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The Infinite Wordstream: Part II

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(This is part two of a two part series. Read The Infinite Wordstream: Part I here!)

The Infinite Wordstream

If reader satisfaction is to mean anything to the budding epublishing author, it’s going to require hitting the moving target of reader desire. To reverse myself for a moment, the old 3,000 word and 300 page limits were and still are awfully handy as guidelines because the teeming mass of our reading public has been indoctrinated to expect these formats and sizes. It’s comforting for both readers and writers to know exactly what the expectations are.

It’s as we move out of the realm of standards that things get hairy. Spend some time with writers who have published their short stories electronically and you will hear horror stories of 1 star ratings, angry comments, and negative reviews…not for the stories’ merit but because of their length.

“Charging money for this is insulting” is one comment leveled at fantasy author David Dalglish‘s short story release, Guardian of the Mountain (get it here) from an admitted fan of his other words. At the time of this article’s writing, the 13,000 word short story—the equivalent of 50 paperback pages—was selling for just $.99, yet this reader was offended at the length. Crime fiction writer Ed Lynskey released a novel length collection of 15 short stories, Out of Town a Few Days (find it here), and received a 2 star review. The comment? “Not a real fan of short stories.” Full stop. Nothing about the collection’s merit.

With that preface, things might seem gloomy for short story and novelette writers the world over. But indie writer Deborah Geary might disagree. She writes a popular urban fantasy series (the “Modern Witch” series) that has garnered great reader reviews, but also constant fan pressure to release more, sooner. To keep the hordes at bay, she published several “Novel Nibbles”: stand-alone, 20,000 word stories not meant to be part of her regular lineup. Rather than an angry response at the length of the nibbles (which are about ¼ the size of a novel), she’s received positive feedback and now new chants of “we want more” and “turn this into a novel, too”.

It’s speculation on my part, but I have a feeling that Deborah’s releases would have been considered “unpublishable” five years ago: too long for magazines, too short to be novels, too awkward to be collected in an anthology. Yet, even in today’s climate, they might’ve been 1-starred had they been half their length and released as “short stories” in the digital market. Through hard work and careful cultivation of her audience she’s found a non-traditional word count that works. She’s helping to break the old standards.

Tapping the Stream

The point for writers is that the face of not just publishing, but writing itself, is changing. Reader bias for standard lengths will continue as long as there are print books (which I hope is forever). But as the digital market evolves, so will reader tolerance for unusual formats and non-standard lengths until, at some magical moment, we’ll just be talking about “story”. And that’s good news for writers everywhere, because the craft of writing shouldn’t be pushed into a corner by the cost of paper, the weight of a book, or the width of your spine.

The Infinite Wordstream: Part 1

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Mention a number to writer who’s been at the craft for a while and you’ll probably get a Pavlovian response in word count.

700? Flash fiction.

3,000? Standard main-stream magazine short story length. 8,000? The “one-per-issue” exception if the fiction editor likes your work.

15,000? Novelette. 25,000? Novella. 50,000? Short novel, a slim volume you might be able to sell to an unsuspecting—or forgiving—public.

75,000? Industry accepted minimum length for a debut novel, about 300 paperback pages.

150,000? Unless you’re Stephen King or George R. R. Martin: an agent’s rejection slip followed by a suggestion to find a good editor.

Despite the immense spread, however, these numbers have two things in common: they are the industry-accepted perceptions of what the public desires for a “good read” at particular moments. And they are all restrictions imposed on story-telling by the physical limitations of the medium in which they are delivered.

The Finite Wordstream

Let’s put aside the first point for a moment. The second is an interesting thing to ponder for a second. Short stories are, well…short, because historically magazines were expensive to print. Putting out 35 glossy pages every month is costly and it took years of experimentation for publishers to triangulate the sweet spot of issue length, reader interest, and expense. The formula they arrived at allowed for three to five 3,000 word short stories with room left over for a novel excerpt, a couple of book reviews, and a letter from the editor.

