Bloated popular fiction

Cafe Society
21

For the most part, I agree with Exapno Mapcase. I have a few comments on the OP, though. I’m a nonfiction writer that owns a bookstore, incidentally.

True as a trend, perhaps, but not as a general indictment. The popular pulp Westerns and romances are often still little thin things. Mysteries can go either way. Most of the thrillers and horror books on my shelves are pretty fat. Science fiction and fantasy are a mixed bag. There are plenty of skinny fantasy books.

Could part of the perception be higher-quality (thicker) paper? A lot of these new 1" thick books don’t really seem to be longer than the old 5/8" thick books–just thicker.

Hallelujah, brother!

You have that one exactly backwards. On my last book, the editor told me how many pages (not how many words) I had as a maximum to avoid raising the price because of paper costs.

If you look through the mass-market paperbacks in your local bookstore, you’ll notice a definite correlation between price and two other factors: the author’s name and the thickness of the book. The skinny little books still often go for $4.95 or $5.95, and the big fat ones go for $7.99 or $8.95 (or even higher). A thin Dan Brown (or Stephen King or Anne Rice…) will sell for more than a thick Hieronymous Whatsit. Books by long-dead authors are also often cheaper, because they don’t have to pay any royalties.

22

Actually, part of this is that a lot of publishers feel that older authors who are not known for “literature” won’t sell. Some publishers are overcoming this tendency: Baen Books, for example, is going through a lot of classic authors and reprinting their works in thick format books consisting of two or three titles published individually when they first came out.

And while I enjoy a good thick meaty book, I’ll admit that there are a lot of authors who would benefit from a red-penciled maniac going through their book randomly scratching through every other adjective. At least. :wink:

23

I’m writing a science fiction novel, and I’ve been told by people in the know that it’ll have to be at least 90,000 words if I want to get it published, even though the story only justifies a length of 75,000 words. The way I’ve heard it works in SF is that many people see long books as being more like “literature,” and SF is always trying to make itself more like “real literature” because for some reason a lot of writers have a massive inferiority complex. SF is trying to distance itself from pulp fiction and aspire to the level of classics, and people tend to think of classic novels as being super long and “challenging” (read: non-entertaining). SF wants so desperately to be legitimate. Unfortunately, people conflate legitimacy with being long and boring, seeming to forget the hundreds of great “classic” works that were less than 75,000 words long, and also seeming to forget that “classic” works up until the twentieth century were not written with greatness in mind but merely as entertainment, something that modern SF has ceased to be for me. The race to be considered legitimate is also the reason why SF book covers no longer look “science fictiony,” but are instead supposed to look classy, whereas mystery publishers or romance publishers have no qualms about putting stereotypical pulp-like covers on their books.

Another problem, besides the “long = literature” thing, is that publishers don’t really price their books according to length, at least on the SF shelf. A trade paperback of a Philip K. Dick book (most of which clock in at somewhere around 60,000 words) costs around thirteen dollars at a brick and mortar bookstore, and it’s the same for a 500-page novel printed in trade. If there’s a difference, it’s only by a dollar or two: i.e. a 700-page novel in paperback might sell for eight bucks whereas a 250-page one might sell for seven, which isn’t enough of a difference. IMO the publishers have to offer enough of a price difference between short books and long ones to make the short books “worth it.” There’s no reason on Earth why a 75,000 word long novel should sell for anything more than five dollars. I’ve never seen a book on the SF shelf for $4.95 originally.

So yeah, economics are part of it. But I think that the “800 pages = serious literature” thing is the bigger problem.

Bloat is the reason why I don’t really like a lot of modern SF. Authors spend hundreds of pages “world building,” which frankly bores the crap out of me. I know some people like to be transported to another world when they read, but I don’t care about setting at all, I care about character interactions and seeing how the characters react to the pressures of an alien society or the novelty of a new technology. Setting is more of an afterthought to me than anything else. Sadly, as long as people keep on buying copies of Jonathan Strange and the Baroque Cycle books*, this is a trend that isn’t gonna die.

