Fan Fiction Musings: Can a Fic Length be Intimidating? · 2:52am Sep 26th, 2015
Length is one of those tricky things when it comes to writing. Humanity has written stories as short as the (most likely apocryphal) Ernest Hemingway tale of "For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.", to the current world record holder for longest novel, "In Search of Lost Time".
Our own fandom has produced some stories that would be real head bashers if they were printed out in dead tree format. Fallout Equestria sits at 620,295 words, This Platinum Crown clocks in at a hefty 847,983 words so far and isn't done yet.
Long fics strike me as being a very kind of love or hate beast to grapple with. On one hand they can provide a reader with a nice long pile of reading to chew through and a good way to spend a lazy afternoon or two. Of course on the other hand there's always the question of...pacing. That feeling like you've been reading the same story forever and that nothing big has really happened in the narrative yet. Of course this is, like so many things when it comes to art and fiction, a matter of personal taste.
Personally, I have kind of a love/hate relationship with fic length. I routinely have this nagging feeling that my own fics might be a little too short at times. Or at the very least that the pacing of my fics can be...off. At least that the character moments can sometimes need more time to breathe. But, there are a good number of fics on this site that I am very, very reluctant to start reading, just because of how insanely long they are.
This is one of those places where fic "universes" can be helpful. I'm sure that if I was to stack up all the words in the Lunaverse that it might stack up near to some of those big ones fics. But as it's in more bite sized chunks, I find it more easy to get through.
So, what about all of you? Is there kind of a sweet spot for fic/novel length that you like to hit? Does it depend on the genre of what you're reading? Or can you get lost in a story no matter the length?
Length is, I think, the single biggest problem I have with This Platinum Crown. It's too damn long, and I was actually reading it regularly when it first went up. And then I stopped. Why? Because of it's length.
It's presented as a single story. By the time I stopped reading, it felt as though it should have been broken into two or three separate stories. Not because of its length, but because the story actually ENDED at least once. By that, I mean there was a very clear point where the story ended, the chapter following the one where it ended was very clearly an epilogue, and the the chapter after that was the start of a new story.
Hell, it's actually description even notes which story arc it's currently in (6, I think). That means it's 6 complete stories, each one a novel in length.
MAKE IT SIX SEPARATE STORIES
I just i don't WHY
There is no reason to do this! Could someone explain to me why this happens?
Please.
I'm begging you.
I don't mind whenever some of my favourites update with long chapters (>9,000 words), but since having a full-time job in the beginning of last year I have been lacking time to actually read all of them. Some chapters are still unread since the summer before the last due to the chapter length and personal time.
3420164
That's absolutely bananas. The author couldn't have broken them up and added a link or something?
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As far as length goes, I like longer stories. Hell, my favorite fic on this site is over a 100,000 words and still going (albeit, I'm more comfortable because the author has stated for sure that it ends in this last third act). I just don't feel a lot of investment in reading 5000 word fics.
If it's an author I love, I'll read anything they write regardless of length. I'm a little leery of just jumping into big epics by people whose works I'm unfamiliar with, though. If it's long and a genre I'm uninterested in, I'm way less likely to try it than a story that has a genre I'm into.
3420238
Oh, I certainly don't mind longer stories (not to say you were implying that I was implying that I didn't). I'd actually kind of like to use webcomics as an example here, particularly since most of us have probably binged on one we've just found at least once. But even one that's been running for years, we can do that. Why isn't that intimidating?
It's not the length, really, but the "chapter length." We can usually spend maybe ten minutes and read through a few pages and get a feel as to whether we'll like the comic in question or not. I kind of feel that even a really long fic (80,000, 100,000, 200,000 or more words, skies the limit!) seems much, much less intimidating if the first two or three chapters are small; perhaps between 1,000 and 3,000 words each. That's short enough that, at least for something w might be interested in, we can look at and say, "Ok, that's not bad at the start. I guess I'll give it a go and see if I like it."
People who really, really like the story will read longer chapters, but I feel like that short, initial chapter length can offer a safe "in" for someone who isn't sure, because the investment of time required to decide if they'll like it is (comparatively) small.
Long fics are good. Especially if they have a good writing style or good world building.
Edit; One could say that the number of words in a piece of literature whets my proverbial appetite.
I'd say I don't really have an issue with overall story length but chapter length can affect if and when I read something. It usually comes down to time, if the first chapter of a story is 1-3K I can read it in less than 10 minutes normally it's easy to fit in when I want. 5-8K gets a bit trickier, I can normally fit it in between some other things but not as easily, 8-10K I need to decide to sit down and read it at a specific time which might not be for 2-3 days, >10K I'll probably have to wait until a weekend or longer. Thus my to read list has a bunch of stories with 10K+ chapters I want to get into but haven't got the time while other shorter stories tend to get in front of them.
I think it really depends on the writer, or the stories themselves. Some authors or plot ideas deserve a good, novel length story. However, there are some stories that would be terrible if they dragged on; give it a start, a middle, and an end, and done. Please don't jump the shark by dragging it out. If you want to write more, come up with a side story, or a different story in the same setting, or even do something completely different. My creative outlet is running tabletop rpgs, and sometimes you come to the end of a story arc, and just need to recognize that continuing would lessen what you've already done.
Of course, my favorite anime at this time is One Piece, and they're around episode 700 or so...
3420164
This Platinum Crown is currently the ur-example of fics that are just too long for me to get into even trying to start reading. I just picture its pacing being somewhat glacial when you have almost a million words to sort through.
3420229
Interesting. So for you, it's less the length of the fic itself and more the length of the chapters inside the fic that's the big thing when it comes to length?
3420238
I think that your description of how you handle epics from authors you don't know pretty much sums up why I've skipped a good deal of such fics that I've seen. It can be a real struggle to jump into something so weighty, completely unknown.
3420567
So you do a lot of your fic reading inbetween doing other stuff too eh? When I was saving up for my move out west, I mostly chewed through my read later pile when on break at work, so I totally know what you mean there when it comes to chapter length.
3420686
Ironically, I sometimes wonder if my background in table top RPGs has kind of "trained" me in the wrong way for writing. My main group can sometimes be pretty focused on just getting through the module that we're doing at the time, so there's a bit of bouncing from cool set piece to cool set piece, with less focus on character. It can be a bad habit to fall into.
I am curious though. What fics do you think kind of jumped the shark when it came to dragging themselves out more than they should have?
3420791 Most of the players in my gaming group prefer story arcs, not just jumping from adventure to adventure. Not to say that every session has to deal with 'the big picture'; I do occasionally run plotless or side crawls, especially when I haven't enough time to plan. There have been a few times where I got past the big plot and kept going (i.e; try to cap in D&D) to find the campaign had 'gone stale' so to speak. Now I try pace myself, set up multiple plot hooks so the players can go on to a new arc, or let players know ahead of time about what level the campaign should end. Nothing annoys a munchkin more than ending a game before their build hits the sweet spot...
I can't think of a title off the top of my head. When I felt they'd gotten tedious, or the writer could have gotten to the point a few chapters earlier, I had a tendency to stop following the story. Now that I'm trying to be more social (see the name...), I'll more likely try to give constructive criticism.
I sort of agree with others about chapter length. It can get annoying to find a story you like has updated and you end up having to wait a few days to read it because the chapter is huge, and you don't have the time to get through it in one sitting...
3420791 Yes, I usually take more notice to chapter lengths than fic length. I sometimes have a habit of blanking out or getting drowsy whenever I'm reading a long chapter. And I normally like reading.
3420567 You have just described my habit here in fimfiction.