The Contemporary Nomad is where five authors talk with you, dear reader, about the important subjects of the day. Whatever we decide they might be. Read more 
W I G N A L L
I’ve just read a great book, The Princess of Mantua by Marie Ferranti, translated from the French by Andrew Brown. It tells the imagined story of a real person, Barbara of Brandenburg, framed in the context of her depiction in the Camera Depicta as painted by Mantegna in the Palazzo di San Giorgio, seat of the Gonzagas. It’s a thought-provoking read which covers the whole of Barbara’s life and leaves a vivid impression of fifteenth century Italy in the mind afterwards. This is all the more impressive for the fact that the book is only 81 pages long.
You heard me, the book is only 81 pages long. My current read, The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald also deals with a fictional account of a real person, in this case the poet Novalis, and that comes in at 282 pages – verbose by the standards of Ms Ferranti but still nicely lean.
Skip back seven years and my second visit to the offices of Hodder & Stoughton where my then editor, Jon Wood, offered me a book he thought I should read. I declined, telling him I rarely read books over 300 pages long. He laughed and said that as long as I wrote books over that length he didn’t mind. It seems my inclination towards Size 14 font had fooled him – the longest of my books is the UK version of People Die which comes in at a whopping 244 pages (the US version, using smaller print, is 220).
Let’s just consider some other examples. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is about as epic a story as one could hope for and yet it’s 315 pages long. Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is 320 pages long, The Awakening by Kate Chopin is 221, and while we’re at it, Agatha Christie usually turned in her books at around the 250 page mark.
I’m not saying there aren’t much longer classic works, but what really baffles me is that in the current climate, with so many other diversions, books seem to be getting longer. It reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future where Marty McFly explains that everything is smaller in the future… except portable stereos, which get really big.
Stuart MacBride has told in the past that his contract actually specifies a word count of 150,000. His editor laughed about it and told me Stuart was making rather too much of this point, a clause they treated merely as a guide – but I suspect if Stuart turned in his next Logan McRae book at 60,000 words (the average length of my books) his publishers would have a fit of the vapours.
Now I have to say, this isn’t a criticism of authors who write long books – there’s clearly a market for them. Indeed, I’ve broken my own rules and read a couple of superb thrillers that were around the 500 page mark in the last year (Alex Barclay’s Darkhouse and Michael Marshall’s The Straw Men). And perhaps readers prefer longer books, but I do wonder if this is in some way a publisher-driven phenomena.
My concern is not that all the long books out there are unwarranted but that too many of them are long because the authors have lost focus and the editors no longer edit. But tell me I’m wrong. If you’re a writer (Olen, I know you’ve crossed this bridge in the last week or so!) why does a book ever have to be over 300 pages? If you’re a reader, why do you prefer a longer read when you could read two or three shorter books in the same time? If you’re either or both, why has brevity fallen out of fashion?
February 20th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Speaking as a reader, I go either way. I like short novels (and short stories), and they have the advantage of being easier to read in one sitting, which is my preferred way to read a good book. But sometimes I’m in the mood for a multi-volume epic. There’s also something very appealing about a fat standalone that packs in a lot of world building and a cohesive story, without succumbing to the temptation to either prune subplots or spin off into a trilogy or open-ended series.
In the end, it depends on the story. If a book’s well written, then it’s the right length. If not, well…
Speaking out of my ass, maybe brevity is no longer in fashion because of the situations where people read books. The beach, a plane, commuter rail. All those situations lend themselves to having a chunk of book to work through, and it’s more inconvenient to lug three small novels than one doorstop volume. (This doesn’t apply so much to people who read a lot, who have TBR piles and have plotted out their next several Amazon purchases with an eye to when sequels to as-yet-unread books will be available. But there are a lot of books of opportunity picked up in airports and grocery stores.) There may also be a higher perceived valuation for a longer book, if buyers are tracking their hours of entertainment per dollar. (Of course, if they’re doing that reading’s still pretty cheap, even in hardcover.)
