L is for....Length
Length for length's sake is a dreadful indulgence in a fiction writer-- if you are wodging out your work to arrive at a notional number of words, be it eight hundred or eighty thousand, then you may be putting on unnecessary fat, when it is muscle that you are after. (It's easy to become hung up on word counts, like standing on the scales every day to check your weight. Try not to, not too often anyway, as you may end up with quantity rather than quality.)
Most books seem to have their own ideal mass -- if you do justice to the story, teasing out the nuances of the plot, conveying your themes in all their complexity, breathing sufficient life into the characters so that they function almost autonomously, then the length should more or less take care of itself. The notion that a thick book is better value for money, even if it persuades some publishers, seems crass to me -- think of the irresistible slenderness of Paul Gallico's novella The Snow Goose.
Having said all that, a while ago I bought an abridged copy of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, feeling it was something I really should get round to reading, but lacking a little literary stamina. I didn't get past page twenty. I wasn't interested in the characters, I thought the narrative seemed thin and flat, I didn't want to waste my time. Then, seeing it free on Kindle, I bought the whole e-tome and I haven't been able to put it down since. I'm up to my neck in its lusciousness, its assurance, its humanity. It is written on a generous, expansive scale and all the words and scenes the abridger culled are more than worth the work involved in reading them.
The moral here? Write the story you want to write, to the best of your ability: size isn't everything.
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