In Praise of Short Fiction

It seems readers are divided into two camps: those who like short reads and those who like long reads. In forum after forum and Facebook group after Facebook group, I notice people writing that they don’t like short reads. Very few complain about long reads.

For myself, I’m firmly in the short read group. I grew up reading short stories and short novels — books that many today are labeling novellas (even though the Science Fiction Writers of America defined novels as 40,000 words and up). So maybe it’s just force of habit. But I can’t help myself asking the question, how did these short novels come about anyway.

Back in the Victorian era, the “triple-decker” was the standard novel format. That is, essentially every novel was a trilogy. A novel of one volume was considered a “short” read.

Why were Victorian novels so long? Mostly because publishers thought the reading public wanted long novels. And perhaps they did. After all, they would read novels aloud as a form of family entertainment. And just as movies used to be an hour and a half, now they are approaching 3 hours in length. People want more bang for their buck.

Yet, after World War I the Triple-Decker went out of fashion. Novels became shorter. More lean and taut, more focused. Which was perhaps due to the discarding of the third person omniscient point of view. Stories and novels became more intimate with the adoption of first person and limited third person points of view.

The proliferation of pulp and slick magazines in the ‘20s and ‘30s were the result of a reading public wanting stories and novels to read. Serialized novels were typically around 30,000 to 40,000 words long. A story of 20,000 words was called a short novel.

These novels established the formats and formulas for genre fiction, and also to a degree for literary fiction.

When the pulp magazines died in the ‘50s and were replaced by the mass market paperbacks costing a quarter, the length of the novel didn’t change. And rarely went over 50,000 words. Search out some of the old paperbacks. They are slender little books. Truly a book that would fit in a pocket. One that could easily be carried with you.

Dean Wesley Smith has an interesting article explaining why the New York publishers fattened up the novel after its lean period during the pulp era. And I’ll give you a hint: it had nothing to do with literary merit and everything to do with money — money for the big corporate publisher, that is.

So why did novels slim down after the era of Victorian excess? I think it was because editors and authors discovered a story could be told in 40,000 words or less. The more intimate points of view allowed the author to dispense with a lot of unnecessary back story and editorial comment. They allowed the author to focus on the characters and their story.

When a novel is bloated beyond 50,000 words, it’s frequently due to elements that don’t enrich the story. Descriptions get longer and more detailed. Purple prose is fine, often beautiful, but rarely beneficial to the story. Scenes are introduced that do nothing to further the story, they merely fatten the word count. And when getting paid by the word, I suppose there is some justification for the fat. But I, as a reader, skip over those parts.

Elmore Leonard’s advice to writers is very valid here: don’t write the parts that readers skip over.

I’m reminded of the story concerning Raymond Chandler, I believe. Chandler’s editor returned one of his novels because he wanted it a little longer. 

Chandler went over the book and sent it back. The editor returned the manuscript with a note saying Chandler had misunderstood him. He didn’t want the novel shorter. He wanted it longer, and was returning the manuscript so that Chandler could add a few thousand words to it.

Once again Chandler went over the manuscript and sent it back. This time the editor decided to leave it, because Chandler had cut the text even more. And the editor felt if he kept on he’d have a short story on his hands instead of a novel.

When I consider our contemporary western lifestyles, I think a shorter read makes a lot of sense. A majority of online content is now read on the smart phone. Writers are advised to make sure that everything is shorter: sentences, paragraphs, chapters. And to make sure there is plenty of white space instead of a mass of text.

In addition people are very busy. A short novel can be read in one or two sittings, which seems to me to be just about right. Read half of the book on the morning’s commute and read the other half on the evening’s commute.

I also find that reading a shorter novel requires less mental dedication to keeping everything straight in the story. If I’m reading a long novel with many plot lines and characters, then I have to take time to upload all that data into my head every time I pick up the book, after having set it down.

And then there are all the boring parts in those long novels, which I end up skipping over anyway. Because sad to say, few are the writers who can write a long novel without there being boring parts in it. Often lots of boring parts.

To see what all the fuss was about, I read the first two Jack Reacher novels. I found them fat and flabby. Continual lapses in the suspense build up of the story, left me feeling like a yo-yo. 

Build up suspense, then have it deflate due to overly long descriptions. Then build up the tension again until the next several pages of needless description.

I don’t need to know all the different types of grasses and rocks and how each might impact Reacher taking out his target. Nor do I need a page long description of the flight path of the bullet as it leaves the rifle to when it reaches the target.

All that unnecessary description is padding pure and simple. And it is boring.

By way of contrast, I just finished a Seabury Quinn Jules de Grandin short novel. There was plenty of action, plenty of suspense, and absolutely no flab to the story. It was lean. And a whole lot more fun to read than Jack Reacher. And I think all because the story was a whole heck of a lot shorter.

Child took 20 times as many pages to tell his story then did Quinn. And IMO, Child’s story was the worse for it because it was too damn fat.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that applies to books as well as art. There will always be readers who find the short forms to be “ugly”, and those who find the long forms to be “ugly”.

However, we readers live in a wonderful age. We can find all manner of books and stories to satisfy our reading desires. For every reader there is a writer, and for every writer there is his or her reader.

I think we readers can take comfort in the fact that there are many, many writers today who can meet our needs. And often they aren’t the bestsellers. We writers can take comfort in the fact that we do have an audience. There are readers who want to read our books. We simply have to find them.

Short stories and the short novel are alive and well. For those of us who like to read shorter forms, they are out there. Happy hunting to us! And if you run across some good ones, let me know!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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