Over the course of three thousand years of western civilization, storytelling has transformed from an oral tradition of poet/rhapsodes reciting mythological epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey at religious festivals to information age books read on an electronic page or listened to from an audio-file. I find it interesting that the Greek epic poems are approximately the same length as a typical modern novel, something between one and two hundred thousand words. Reciting the whole poem at a festival would take up week’s-worth of listening. That’s comparable to the time it takes to read a book.
Now for shorter subjects, the Greeks had the drama. A play by Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides was just an hour or two of the viewer’s time. Pretty similar to a Shakespearean play and interestingly enough, the amount of time that a motion picture usually takes to watch.
Does this mean that human beings inherently absorb story telling in these lengths of time? I can’t prove that assertion but you know, a three-hour movie starts to get to be a bit much for one viewing. And a four-hundred-page book better be damn interesting or it also begins to wear out its welcome.
So maybe our entertainment has been standardized to suit our mental, emotional and physiological parameters. Humans have a limited attention span. We also tire after a certain amount of time sitting or standing watching something. Also, hunger, thirst and the realities of hydraulic pressure eventually force us to interrupt even the most fascinating entertainment. To ameliorate these considerations, movie theaters are equipped with a snack bar and restrooms. But dramatic interest will begin to flag by the third hour.
So, I’d say we’re programmed for these lengths of entertainment products. Whether it’s Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or The Lord of the Rings at some point you either come up for air or you fall asleep. And similarly with a book. There have to be chapters or groups of chapters that allow for the reader to put the book down and come back to it later. It needs a punctuated progression. The action must go through a series of starts and stops. It needs a rhythm to the action, a flow. And if the rhythm isn’t right, the story doesn’t work because the reader is jarred out of the spell of the story.
You may be wondering what this post is about. It’s a transcription of an internal dialog I’m having with myself. I’ve been rereading my story and some sections seem choppy to me. Some of the transitions from one chapter to another just don’t flow. So, to make myself feel better I’m imagining Homer sitting in his office in downtown Mycenae and wrestling with the transition between the story of the cyclops Polyphemus and the Island of Aiolos. He’s plucking the strings of his lyre and thinking, “This Aiolos story is really boring compared to all the excitement of the cyclops. It needs something to punch it up a little. Maybe I can include some more man-eating giants again. No, wait, that’s stupid. There can’t be man-eating giants on every island. That’s just lazy.” I totally feel for him. The epic poetry-listening public is easily jaded. They demand good writing (or singing). Ah, the vicissitudes of the epic Muse Calliope. Like all females, she is fickle. Well back to the grindstone.