And brevity may be coming back. At chain bookstores I’ve seen Hard Case Crime books displayed prominently (and not just King’s), and I’ve picked up slender books by new authors. (Still, I’m not sure how this impacts authors’ contracts in general or specific.) I get the sense brevity’s sort of fashionably unfashionable right now, maybe poised to cycle back into fashion for a little while.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Kevin,
My take: it’s the fault of older leisure readers who aren’t very discerning for the most part. I think it’s a matter of writers getting lazy, and readers letting them.
A lot of stuff is written pretty slipshod. Lots of superfluous words and descriptions.
I think the crowd that enjoys this kind of thing is older. Growing up they read off and on in their free time, but they aren’t what you’d call passionate about literature in the sense that we are. Now that they have tons free time and nothing to do with it but gum carrots to death, they control the market. I’m talking 45+ Boomers.
They have more time to read, they’re lazy readers, and they control the market.
However, I think there’s change in the air. Younger generations, 35 and under, like brevity. They want the story wound tight and they don’t want you to spoon feed their imagination.
The internet has a lot to do with it, and I think it’s a great change.
Gen X-Y readers are much more likely to pick up a slim volume from a writer they’ve never heard of than a giant doorstop. They’re saturated with entertainment, and they want something that cuts to the chase, and does it with style.
The bummer is: they’re busy busting their ass, so they don’t have much time to read for pleasure. The upshot, when they get a little older, they’ll be reading your books, because not only do they want brevity due to spending a good chunk of time reading online, they’re growing more discerning towards good and bad prose, whether they know it or not.
Chuck Palahniuk is a good illustration of this. His books rarely exceed 250 pages, and he’s got an enviable following, mostly with the 18-35 crowd.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
I can argue every direction on this one.
First of all, a book is (to some extent) a product. Know your consumers. I’ve joked about the fact that women prefer long and men prefer tight, but as a general rule there’s something to that. I have a lot of friends who will not buy books that are under 250 pages in length, and they’re all women. They feel cheated, like they’re barely getting into the story and then it’s over.
There is also a cost factor to consider. James Sallis’s Drive. 168 pages and $13 US. A cost of 7.7 cents per page. Michael Connelly’s Echo Park weighs in at 412 pages in hardcover at a cost of $26.95. Basically double the price but almost two and a half times the length. If MC’s book was priced the same as JS’s it would list at $31.72 US. I don’t think it’s exclusive to the North American market that we’re conditioned to think buying in bulk is cheaper. It isn’t always, but I will tell you this: my husband was interested in reading Drive. We had an offer of a review copy. We don’t always take the review copies – sometimes we still buy the book ourselves. Kevin looked at the cost and looked at the length and said there was no way he’d spend that much on an unproven author for a work so short.
I think the story should be exactly as long as it needs to be for the story being told. That means that if the book weighs in at 400 pages that aren’t propped up by filler, what’s the problem? If a book is 250 pages and tells the story to the fullest, same question.
As a reader, when I have a favourite series and am looking forward to reading the latest book I do not want to think that I’ll be finished in a couple hours. I actually want to spend some time with the character.
This is another variable that factors in. Sometimes, in crime fiction, the story is only the case and nothing extraneous is allowed. As a result, in order to push for character development the protagonist must have some personal connection to the victim/crime/situation. I have an appreciation for books that round the person out a bit. The relationship between Thorne and his father springs to mind.
It’s funny you raise this now, Kevin, because I’m wrestling with some final touches on a manuscript before it goes out. On the one hand, I want to be sure I’ve done enough to set the scene and develop the characters. But I don’t want to be repetitive. I’m looking at a manuscript that’s just over 107,000 words, but 444 pages, because most of the book is dialogue… which is normal for me. I write a lot of dialogue. Perhaps a failing on my part, but I believe that what the characters do and say does more to depict who they are than much of the analysis I could put in narration.
However, sometimes what’s clear in my head doesn’t translate across, and once you’ve gone through a few drafts of something you forget what you’ve put in or taken out and those drafts blur.
