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15th November 2008, 04:27 PM
| #31 (permalink) |
| Registered User Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Gwynedd
Posts: 3,586
| Re: Is It Possible To Have Too Big A Story? How about this for consideration? Perhaps it is not the writer's fault, perhaps it is a publisher thing? Fantasy has always lent itself to pages and pages of waffle, fair enough, the extra wordage is needed to define and create the world, though it is worth noting that Edgar Rice Burroughs (him of Tarzan fame) managed to effectively rewrite the whole of Lord of the Rings in to a single book of a mere 300 pages! Of the acclaimed 'Masters of Science Fiction': Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein etc; Only Niven has individual books that take up more than 3/4" of my shelves. Which inclines me to suggest that Science Fiction tends towards shorter more succinct writing. Swords and Sorcery is more popular than Science Fiction (at least there is a lot more of it) and/or publishers seem to think that Science Fiction is Fantasy with laser guns, consequently it gets lumped in to the fantasy shelves in the bookshop, where they are simply over-powered by their corpulent shelf mates. Simply put: If you don't measure 3" across the spine you won't be seen and bought! |
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15th November 2008, 05:28 PM
| #32 (permalink) |
| Registered User Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: West Lothian
Posts: 41
| Re: Is It Possible To Have Too Big A Story? "Simply put: If you don't measure 3" across the spine you won't be seen and bought" Or maybe publishers think fantasy = epic. After all 4 of the top ten bestselling books are fantasy and Harry Potter is the only one that comes in at under 300 pages. |
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15th December 2008, 08:34 PM
| #34 (permalink) | |
| Senior Member  Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: West Sussex
Posts: 3,575
| Re: Is It Possible To Have Too Big A Story? Quote:
He he! If only! I had to study the damn thing at school, and a pamphlet would have been so much better. The only thing worse was 'Paradise Lost' by some pillock who should have known better.....Having said that, my all-time-favourite fiction work is SHOGUN, by James Clavell, It's one book, but 1243 pages long, could easily have been a trilogy! I found with Robert Jordan, that as soon as I got to a page of dialogue, I'd keep skipping until I reached some action. Incredibly that could be up to seven pages, and I didn't miss a thing. Same with Terry Goodkind.... When I finish my own Trilogy, people will say "Not enough Dialogue/Too much action" and they'll be right..... In the end it's what publishers want, plus what we give them (and the two aren't mutually exclusive!) pls what the reader wants, plus whatever..... | |
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