The case for novellas versus long books

[Alexander Turcic]

Not exactly a new question, but it always comes up again. Should anyone need more than a few hundred pages to tell a good story?

Mrs. Edelstein from the Guardian Books blog is an outspoken proponent of efficient novellas, and she also explains why:

And who could deny that the actual experience of reading a long book can feel a little arduous if it doesn't really make your heart sing? It is much like eating a delicious meal in an American restaurant - lovely, but you have to leave at least quarter of the portion behind or else you'll explode.

[...]

Readable in a couple of hours, a novella demands far less time than a full-length novel: you can get through them in the same amount of time it takes to watch a film or two reality television programmes. If you read one in bed you can actually finish it in one go, as opposed to reading the same few chapters repeatedly because you keep forgetting what you covered the night before. And best all, an upswing in the publication of novellas would not confirm the prejudices of those who rail against the dumbing-down of literature: novellas require an intelligent author and an intelligent reader to appreciate the power of brevity.

Some people like a long read. Some don't. On which side are you?

[via SF Signal]

[tompe]

I like books that gives the experience of reading a novel. That usually means novels but too long novels are often a bad thing. Reading a short story is a totally different experience and not as good. A novella can in some cases give the novel reading experience.

[Gudy]

I appreciate a good read, regardless of length. Generally speaking, I prefer novels to novellas or short stories, though, because they are better suited to my penchant for complex, twisted plots and deep, many-faceted characters. As to the points raised in the article, the first, admittedly snarky, response I have is that it seems that someone needs to work on their attention span and memory retention skills. :-P

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I'd prefer a novella to any novel upwards of 500 pages. I get as much enjoyment out of a story that understands the concept of brevity... sometimes you simply don't need to describe, in baroque detail, every rock a character encounters or every nuance of their thoughts. Incredible detail doesn't automatically equate to a great read.

The length of a novel is very subjective, anyhow. Many "novels" of 20 years ago are considered "novellas" compared to today's tomes.

[NatCh]

I see some stories being very well suited to a shorter format, but others completely unsuited to it. I think I see the dividing line is how important the characters' developments are to properly telling the story.

For example, Minority Report doesn't really go into character development all that much, the characters are largely the same at the beginning as the end. It's a good ride, but it doesn't give the reader all that much to think about as far as how the characters react to the situation. The "thinking" it induces in the reader is more on how humanity as a whole deals with the concepts it covers, rather than how the characters work their ways through them. This is what makes them Philip K. Dick's stories so great for movie adaptations, while things like the Harry Potter books (especially the later ones) seem rushed as movies.

On the other hand, a classic "coming of age" story has a much harder time cramming itself into so short a span without flattening the characters. And how much does a character really come of age if he never develops? Is a character really a character if the reader doesn't care about him?

I used to love the Xanth novels, but somewhere around #13, the author seemed to lose track of the characters somehow. He got so caught up in telling the story and cramming in as many puns as possible that he forgot to tell the story of the characters. That's the reason I stopped reading them. Frankly, I kept reading them a lot longer than I should have out of past love for the series.

So while I agree that short, efficient books can tell some stories exceedingly well, there are some that simply need a larger canvas to paint their pictures on. Does any story really need 13 several-hundred-page-long volumes to do it justice? Well, that's a different question, now isn't it?

This is kind of a different parsing of the question "Book or Movie" to my mind. Some stories make good movies, others don't, the length available in the format for presenting the story is the main dividing line. Does that mean that books that don't make good movies aren't good books? I certainly don't think so, and I don't think that books that won't cram into less than 100 pages are necessarily bad ones either.

[mocelet]

One of the most memorable (for the right reasons) stories I have read recently is the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson - and that is a little over 3000 pages in three hardback volumes in total. That said, there have been some cracking 100 page novellas in anthologies in recent months as well.

Some stories need the pages, some don't. Equally, some stories don't get enough space, and others get way too much.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by mocelet

Some stories need the pages, some don't. Equally, some stories don't get enough space, and others get way too much.

Yep. I've read some 200 page books that seemed to long & some 1,000 page books that seemed to need to need more pages. It's down to the individual story.

[slayda]

If the story is one I really like, I hate for it to end. Therefore it should be long. That said, I really hate books that you think, "Well it might get better in the next chapter." Those should never have been started. I won't name any since the most recent one was a "very popular" book that was made into a movie (class "C" IMO).

