Friday, April 26, 2013

Over at The Passive Voice

There's an interesting discussion about story lengths going on in the comments of "Less is the New More in Book Publishing" post over at The Passive Voice.

3 comments:

Stephen D. Rogers said...

Hey Sandra,

Praise be.

Most books, in my opinion, should be edited down to under 150 pages.

(Unfortunately, these 73-pagers might only be long short stories sadly in need of editing.)

Stephen

Katherine Tomlinson said...

I like the comment/quote about stories being as long as they need to be to tell the story. As someone who reads for a living, I often read manuscripts that give the impression the writer was padding the page count because he/she was paid by the word. I just read a thousand-page fantasy that had about enough sory for a solid 450 pages and the rest was filler. In fantasy, I like solid world-building, but this was filler--lavish and elaborate and redundant descriptions. I had flashbacks to reading THE SEVEN GABLES where Hawthorne described his house in such minute detail I felt like I could have built a replica without consulting a blueprint.

sandra seamans said...

Yes, it always surprises me that publishing companies can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that a story doesn't have to be 500 to a 1000 pages long.

I love the old novellas that come in at a 150 pages. It's a complete story with no words wasted.