This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is Story Over Everything, episode 11. The topic of discussion for this episode is,
are longer books better and shorter books worse, or less than, or inferior in some way?
And, yeah, I'm just going to launch right into it. First of all, I guess I'm going to
stop myself from launching right into it and ask, what is your opinion? What are your thoughts?
Tell me some of your favorite long books, short books. If you like only short books,
tell me about that. Why? I'd like to know. If you like only long books, epic fantasy,
that kind of thing, tell me what they are, tell me why. And if you enjoy both, let me
know about that. Does it depend on your mood? Does it depend on the vibe that you're going
for? Does it depend on genre? Do you like certain genres to be long and certain genres
to be short books? I don't know. So, I will go ahead and let you know that I like some
long books and some short books. The longest book I ever listened to was actually a novel,
like a fan fiction novel adaptation of The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, which you
can find in Dragonrand something something, some number. Dragonrand, Ocarina of Time novelization.
I think, I think, because they don't have it totaled up in a single file, I estimated
that it's about 60 hours. That's different people reading the book at different paces.
I'm not saying there wasn't a lot of consistency, but there's a, you know, there's a difference.
But it was a very long book, a very long story. I think I took a couple of weeks to listen
to it and I enjoyed it. And it was good, but there were parts where I thought, well, was
this really necessary? Do I really like this chapter? Why is this going on so long? That
sort of thing. And honestly, getting back into, you know, real fiction. No, it was a
good book. It was a good book. I liked a lot of it. There were some things that were interesting
or weird or that I didn't like, but I think that happens in every single book I've ever
read. There have been things that I don't like. So anyway, realistically, the issue
with long books is sometimes they just, they're too much. For example, I do love The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings. And I'm saying that like, it's a new thing to me because
I only started reading them or listening to the audiobooks of them a couple of years ago.
And I think I've gone through each of them three times now over the last couple of years.
And probably like once a year, basically, is what I've done over the last three years.
And that's a lot of fun. And yes, I'm sort of doing that because Christopher Lee would
do it. And I thought, that's kind of a cool habit to get into. I don't know that it's
something I'll do every single year for the rest of my life or anything like that. Maybe
I'll switch it up a little bit, but you know, they're good books and I had a lot to learn
from them. I kind of wanted to dig into Tolkien because, well, first of all, I had no idea
when he wrote, when he lived, I had no idea when he wrote. There's a meme going around.
My kid showed me that apparently he died in 1971. There's one ring to rule them all, nine
for the kings of men, seven for the dwarves and three for the elves. Or I guess it was
1973 is when he died. And that kind of, you know, all combines together. And it's really
an interesting little fact to it. But anyway, so he died in 1971. I think he lived near
his sixties or seventies. So that would have put him born at around, you know, 1900. Could
have been older, could have been younger, but you know, 1900 at the earliest based on
that estimation of mine. So, you know, he, like I said, I didn't know when he lived,
therefore I didn't know about when he wrote his books. I thought they were older because
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit seemed to dominate the zeitgeist of fantasy. Like most
fantasy today, I think is derivative of Lord of the Rings. And I was curious as to things
like, well, why did Tolkien put seven dwarf lords? Cause I know of the seven dwarves from,
you know, the seven dwarves that were associated with Snow White. And I've since, you know,
being exposed to that as a child, I've gone back and I've looked at the Grim Fairy Tale
versions of Snow White. And I do say versions on purpose because there's more than one.
There's Snow White and then there's Snow White and Rose Red, which is her sister. And in
one there's a dwarf who's a jerk and they only encounter him over and over again in
different places. That's Snow White and Rose Red. And then the other Snow White, which
I don't, which is not called Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, it's called something else.
I can't remember why. I think it might just be Snow White or like the Little Maiden Snow
White or something like that. She does encounter dwarves, but I don't think there are seven
of them. And it just seemed like it was something classical. And I thought, well, where did
seven dwarves come from? Because it's featured both by Tolkien and by Disney. Although I
haven't looked at the dates, perhaps the Hobbit came out before Snow White and Disney had
read that or somebody had on the creative team and said, hey, let's make it seven dwarves.
