m just going to dump way too many words into a document for first drafts. I need to make up for it by learning to be a ruthless editor in identifying places to cut and condense my work. I would suppose that if you’re an underwriter, you need to make up for it by learning to pick out what your first drafts lack and then add to it.
 
Kallisto said:
What does this mean to me? Underwriting is the not-so-transparent method by which insurance companies set your premiums, or whether they would even look to insure you at all. And they base that typically on things such as your driving record, accidents, credit score, type of vehicles, age, number of drivers, where you live, and eligible discounts. (Before you ask, no, the color of your vehicle has nothing to do with it.) The weight of each of these categories and how they factor in is a carefully guarded proprietary information that is known only to the insurance companies. I don't even think that the underwriters themselves, even know what calculations are done behind the scenes.

What it is not, is a literary term.

Yes, I am an insurance professional. Yes, I'm a weirdo who geeks out about insurance. (It's also how I got so good at writing dialogue. When you have to talk to lots of people every day in a variety of stressful circumstances, you get pretty good at transferring that to paper. So if you want to write good dialogue: Work in insurance.) And most about what you read of insurance companies being "shady" is actually more like customers being ignorant. Which is why I'm more than happy to explain the subject to anyone, that when something is unfair, they can actually vocalize it, rather than saying, "Well that was unfair" and then letting a politician determine how to fix it, it's best you understand and can vocalize exactly what needs to be fixed about the system.

EDIT: I get this is way off topic. But the OP asked, so I answered.
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The way I see it, insurance is a form of legalized gambling. It's been around long before governments had to either make it lawful or not for the public. In basic terms, life insurance, is a wager where you bet you're going to die before certain time (in order to make gains above your investment), and the insurance company bets that you're not, using actuaries to set the odds. The irony of winning the bet is dying.
 
Stuart Dren said:
Hmm. I should rethink my next thread titles, which were going to be:

Fictional Claims
Best Policies for Writers
What do you Consider to be Your Premium?
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Lol! I could totally go off on tangents about those! You will learn nothing about writing (except how to do it badly,) but you will be able to have a sensible argument with your claims adjuster!
 
Fitting information into a designated space is one of the great frustrations and satisfactions of writing for publication. When I'm asked to write 1200-1500 words about Welsh ponies, that's what I write. Knowing 125,000 words was the upper length for a particular novel, I abandoned an entire subplot to come in under the upper limit. When the same editor suggested expanding certain scenes, I expanded all but one that I thought was fine the way it was. Including requested expansions, the final length is around 125,500, but I doubt he'll kick about the extra 500 words. If he does, I'll find 500 unessential words to eliminate throughout the manuscript. It's my job.

So, I both underwrite and overwrite, but the real goal is to rewrite until I get it just right.
 
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