I feel like the art of brevity is dead. It's getting to a point where after almost every book i read i think to myself "that could've been like 100 pages shorter". It's like editors have all gone brain dead and just approve long, unedited manuscripts instead of polished works. That's not me saying a longer work is inherently bad, a story should be the length it needs to be, but many books that are longer I feel do not justify their unwieldy page counts. Does anyone feel simmilar or disagree?
by HARJAS200007
33 Comments
I’ve had this experience with less specialised books. Like the stuff you see at Waterstones / Barnes & Noble.
Yeah man, especially with fantasy series where they just pad everything with unnecessary world-building details that don’t move the story forward at all
Absolutely agree. I feel like 95% of books would only benefit if made 20-30% shorter.
Depends entirely who you’re reading. Sometimes established names, like Stephen King or She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, release doorstoppers because there aren’t any editors left who will be brutal with them. New names are more likely to be working closely with their editors.
Another problem is that some publishing houses barely employ editors anymore, at least not the way editors used to be.
this is why I prefer short stories.
A lot of formulaic books are like that. The final complication that delays/imperils resolution that you know won’t end up mattering. I just skim thru that part to get to the resolution.
Very much agree. I think this to myself every time I read a book that suffers from it. Even a recent Stephen King I read (Fairy Tale) seemed longer than it needed to be.
Genuine question though; because I think this is becoming an issue for people: *is* it that they’re too long, *or* is it that we’ve gotten so used to consuming information in small bites that a whole book now *seems* too long and a bit insurmountable?
Man, I’m the polar opposite – i feel like everything anymore is 300-400 pages, and thats so short I end up finishing them in 2/3 sittings. Give me a doorstopper clocking in at 1,000 pages and I’m happy.
Whenever I’ve felt this it’s because I don’t actually like the book overall, I’m just finishing it because it’s closer to done than not and I don’t hate it, just not vibing it. So, are you sure you just aren’t grabbing books that aren’t grabbing you?
I agree. Powerful novels are usually 200 pages or less.
I agree. I have a pretty decent attention span but, my God, less is more sometimes.
The average page length of novels is creeping closer & closer to 400. That’s a lot of pages to hold someone’s interest. I feel like 250-300 pages is a sweet spot.
I don’t know, I didn’t read your whole post. Too long. Succinct it up, my friend.
It definitely depends. Sometimes the length is justified. I would argue, however, that most of Stephen King’s long ass books could be split in half lol
At a certain point it feels like I’m trapped in the author’s head and all their world building becomes frayed and chintzy. 500 pages is almost always more than enough.
Wild stab in the dark: you’re late Gen Z/early Alpha and don’t know or remember a world without smartphones or social media so you’ve trained yourself to not have much of an attention span because you lose focus without constant stimulation.
My advice would be to switch off your phone and set aside 30 minutes for reading every day until it becomes a habit.
Or you can just do a page a day. Whatever actually works for you.
Well, I think maybe your sample size is probably pretty small and skewed, so it’s hard to say something like ‘all books are XYZ.’ But I think that a book seeming overlong is a classic example of not being edited enough. 70% of editing a manuscript is cutting shit out. Are you reading a lot of books by the same or similar publishers, or maybe in the same genre or targeting the same market?
Did an Ai make this post?
>Does anyone feel simmilar or disagree?
Without any examples, it’s impossible for me to tell if I agree with you or not.
lol don’t delve into Russian literature is my advice.
I’m having this issue with The Count of Monte Cristo. Everyone says to read the unabridged version, but I can’t make myself care about some of these long conversations. Hearing that the author was paid by the word makes sense.
In this thread: people who haven’t realized they don’t actually enjoy reading
I feel that way about series. It seems like everything I read ends up being 10+ books and it seems like the author plans on keeping it going until the end of time.
I have gone back and read books from the 80s and earlier, and the pacing is much better in general. However, there is often a bigger trade-off between plot and character development, too. The books have much less wasted space… but there’s also less life in them.
I think a healthy mix of the two styles is good.
Give examples please.
this is such a stupidly broad thing to say that it’s essentially meaningless. do you realise how broad a category “books” covers? not everyone reads the same things you do or the same genres. i mostly read political non-fiction and i would say a lot of the books i’ve read recently suffered from being too brief and not providing sufficient context, but it would be idiotic of me to say that to someone who only reads fantasy
r/cosmere will come for you if you keep talking like that.
In all seriousness, there’s something to be said about books like the Louis L’ Amour series.
After reading some long fantasy series, I picked up 100 Years of Solitude finally, and it was amazing to see the kind of depth an author can pack into a single chapter. And as someone who likes webserials, the glaring issues in pacing really becomes even more noticeable.. So I definitely appreciate a polished work in that way.
In a different sense though, I think really long series has a really big appeal to readers who wants to linger in the world as much as possible lol. I think you can look to long cozy-fantasy stories for example, it’s a source of comfort and escapism I suppose. And in works like ASOIAF, I would argue that the length can work in its advantage of immersing someone into the world so deeply, but it can backfire though, I can’t imagine the effort it takes to plot so many POVS and weaving narratives together
This is a baseless statement with no actual thought or evidence behind it. What counts as a “too long” book? What are the parameters? What’s the page cutoff? Which books do you feel were too long? How long should they have been? What made them too long? What page length counts as brevity?
I don’t think you put more than half a second of thought into this.
Idk I mean quite a few books I read are around 300 pages and I’d say they keep me interested the whole time and make me want to come back for more sometimes even wish they were longer so I wouldn’t have to take time and find the next book to read
Infinite jest is my favourite book
But some books I wish were shorter while others I wish never end
Read better books.
Couldn’t agree more. No book needs to be over 400 pages.