Kind of like the seven dwarves in the Hobbit. Or sorry, the Lord of the Rings, not the Hobbit.
There are 14 dwarves in the Hobbit, or I guess it's 13. They have an unlucky number and they
want to fill it out, round it out with Bilbo. So anyway, I looked into that and it's a long
walk. I listened to all of the Lord of the Rings before I went into the Hobbit and parts
of Lord of the Rings drag on. Parts of it are bleak. Some chapters are an hour long
or more, perhaps an hour and 15 minutes. That seems to be too long for me. I don't know
if chapter length is genre dependent. I've looked up different things and anywhere from
like a 2500 to a 4000 or somewhere between 2500 words and 5000 words seems to be the
modern conception of a reasonable chapter length today. I believe a 2500 word chapter
can be read in about 10 minutes. I personally think 10 minute chapters are the sweet spot,
but we're actually talking about overall book length. So I won't get into that now, except
for to say there's no way, well, Tolkien would have had to have hundreds of chapters maybe
or at least, you know, high dozens or, you know, a hundred per book in order to have
his books be the length they were if that's how they were broken down. And I personally,
again, I'm talking about chapters. I don't want to do that. I personally felt like too
much or too much of Lord of the Rings dragged on in too many ways. And it was funny in high
school, I actually read Paralandra, I believe, by Lewis. And I thought, man, this guy sure
takes a long time describing things. And then when I went into Lord of the Rings as an adult,
I, you know, like a decade and a half later, I loved it. And I loved the depth and I loved
the, the detail, the level of detail and the level of myth and lore that were in each page
and the world building and stuff. But honestly, you know, listening, having listened to them
multiple times now, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, I don't think there's a lot
of time wasted on over-exhaustive detail. There are plenty of asides, but that's different
from, you know, going on describing a sunset for five minutes or, you know, a hundred,
you know, 500 words or something like that. Maybe a hundred words would be appropriate
to describe a sunset. I don't know. It depends on, on the, how large the scope is and what
it does for the character who's observing it and such. But I think, you know, a third-person
perspective omniscient narrator describing a sunset, a hundred words. I think that's
unnecessary. I'm just going to say that right now. Yeah, I think it's unnecessary, especially
if it's disconnected from a character, because if it's not connected to a character, I don't
know that I want to spend any more time on it than I actually have to. The sun was setting,
boom, you're done. It was a bleak sunset. Okay, that's fine. The bleak sunset filled
those who looked upon it with a feeling of dread and foreboding as, you know, Carrie
and Val across the horizon telling them of approaching hordes of marauders and warriors
who would soon bring death to them and their kin because they had no warriors among them.
I didn't, what was that? 80 words maybe? Like you could do that. That sets the tone. It
makes it foreboding. It, you know, does context in the world. That was extemporaneous by the
way. Not that it was like some great thing, but just to let you know. So yeah, I don't,
I don't want to have my time wasted. I will only live for so long. Then why are you listening
to the same books over and over again? Because they're really good and they make me happy.
And it's good to go through those things again and again. Why are you eating food again today?
Why are you sleeping again tonight? Because you have to, right? I mean, it's what you
do to survive. And sometimes reading is what we do to survive. But anyway, you know, Tolkien's
books, even The Hobbit, I think is a fairly long book. I don't know. I think The Lord
of the Rings all clock in at around 20 hours, but it could be more on the audio book version.
In fact, hold on. If I take a moment, I can probably find out very, very easily. But I,
to go to the other side real quick, to switch over to Lewis, his cosmic trilogy, I believe
the first book is five hours long. That would be out of the silent planet. I'm going to
say five to seven hours long. And then it goes on to get longer and longer. And by the
time we reach that hideous strength, I believe that hideous strength is a 14 hour long book.
So I'm just trying to look through real quick and find my files. So I've got The Fellowship
of the Ring, 19 hours, seven minutes. And that's if you listen to it at one speed. Okay.
What am I going to find next? I don't know. Oh, The Hobbit is 11 hours to five minutes.
