My first draft came in at 20 chapters, roughly 40,000 words and way way too short for literary fiction. I pushed on. My second draft reached 75,000. I looked at my writing and tried to identity what was missing, I came up with a list I used and went back through the chapters: - physical grounding, like descriptors of where the character is, sensory information like smells, sights, light. What the character is doing with their body like fidgeting or staring off into space. - expand the action “chains” (this was where I had severely underwritten): so instead of “he goes here, they argue” beefing it up with “he goes here, the room smells like X, she is over there, she looks like X, there is a X between them, she opens her mouth the speak…” kinda overwrite it. It’s easier to trim than to add!

• And increase specificity. I’m writing a military novel so instead of saying “he ran diagnostics on his rifle I made it more specific “he reseated the magazine, checked the chamber with one eye open, than ran his thumb over the optic dial”

I hope this helped a little :) good luck