I know I've asked this before

[james_davis_nicoll]

I was reading a mystery last night that turned out to be a lot shorter than I expected because the manuscript pages were single-sided. The book turned out to be less than 280 pages long. Despite this lack of length the author managed to fit an entire plot between the two covers.

It's comparatively rare for an SF novel to be that short and nearly unheard of for a fantasy novel to be under 300 pages. I've also never seen a mystery that came close to the brick-like dimensions of many F&SF novels. There seems to be a hard limit of about 400 pages over in mystery.

Mysteries also eschew the cliff-hanger ending and the book-fragment approach, which I greatly appreciate.

Does it make sense to ask why modern [1] F&SF readers appear to prefer longer lengths than do mystery readers?

1: I have a number of older books upstairs that come in under 200 pages and like the mystery they all have complete plots.

Comments

Re: Anderson

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Then too, the charge being leveled of 'telling, not showing' has to explain why one is better than the other in specific categories. Yes, infodumps can be clunky, and often are, and often overused. But consider what they replace (sometimes.) For Anderson to show the history of Johannine influence in politics while keeping the word count essentially the same strikes me as a fairly difficult task. Iow, that clunky infodump replaces what would arguably be several stories worth of material in and of themselves.

Re: Anderson

[(Anonymous)]

Disagree. Often (not always, but often) a clunky infodump shows a soft spot in the structure of the story.

I'd say that's the case here -- the whole "Johannine Church as COMMUNISM, with a touch of counterculture thrown in" is not well thought out.

Perhaps more to the point, look at the other example Carlos gave. Same author, same series, but he managed to "show" very well without any infodumping whatsoever. And fast -- that's a single paragraph. A very dense one.

Anderson even seems to be vaguely aware that he's committing a sticky; notice the "Brother, it didn't happen in one day". That's Anderson... what's the trope for when you're trying to spackle over something, and end up hanging a lampshade on it?


Doug M.

Re: Anderson

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Okay, then, here's the challenge: why don't you write something that conveys the same information in as little space that is not an infodump? Don't tell me, show me.

The point here is that there are different kinds of infodumps. You want to work in the fact that magic is operant to an audience that's already familiar with the trope, that's one thing. Depicting a highly idiosyncratic, historically contingent series of events is quite another.

As I said, I'm willing to be proven wrong, just show me how you would do it.