I think an 11, I think a 10 to 13 hour book is very respectable and I can definitely handle
that. Moving on to the next book on our journey. Man, I've dressed Parker, but it doesn't tell
me how long it is, which is a little irritating because I like that book. That's a good book.
Same with The Lost World. Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let me see. So as, okay, Paralanger, oh
golly, Paralanger does not say how long it is. I guess I haven't listened to it long
enough that it doesn't say, but I'm just going to jump back. I believe it's like five hours,
nine hours, and then 14 hours is the progression of Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy, which even if you
put five, nine and 14 together, that's 23, 28, that's still only a little bit longer.
Those three books together are only a little bit longer than The Lord of the Rings or,
you know, one of The Lord of the Ring, you know, one and a quarter of The Lord of the
Rings books and there's three of them. So those are really long books and I don't know
that I necessarily like the long books. Like I said, I enjoy Lord of the Rings. I enjoy
The Hobbit more. Is that because it's more concise? I'm not sure. The Lay of Luthien
and the Cimarillian is a really satisfying story. The shorter stories, maybe because
they're disconnected, they're just okay. I like some of them. I like the one where the
guy has like an Oedipus thing where I think he ends up marrying his sister and they both
like die. That was, that was pretty gnarly. Just the tragedy of it was like, I don't know,
shocking and impressive and something I did not expect. But like The Lay of Luthien, which
I don't remember off the top of my head how long it is, it might be an hour to three hours
long. It's really good and it's really entertaining and it didn't need to be a full length novel
to be entertaining and good. The length of the prose does not dictate, it's not directly
proportional with the quality of the prose. In no way, by no means is that true. I've
mentioned previously Greg Taylor's Red Panda books and I think I've mentioned recently
here on Story Over Everything that I'm also listening to the Shadow novels. I'm two Shadow
novels in and I'm working on a third and all of those have been about five hours long and
I gotta say, I thoroughly enjoy those and I believe Greg Taylor's Red Panda novels are
about five hours long as well. Pyramid of Peril may be longer, like seven or something like that,
but I don't recall at this moment. But again, these pulp stories have a lot of adventure
in them and a lot of excitement and a lot of interesting things happening and I really
think, and again, that's pulp versus science fiction, I'm sorry, versus fantasy, epic or
otherwise and that's one reason for the dissimilarity in length. But I thoroughly enjoyed those books
and it feels like there's just enough and I would say Walter B. Gibson's Shadow novels
are very well written. Well, as an aside, there's also the Oz books which I feel, L.
Frank Baum's 14 Rivers of Oz books, they're all about five hours long. They feel, honestly
to me, as if they are in some part an inspiration for some of what Tolkien did, maybe even some
of what Lewis did. They both contain, well, so they're talking animals, there's adventure,
there's like mostly nonviolent heroes, there are wars and struggles and kingdoms and royalty
and things like that which are just kind of generic fantasy tropes, I guess you would
say, or subject matter for them to touch on and which by the way, I like all of the Chronicles
of Narnia as well. I almost prefer listening to Seven Chronicles of Narnia books, the whole
set over one Lord of the Rings book because each one is short enough that you can go through
them fairly quickly but they're long enough to hold my attention and to give me an adventure
and would I have liked things expounded upon in certain areas? Yes, but they also just
move along at a good pace and then you get a story and you get more and more and more
and more because there's a whole series of them and you get to experience a different
vibe, a different emphasis, a different theme or subject matter that's being addressed in
each book and they stand alone but they also work together and they build upon each other
and I just, I kind of prefer that. I didn't know if there's like a mindset that makes
somebody more interested in shorter run stories like the pulps or like the Lewis's, you know,
chapter books for children or whatever but those adventure stories are very enjoyable.
