Comments on: Novels vs. Short Stories

By: Ron Peponis

Ron Peponis — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:05:53 +0000

Does e-Publishing make the length debate or word count issue redundant? Do e-Publishers attribute these titles (novel – novella – novellette), to the work they publish? I started writing a novel and discovered I had three short novels instead. I think the reading public’s tastes are changing and shorter is the way forward.

By: bobisimo

bobisimo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:14:21 +0000

If David Lynch movies were three hours I’d never want to watch them.

Inland Empire: 180 min | Poland:197 min … Haha.

But seriously, I agree (even though I did like the movie). I’d like to see how a 2-hour version of the movie would look.

Speaking of length, my last story hit 10K or 11K, and I was thinking of trying to chop that down, maybe in half. Teachers at school always drilled into my head that shorter was better, that the story should be as absolutely tight as possible and then cut some more. Got to the point where you felt guilty if your story went over 250 words. :p

I like your take on word count, though. Nice to see you aim for 15,000+ words.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:12:47 +0000

I definitely agree with you about movies. God knows I don’t watch enough of them but when I do, I really like them to be long. Glad to see that we share that commonality.

By: carltonmellick

carltonmellick — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 05:04:50 +0000

The funny thing is I prefer movies to be as long as possible. I think most movies should be at least 120 minutes. But I prefer books when they are as short.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:52:37 +0000

I really love the longer novels because I have a habit of reading slowly anyways and this isn’t a problem for me. I don’t think I’ve ever read an actual book in one sitting (yet.) I’m glad that you enjoy short novels but off-hand, given the choice, I always go for the longer one, just out of impulse. This could be a problem I have but eh, I’ll deal with it later.