At the other end of the scale is the novel. 75,000 words translates nicely into a 300 page paperback which, when placed on a bookstore shelf, has a one-to-two inch spine that is narrow enough to leave room for the latest 480 page New York Times best seller release and long enough to keep a customer from feeling cheated.

Anything in-between these lengths (the long short, the novelette, the novella) was eventually found to be either too long or too short—and here’s the point of this article—physically. It either didn’t meet the compressed economics of a magazine or it didn’t give value on the bookstore shelf by merit of its heft.

The Missing Link

The much more important half of the equation, reader satisfaction, has been the poor, unwashed cousin in this relationship. Our tastes in literature over the last century have been shaped as much by the 300 page standard as they have by story-telling, literary merit, or creative genius. Or, put another way, since those attributes can be shoe-horned into a predetermined, one-size-fits-most model driven by economics…they have.

What’s changed? Electronic publishing. Certainly, the old tropes of historic publishing remain—the feel and smell of a book, the pleasure of holding it, the sense of tradition you get sitting by a fire with a novel. This isn’t the place to argue those points (which I agree with, anyway). But if epublishing has done one thing—and it’s done more—in the field of literature, it’s that it has broken the chains of physical limitation on the creative process of writing.

In a digital medium, format as expressed by word count is not just irrelevant, it’s meaningless. It’s like asking someone how much air they breath. A lot? A little? The important thing is that you’re breathing. Old monikers like short story and novella begin to slip away. And with that side of the equation gone, what are we left with?

The only thing that should matter: reader satisfaction.

Read The Infinite Wordstream: Part II here!

The Point of Defection

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I was at a New Year’s party, talking to one of the guests about favorite books. He mentioned some comics, I mentioned some mysteries. The conversation turned to ongoing storylines: what we liked and why.

“What series do you like?” he asked. “Like, a character that you really can’t wait to read again to see what they’re up to?”

I hemmed and hawed, and eventually chose Robert Parker’s Spenser character. “But only the first seven books or so,” I amended.

I went on to explain that, while I loved the character and the first half-dozen novels, Parker’s writing became so formulaic (to me) after a certain point that I read the rest of the 40-odd novels in the series only out of a sense of loyalty. Subsequent books had all the excitement of tucking into a favorite Sunday dinner: it was familiar, and comforting, but I wasn’t ever going to be wowed by it. And, far from being protective of the characters and plots, I would’ve welcomed a radical change (in the same way I could use a different side-dish on the table…or, hell, ordered Chinese).

My friend said he’d experienced the same thing with comics, but that–with few exceptions–he always kept coming back to his favorites. I agreed; I’ll never stop loving those first seminal Spenser stories, even though the vast majority of them are cookie-cutter renditions of those first few great ones.

“Why is that?” he asked. “What makes us stick with these series–or even a single book–if whole parts of them stink?”

So, right there on the spot, we cobbled together a pretentious academic theory: The Point of Defection. It goes like this:

At some point, a writer will interest a new reader in their story. The tale can be of any length: if it’s a series, maybe Book One does it. In a single novel, a particular plot line. In a short story, it might be the first sentence.

If the writer is skilled and careful, as the reader moves along he or she will become so invested in the ongoing life of the character/plot/world that they pass The Point of Defection. They’re hooked, and after this moment whole lines, chapters, and even books can be a disappointment and it won’t matter: the reader will stick with the author through thick and thin (i.e., won’t defect). Can you imagine any fan of The Game of Thrones not buying the next book just because they didn’t like A Feast for Crows…even though it’s one-fourth of the entire series to date? Or a Sue Grafton follower not buying the Z is for Zebra (or whatever the next Kinsey Millhone mystery is) because G though M didn’t tickle their fancy?

(Of course, it certainly helps the overall “health” of a series if the writer raises his game again: as many movie-goers know, “Sequel-itis” stings a lot less if Number Three delivers.)