So yeah, for me it kind of depends on genre but I also wouldn't be upset had Tolkien broken
up the Lord of the Rings into a series of shorter books and added more definitive endings
and beginnings to some of them, to some of the separations and in fact, Lord of the Rings,
the Fellowship of the Ring itself has I think three books in it. It's book one, book two,
book three, right? And the rest of the books have something similar but I think they build
on, I think if Lord of the Ring, or Fellowship is books one, two and three, I believe The
Two Towers is books four, five and six, maybe even seven and then Return of the King has,
I don't know, that's probably three books right there. So like why not just do that
and then have them all linked together in series telling a more, you know, the whole
story takes place over about a year and that's from Bilbo's party basically to the scouring
of the Shire. Well, I mean, then it jumps farther because everybody separates and has
their endings, which is good. But yeah, for me personally, I think I prefer the pithier
length book, you know, 50,000 words I think is what it breaks down to, to about five hours,
which tells me about 10,000 words is, or 10,000 words equals about one hour depending upon
the reader, of course, and maybe descriptions versus dialogue and things like that. So that,
to me that's the sweet spot. But I don't really see a benefit for going, you know, 90,000
words, 100,000 words, 200,000 words. I don't really see a benefit unless there's going
to be a lot of, a lot of good stuff. I don't know. I'd like to hear your opinions on it,
but that's all my thoughts in it for the matter. I'm going to go ahead and, and get out of
here. But yeah, I thank you for listening and I ask that you check out all my other
stuff. I'm going to advise that you check out my other podcasts on other things where
I analyze stuff and then also some of the art that I post over on MJwinners.com, but
I'm going to toss it to myself and that guy in, you know, past me is going to tell you
about my Grow Bug books and all the books section, or the book section and how full
it might be of various types of books that I've written on the website, MJwinners.com.
So with that, I ask that you give me some feedback. I'd love to hear your thoughts on
book length, short, long, what do you like? What are your preferences? Do you like my idea
of just having a series, like, you know, make everything a series, make everything a series
where all the books are, you know, 50 to 80,000 words long and you can have, you know, three,
five, seven, eight, 10, 12, whatever, and get to explore different things because you,
you know, cap each one or you, you know, with the shorter book length, you say, I'm going
to address this in this book, then I'm going to address this in that book and so on and
so forth so that you have more, like, I don't know, it almost feels like you're doing more.
Like it's more productive or it's more meaningful or more rewarding potentially for the reader
because well, I get to handle all these different things. But then what do you do about just
like straight up adventure, thriller, crime novels, you know, maybe those can be shorter
too, like the, like the pulps, like the shadow and such. And if there's no message or whatever
addressed in them, maybe it makes sense to just have them, well, this is a thrilling
adventure that you're going to go on. There's like neat tricks and, you know, interesting
things that are going to happen in each book. And each book will be differentiated by, oh,
this is the one where the villain, you know, made all these bombs and did this. This is
the one where the villain has powers very similar to the shadow and he goes after the
shadow because he's the only one who can stop him from world domination. This is the one
where it's a very interesting heist that's going on and the shadow is trying to stop
it and he's pulling in all these different things. Or this one where he's, you know,
fighting the gangs. Well, which gang? Well, it's the Chinese gangs. Okay, now it's the
Italian gangs. Now it's this gang, whatever. And you can kind of go back and forth between
all of them and just have like a focus for per book and then so that you don't draw it
out and exhaust your audience by belaboring everything. You just do, all right, it's a
quickie. It's a 50,000, you know, 50 or, you know, 40 to 60 of these with the standard
pulp size was for like the shadow magazine and such. And then you just, you just do that.
I don't know. I'm going to be interesting once I get writing novels, novellas and novels
to see how easy it is for me to put out. I'm going to target like 60,000 words and see
how close I get to that and see how long it takes for me to get there. And if I can do
that at like a regular pace, cause I think that feels like the best thing for me, but
I'm also planning on writing dozens and dozens and dozens of books. So anyway, I'd like all
your feedback on book length and on whether or not a book is better because it's longer
or shorter. I would love all that perspective. Anyway, that's it. I'm getting out of here.
If you enjoyed me talking about the writing process, then hopefully you'll enjoy reading
or listening to my writing instead. So go over to MJMunoz.com or MJMunoz.com slash books
and check out what I have there. My plan is to keep that updated all the time with the
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