I’m reluctant to put any extra words in unnecessarily. Consequently, in my final pass I’m giving myself a limit of how much I can add. Still, I’m not happy about the length. My first few efforts came in substantially longer in the original drafts – I cut more than 50,000 words out of SC to bring it down to 110,000. I was actually pleased that this latest effort came in under 110,000… contrary to my rambling here tight writing is a goal of mine.
Unfortunately, I have a habit of writing large stories. I know that some publishers automatically won’t consider works over 100,000 words, but I tend to write long.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
My contention is…don’t waste a word. If the story can be told in 60,000 words, then great. If it requires 200,000 words, well thats fine too. I can’t stand reading page after of page of filler that has nothing to do with the story.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
I feel under attack here. My mysteries run as a rule about 120,000 words. I account for that by the fact that I deal with an exotic setting and atmosphere, plus I usually cover 3 separate cases. Then there is the “show, don’t tell” requirement. Dialogue is not an efficient way of telling a story.
As a writer, I admire other writers who can control their style so well that 60,000 words presents a complete novel. As a writer, I wish I could do the same, if for no other reason than that it would save me a lot of time.
As a reader, I usually like my stories rich. I never read anything in one sitting but rather look forward to returning to it at a later time again and again.
As for the older generation of readers being responsible for long novels because they aren’t very bright: They were raised without TV and read a great deal more than Generation X. They are therefore better at it. Yes, shorter books do sell better. Shorter books, shorter chapters, shorter paragraphs, shorter sentences, and shorter words. They are aimed at the semi-literate.
And I absolutely detested the Fitzgerald book.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Ingrid, I too disliked “The Blue Flower”!
I wonder whether length has to do with price points. It takes time to cut a 400-page novel down to 250 pages, and once you’ve invested that time, you can’t charge $26.95 for it any more.
Movies suffer the same bloat. I saw a dozen films last year that ran 2:30 and longer, and would have been twice as good at two-thirds the length.
February 21st, 2007 at 12:20 am
Good comments all, and they show how complex this issue actually is.
But I want to stress, particularly to you Ingrid, that this is not an attack on long books – in the perfect world there would be a good cross-section but despite some of the comments above, I think brevity is scarce, particularly in the crime and thriller world.
Torrey, I don’t think it’s generational somehow. After all, both Pullman’s and Rowling’s books come in too long for my tastes but are devoured by children. And I know plenty of people in their twenties who only read doorstops.
As an aside, I’m also having issues with The Blue Flower, but none of them concern its length.
Finally, Aldo, thank you for your brevity!
February 21st, 2007 at 1:18 am
Kevin: Fair enough. I suppose we can agree to disagree.
While I don’t think the generational technology gap is the only reason, and while I don’t think all older readers are lazy readers, I’ve got a hunch that it factors in somehow.
Of course, I’m a technology writer by day, so I have to make a conscious effort not to see things through that filter.
Ingrid: I’m echoing Kevin here. My off the cuff comment wasn’t meant to imply that all lengthy books are written in a slipshod, lazy fashion.
The novels you write, with a very specialized setting, probably wouldn’t fly at 55,000-words, because the reader has very few reference points in that world. Unless you tell them what they’re looking at, they don’t know what they’re seeing.
Whereas someone writing a book set in the contemporary world can get away with, “The blue sedan,” and any more description, unless it’s integral to the story, is superfluous.
For example, the writer doesn’t have to describe it as, “The blue sedan, a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine, which was propelled along the top of black rubber tires, and controlled by driver who turned a wheel in the cab, directing the motion of the car.”
I mean, I could spend 15,000-words describing what a car is, what it looks like, and why it is what it is.
I have to disagree on the shorter sentence/chapter/words comment in regards to semi-literacy. Gen Xers are highly literate. But I’ll save a long rebuttal in the spirit of brevity.
Personally, I could give a damn about book length. I either pick a book up or put it down based on the first couple pages. If the writing is good, I don’t care how long it is. If it’s not, it could be a slim volume, I’m not gonna read it.