After we were done admiring ourselves for codifying and naming this common-sense principle, I suggested an addendum: the more legs a story has to stand on, the less likely the defection. In comics and related short story collections, there are enough “legs” (mini Points of Defection?) that a reader is free to take or leave a number of them without defecting.

The original Conan series, for instance, are all collections of stories; Robert E. Howard never wrote a Conan novel. Same with Fritz Leiber’s immortal Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series; there is only one novella and one novel; the rest are short stories. Comics and graphic novels, the same: they often rely on an underlying premise to carry the life-story of the protagonist forward, but individual adventures can be dismissed or embraced without requiring the reader to “drop” the whole series.

My love of the Spenser novels can be seen in this light: I could only tolerate 30 mediocre novels if I’d already loved seven of them (a ratio of 1:6). Give me one great book and six stinkers and I’d probably walk away from the series (and maybe the author).

Reverse engineering a series’ success this way doesn’t really tell us much as writers, since the lesson seems to be: write a good story, hook your readers, and let yourself skate when they’ve passed the Point of Defection. Theproblem is, since you don’t know when that ‘Point is, you could end up really screwing yourself.

So, you’re left with something you already knew: just write a good story. Keep doing that and you’ll never have to worry about where your Point of Defection is.

A novel idea

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After several years of working on my craft but poor showings with my short stories, I decided it was about time to try my had at writing a novel.

The funny thing is, for such a mundane and commonplace object, the novel is fairly poorly defined. It’s one thing to stroll through a library or a bookstore, running your hand along spines, and say “these are novels”. It’s quite another to sit down in front of a computer, fire up a word processor, and start to type.

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Get in your saddle and ride…now

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My journey to digital self-publication is far from original but it almost didn’t occur due to an almost fatal (to my career) ability to procrastinate.

I’d wanted to “be a writer” for almost as long as I can remember, but the proof is in the pudding (to daisy-chain two clichés together). For years, I managed to write a paltry short story or two a year. I’d toss them in the mail with little market research or editorial diligence, then wallow in self-pity when the rejection slips came back. The wallowing was made worse by my firm belief that I, indeed, had “it” and just needed to be “discovered” by a Big Six editor (before I knew what that was) while pausing at a rest-stop on I-95 or by chatting up a NYT best-selling author as I stood in the lunch line at Subway.

And I didn’t bother bolstering whatever natural talent I had with a scrap of education or self-edification. I figured I could always get my MFA (ha!), but why bother? Hemingway hadn’t gone to school for writing, Melville barely left his farm after returning from the sea, Bukowski was a postman for Christ’s sake. I’d eventually get around to the act of writing…and when I did, watch the hell out world, because life would never be the same. They’d make Hallmark calendars centered around the day I published my novel. Animals would come up to me in the forest to sit on my lap and eat out of my hand. Weather patterns would form around my house as the creative power of my brain caused a micro-climate to form in my neighborhood.

Needless to say, actually sitting down and writing something didn’t figure into this equation. Since it was understood that you had to write to be a writer, I glossed over that small fact and thought a lot more about hypothetical acceptance speeches and book signings than I ever did about creating anything. Writers call this irony.

By the time I woke up (mmm…around 30?) I realized I not only had to start writing, I had to start writing–and learning–now. I had serious ground to make up. There were writers my age who had finished two or three novels in college…and considered them “drawer novels”, not fit for anything except propping up a table. And writing had to begin with learning and re-learning all those things I’d ignored or given short shrift to for years: plot, character, pacing, theme, rhythm, voice, point-of-view, continuity.

Long story short, for the past ten or twelve years I’ve been applying myself as much to learning the craft as working towards publication (of any sort). It’s been frustrating watching others catch success along the way while I’m re-reading Elements of Style, but I’m not going to write anything I can’t stand behind and that’s going to take patience and a dedication to the craft.

There are only two important rules in this game: are you writing? And, is what you’ve written the best it could possibly be? The second rule implies immersing yourself in the creative art of writing. But the first requires the act itself.

If you’re not actually writing, you’re not a writer. Please don’t make my mistake. Get in your saddle and ride…now.