|
Serendipity: last night I was reading P G Wodehouse's book "Performing Flea", collected from the many letters he wrote over many years to his great friend Bill Townend. In a 1934 letter he touched upon story lengths.
"I am now faced with a difficult job-- a 16,000 word story for the New York Herald-Tribune, to run in four parts. But I can't seem to get the right idea. A short story of 7,000 words is simple, and a novelette of 30,000, too., but this in-between length is trying. I haven't room to build up an elaborate plot, and yet the story must not be thin and must have at least a passable curtain for each instalment. Oh well, I suppose it will come."
|