February 21st, 2007 at 8:26 am
I think there’s some effect on the way publishers think on book length from the idea of ’shelf space’. A thin book on a long shelf, especially one surrounded by 100k+ word chunky ones, doesn’t stand out, doesn’t catch the browsing market, so the theory goes. A fatter book, a clearer name on the spine, this grabs the eye.
Since most sales happen face-upward on the table, not spine-outward on the shelf, the logic’s flawed, but I’ve certainly heard it said more than once.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:42 am
I think Aldo’s brevity says the most. From the writer’s perspective it’s simply about taking care of the efficiency of the telling.
I actually tend toward reading shorter books these days, though when I was younger I tended toward longer ones. My life was different back then, and I had a lot of spare time and space (restaurant break rooms, busses, subways) to dig into a book. Ironically, now that I’m a 24-7 novelist, I have less time to read because when I read I fret that I should be writing. And TV. Yes, I watch too much of that for the fast-food version of narrative lessons. (Ingrid, you’ve got a good point there.)
That said, my book lengths have shifted around depending entirely on what kind of story I’m telling. The wordlengths for my little series:
85,000
100,000
105,000
55,000
95,000 (though this started as my planned 300,000-word opus)
With this next one, I’m imagining it may run as high as 150,000. Not that I want it to (in fact, I really don’t), it just seems that, given the number of main characters (3) and the stories they need to live out, I won’t have much of a choice.
Ironically, though, book 4 had 5 POVs and was only 55,000 words. Why? Because that book had a different feel/texture to the one I’m writing now. It was minimalist because that’s what the story needed. Now I’m aiming for a classically fuller, richer feel, which requires more words. Will some of it be filler? I hope not, because it’s the writer’s job to know the difference between filler and things that add to the story (or world or character, though these must also add to the story).
Like Aldo suggests, the story must be as long as it must be, not as you set out to make it. My 3rd book was supposed to be the minimalist, 55,000 word book, but once it got going I realized I’d misjudged it, and it ended up the longest of the series. Turned out the one that followed was going to be the slim one.
As for the contractual stipulation of word length, if Stuart’s editor is anything like mine, then it really does mean nothing–just legal mumbo-jumbo. All mine stipulate 100,000, but when I turned in a 55,000 word ms the issue of length NEVER crossed anyone’s lips. Good thing too, since that’s the one that got the Edgar nod.
As far as the marketing side, if you think a fatter book gets more attention and write to that specificiation for that reason, then you’re shooting yourself in the foot. People buy books because they’ve heard good things about it, because it’s got a terrific cover, or because it’s by someone whose books they like. There may be a fraction of a percent who pick up a doorstopper because of its size, but you’ll end up overwriting–that is, writing badly–just to cater to a tiny group of people while alienating the rest with lousy, fatty prose.
And remember there’s always Ken Bruen, whose books clock in at around 40,000 words. He’s doing very well, thank you.
February 21st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Hmm… I feel obliged to point out that my first contract said 150,000 words per book, because that’s what the first: COLD GRANITE (take my name in vain and not plug my books will you?) came in at. I think they were looking for consistency as it was to be a series. The second and third books actually weigh in around the 120K mark. So, true to their word, they haven’t actually held me to it.
I think the length of a book has more to do with the kind of story the author is trying to tell than anything else. I write about multiple plotlines so my books are a lot longer than, say John Rickards — who focuses on a single event. Doesn’t make my books better or worse than his, just different. Though obviously, I am much, much prettier.
Some books are long, some books are short, and some books just aren’t very good.
Yes, there certainly are examples of bloat being down to poor editing: I’ve had a rant before about Ms Rowling’s ORDER OF THE PHOENIX before. But then she’s the richest woman in publishing, her editors probably feel they don’t need to bother putting the kind of work in they did with the first couple of books. They still make millions.
And it’s fallacy to say that only big books suffer from bloat: I’ve read heaps of sub 90,000 word efforts where I would have gleefully edited out about a third of what was there. Short stories stretched out into novels by adding word after word of meaningless drivel.