*no offense to anyone that actually likes these books, but they look tortuous to read, I’ll stick with pulps

24

I’m afraid I’m completely on the other side of this: I love character driven stories, but without a concrete seeming world for them to inhabit they just seem to be floating, unsupported. The world building aspect is part of what I love about althis, and authors like David Brin and David Weber.

25

I miss Roger Zelazny. Now there was a writer who knew how to avoid bloat. A science fiction writer writing Lord of Light today would stretch the same amount of plot into a 800 page novel - if he could keep it in one volume. If there’s a single contemporary author that can match his discipline, stylistic diffferences aside, it would be Terry Pratchett. Two short novels a year, dialogue driven, fast moving plots, sparsely but carefully drawn out characters; the two writers have more in common than people realize.

OTOH, I have to disagree with the poster who accused George R.R. Martin of padding. Unlike most other modern fantasy writers - especially Robert Jordan, who should be edited with a chainsaw - there aren’t that many wasted words in his novels. They may be long, but they’re eventful and constantly interesting.

26

I like it better when the world building is incorporated into the plot and characterisation. Unexplained customs and jargon work just as well to reinforce whatever fantastical world the story is set in without 6 chapters explaining the detail behind them. Could be why I don’t like David Brin’s stuff!

27

There are different levels of world building, too. I mean, there’s the famous example of “The door dialated,” a three-word sentence that tells the reader things are very different than what the reader is used to living with. Then there’s an author trying to show how something grew. For example, The Lord of the Rings is tough reading for a lot of people because Tolkien wanted to explain his world, as well as show it.

I guess I’m just a masochist who likes looking at the underside of the worlds. :smiley:

28

And then there’s Martin, again. The world described in his Game of Ice and Fire is incredibly rich and complex, but all we know of its history comes from little snippets of conversations - it’s been three volumes and I’m still trying to piece it all together. Nothing is ever presented to the reader on a silver platter.

Th way I see it, a invented world is just another character in the book. A poor writer will simply describe his characters’ personalities and motivations, often when we first meet them, to exhaustive and unnecessary detail. A good writer will give the readers little upfront and let them get to know the characters through their actions. It’s the same with the world - as the moviemaking credo goes, show, don’t tell.

29

Aha, I knew the works of Ayn Rand were good for something…I just never thought of this.

30

The more I read about this series the more I was to read it!

31

With a few exceptions (usually big-name authors and big-dollar promo campaigns), science fiction doesn’t sell well in trade paper at my store. Everything I said in my previous post applied specifically to mass-market paperbacks, where you really can see that correlation between size and price.

That’s one of the reasons I think the vanity press and print-on-demand science fiction doesn’t move. A local here wrote an SF book and had it printed in trade paper. The shelves are full of good stuff in mass-market for $5.95 and $6.95, and the vanity press put his out at $17.95. Sorry. Ain’t gonna move. Even at the standard trade paperback prices of $12.00 to $15.00, people don’t seem to want to pay that much for science fiction unless it goes mainstream, like Michael Crichton.

32

Howard figured out a great way to get around the complexity of world building. His first stories were generally historical fiction, which he put a lot of research into. That took too long for him to knock out books, so he created his own world for Kull wherein he took the Mickey Spillane approach.

Those stories both got bogged down in world-describing detail and his contradicting/confusing himself and it didn’t work out too well. He scrapped that and started something new on Conan: making his fantasy nations/settings analogs for real world places. That saved him a tremendous amount of time explaining things and allowed him to conjure images in the reader’s mind quite quickly without having to remember the differences between X and Y.

I personally fall asleep with all the worldbuilding crap. I think the best example of how it’s used is the comic ARTESIA wherein we are presented with a pleasingly complex world that follows its own internal logic but doesn’t intrude on the story. For those who want a peak into the whys and wherefores, there are supplementary essays in the back of each issue explaining relevant bits of history. Very well done IMO and I don’t have to fall asleep while some freakin’ tea pouring ceremony (and its history) is described.