What is the perfect length for a story?\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m sure there is no agreement in the world on that.\u00a0 And I must confess I have enjoyed books that go over a thousand pages (counting the \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d as one story) and short stories that barely cover a handful of pages.<\/p>\n
But I have an opinion and since I get to throw it out onto the internet for as long as I can pay for my hosting costs, I feel I should elaborate.\u00a0 After all, I have to write my five hundred words tonight.\u00a0 Although that length is hardly a perfect length for a work.<\/p>\n
I believe that between 10,000 and 35,000 words is the sweet spot for telling a story.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s somewhere between a long short-story and a good-sized novella.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve rejected the majority of modern novels and definitely all of the thousand-page potboilers that have been in fashion for the last few decades.\u00a0 And look, that rejects the \u201cLord of the Rings!\u201d\u00a0 Well, hear me out.<\/p>\n
I think long books are by nature composite creations.\u00a0 They consist of a bunch of chapters strung together to get our hero from Point A to Point B.\u00a0 And in my opinion each chapter (or at most a few chapters together) is a separate story.\u00a0 This is like a play or a movie having multiple acts or scenes.\u00a0 You string those together and you tell a larger story.\u00a0 But usually in a movie or a play there is a climactic scene when all of the emotional power of the story is unleashed.\u00a0 If the writer is exceptionally skilled, he can drag out the emotional interest from the beginning of the story until this climax.\u00a0 But no matter how well-written the longer story is it doesn\u2019t have the same impact as a shorter work that can be digested in one sitting.\u00a0 Even a long movie has the danger that it can overtax the watcher\u2019s attention and patience.<\/p>\n
I think that if I kept my work within that 10,000-35,000-word range I could make the maximum impact on the reader.\u00a0 Of course, 10,000 is really close to the minimum that can result in a rich word-picture.\u00a0 But I think if an author works carefully to paint a vivid sketch of a scene even the 10,000 should yield a memorable story.<\/p>\n
Of course, I am painfully aware that the commercial market for shorter fiction is essentially nil.\u00a0 I was reading recently that science fiction short story magazines and collections don\u2019t sell at all.\u00a0 So that guarantees that authors will continue to pump out door-stops.\u00a0 And honestly, the longer episodic genre books are perfectly enjoyable just as they are.\u00a0 But in my opinion the true masterpieces of writing are a shorter type of story that weaves a tapestry in front of the reader\u2019s mind in a unified effect that goes from beginning to end in a single story arc that satisfies the reader\u2019s interest in the subject and provides a legitimate conclusion to the story.<\/p>\n
Well, anyway that\u2019s how it seems to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is the perfect length for a story?\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m sure there is no agreement in the world on that.\u00a0 And I must confess I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,2510,1263,237],"tags":[37,76,5235,1402],"class_list":["post-37109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-literature","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","tag-book","tag-fiction-writing","tag-novellas","tag-short-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n