What’s the deal with short novels?
I know, I’ve been on this rant for a while. I regularly get teased or worse because my technothriller, Daniel’s Mighty Men
How can anyone be expected to read something so long?
But I found out something interesting today. I was throwing out my complete Clive Cussler, along with my complete Jack de Brul, my Clancy, Thor, Dale Brown, Baldacci, Dan Brown, Rosenberg, De Silva, and the Reacher novels. There were many more authors—probably nearly 100 books, maybe more. I can no longer recommend them now that good Christian fiction is available. In the rather sad process, I noticed that most of them looked hefty.
Genre? Technothrillers, Action/Adventure, political/military thrillers
So, I started looking up page counts in the books. What I discovered might surprise you. I found one (at least) nearly 700 pages, many over 600 pages, a few under 400, and the vast majority were from 500 to 600 pages. An informal average would be 550 to 600 pages.
No wonder I feel so ripped off with the latest crop of sub-300 page novellas. They are barely a snack. I will say that Guy Stanton now apologizes every time he sends me another novella, like in the Western, Action/Adventure, Scifi Romances he is currently releasing as the Wind Drifter series. They do make excellent snacks. I read the latest (#4) last night in about an hour and a half. But they are running 85 to 100 pages. Thankfully, he’s finishing it off as a five volume package. All five together will make a decent novel.
But even then, much of the world-building is shortchanged. There’s little or nothing about governments, economics, customs, and so forth. My suggestion?
Develop these runts into full-fledged books
If you are building a new world, introducing a dozen characters or more, developing world-wide conflict, and so on, how can you possibly do that in 300 pages? Something is going to be short-changed.
So demanding you are of us poor beleaguered authors. :)) I have a project in mind that may well end up to be my longest, but you will have to wait for it whereas you could have read 4 or 5 shorter books in the length of time it takes to accomplish the creation of the project I have in mind. Sa la vie.
By the way when I get this monster done would you consider writing the Foreword for me? Should Jesus tarry it may be a year or two or more before its completed as I have two other books to release first.
By the way I feel your pain in having to throw your books away. For me it was movies and TV series, but I have been better off ever since I did. It’s like with the removing of worldly attachments once held dear God has unlocked and blessed me with more inspiration instead of less.