That just leaves the ordinarily good books. With those it depends on the story. Some writers can write a novel that takes place in a single day. Others cover several life times. On this type, the author should say what he has to say & shut up - so I will.

[Studio717]

I prefer longer to shorter. Back in my scifi reading days I remember not liking short stories because they were all over so soon and were often just setups for a punch line. I rarely read short stories now (no matter the genre) for the same reasons.

The story needs to be as long as it needs to be. Some are so well-done that you hate for them to end and are worth the time they take to read, while others are tedious from the get-go and the vast wasteland beyond Chapter One will never be explored. Both opinions are clearly driven by personal taste.

[JSWolf]

In my opinion, it depends on the story and how it's being told.

[Jack B Nimble]

One of the best approaches I have seen to this question comes from an old Professor of mine (sadly, his name is lost to the cobwebs of my memory). When he assigned the first term paper for the class, one of the students asked how long the paper should be. His response: "Do you want me to read it, or weigh it? Make it as long as it needs to be to cover the topic."

You can tell a great story in just a few pages such as Bradbury's "The Pedestrian," still one of my all-time favorite stories. The Lord of the Rings is also a great story, but I would not be surprised if the Cliff Notes version is longer than a novella. As several people have already said... it depends on the story.

Jack

[ottocrat]

To be honest, I think the point she's making is... well, not to put too fine a point on it... absurd! Or perhaps just deliberately provocative. A book should be as long as it needs to be. A 20 page short story can be too long, and a four-volume tome can be too short. I don't hear anyone saying that a Beethoven symphony should be cut by a movement, or that a Britney Spears song needs another three verses!

I often find that I will get through a long book more quickly than a short one, if it's better quality. A Suitable Boy, for instance... I just steamed through that in a few days, and there's no fat in it - at 1500 pages it's not a page too long. On the other hand, I've had 150-page paperbacks sit on my bedside table for months, just because they never captured my imagination.

I know that I always look forward to discovering a really long book: the anticipation of losing myself in a fictional world, getting to know the characters and share their lives... The longer it is, the sharper the sense of loss when it ends. The pleasure I get from a really good, LONG book is far greater than I get from even a superbly written novella.

One of the beauties of e-books is that I no longer notice how long they are. So I find myself reading a wider variety of books than perhaps I have in the past. You judge an e-book by its quality, not its length...

[tompe]

I really think that reading a short story and reading a novel is a qualitively different experience. You can never get the novel reading experince by reading a short story. So I think all answers saying "it depends on the story" and so on is only relevant if you like the two different experiences the same.

And what is this focus on "story"? Isn't the important thing the total experience you get? The goal of a book is mostly not only to tell a specific story but to give an experience.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Some people like a long read. Some don't. On which side are you?

The side that tells the story best. This may be a really short story, such as Frederic Brown's 17 word classic, or it might take a multi-volume set.

SF writer Tom Purdom once opined that the novella was the natural length for SF -- long enough to develop the idea and the characters, but short enough to be read in a sitting. I think he was on to something, and there's a reason why the World SF Convention bestows a Hugo Award for Best Novella, but I don't think the novella is the only length that can or should be used, and I doubt Tom does either. (He wrote short stories and novels, among other things.)

But the story should dictate the length, rather than vice versa. I think we all have candidates for stories that began as novelettes or novellas, but were expanded to book length. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes the padding was all too obvious, and diluted what had been a fine tale.

"Long vs short" is a spurious competition that shouldn't be proposed. "Start at the beginning. Go on until the end. Then stop." However long it takes you to get to the end is the proper length.
______
Dennis

[bookwormfjl]

Some stories cannot be told in less than a 1000 pages and others just go on and on. It's not necessarily the length of the novel but the length of the series. For example George Martin's Fire and Ice series contains novels that are montrously large, but I couldn't picture them as being one page shorter. Whereas Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series felt like a short story stretched out to a full-length novel.
Stephen King's Gerald's Game and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (?) were two novels that could have been excellent short stories. IMHO!
The entire Dune series could not be a page shorter as that universe is so complex. Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon........I thought it would never end! His (much shorter) novel Diamond Age could have been longer.
I guess the bottom line is a good story written by a good author will find its equilibrium be it short or long.