The story should always be as long as it needs to be.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I write until I reach the end.
I read the same way.
I liked For the Dogs. I liked Power of the dog.
Both were just the right length.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Stuart, good point about short books sometimes being equally guilty of bloating. Incidentally, Stuart and John Rickards look like peas in a pod, rather like the crime writing world’s answer to Johnny Depp and Keith Richards as Jack and Grant Sparrow.
Finally, and completely coincidentally, I received this email this morning from someone who’s just read “Among the Dead” -
“I picked up the book last night, and have read it this morning…
LOVED it.
but why oh why isnt it longer.
I was becoming addicted!”
I feel suitably chastised.
February 21st, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Ah, yes, addiction is a lovely thing — both for author and reader.
Thanks, Claire, for agreeing about THE BLUE FLOWER. I felt guilty about saying this afterward. On the whole, I’d rather praise other authors.
This is another very good thread and in the end it made me feel better about things. I have been grumpy lately, wishing I could detach from the market (both publishers and readers) and only care about the writing. Lately there has been an enormous struggle with potential revisions to two novels that remove all subtle hints in favor of spelling everything out until even the most inattentive reader grasps it. I resist because I think that cheapens a novel, but those who know warn that subtlety does not sell.
So please forgive my ill humor.
February 21st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
A good post, Kevin.
I agree with Stuart that there are plenty of very short books that feel like a slow death reading them. Virginia Woolf has written some very short novels, but I found them like wading through treacle.
But a lot can be said for short books (from a short man…) You mention, Penelope Fitzgerald, Kevin. She is a fabulous writer, one of my favourites, and she rarely wrote a novel over 200 pages. She makes every word count.
There are a lot of novels out there that just feel like a meal at TFI Friday’s: overpriced, lacking in flavour and a tendency to bloat when consumed.
I always thought it might be an industry driven thing. A longer book justifies that extra one pound on the cover price (soon gobbled up by high discounts).
A fellow agent has a theory that the `Great American Novel’ is never less than 500 pages these days, and I kind of agree. To have `something to say’ you need to take a long time to say it, to show how deep you are.
Toodle pip.
Phil
February 21st, 2007 at 9:54 pm
P.S. I haven’t read `the Blue Flower’ so can’t comment on it, but give some of her earlier novels a try, `The Beginning of Spring’ and the one that won the Booker years ago, set on a houseboat (can’t remember the title, sorry). I thought they were excellent.
Phil
February 21st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Ah, good to see you round these parts, Agent Phil.
True about Woolf – one of the lines I’m proudest of in any of my books is when Lucas, the retired hitman in “For the Dogs”, says, “Virginia Woolf – boy, am I glad she’s dead”!
Offshore is the one that won the Booker – I’ll give it a try. Clair felt The Blue Flower was misogynistic – I wouldn’t go that far yet, but halfway through I’m having problems with the fact that the central character isn’t someone you can easily warm to, and given that he’s wooing a 12 year old girl I can only see that getting worse…
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:24 am
Incidentally, Stuart and John Rickards look like peas in a pod, rather like the crime writing world’s answer to Johnny Depp and Keith Richards as Jack and Grant Sparrow.
This is an image I’m sure we can work with if I make it to Harrogate this year…
February 22nd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
For brevity I’ve always liked the poem by Pilinszky János:
A life sentence-
A bed’s shared
a pillow isn’t
p.s. sorry I’m always in late on the discussions, I’m relying on free wifi where I happen to be.
February 22nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Is it too simplistic to say that the book should be exactly as long as the story?! Some can be told more quickly and are stronger for it. Others, if cut down would leave you feeling cheated. I like stories of many different lengths and only dislike longer books if they feel padded.
February 23rd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Years ago, when I started selling stories to web magazines, I found that an online pieces needed to be 3000 words, max.
I took a few stories I hadn’t been able to sell to print venues and cut them down to 3K for the web. It was an eye-opening exercise and in all the stories I cut, only one or two were hurt, which told me that I was writing fat.
I’m still working on that.