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Why Are SF Books As Long As They Are?
San Francisco, 8:41 AM
Fri Dec 4
28 posts in the last 24 hours
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Why Are SF Books As Long As They Are? |
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01/03/09
Random filler can kill a great story just as surely as insisting it cut off at a specific point. Why the arbitrary length is set is far less interesting to me than why we even have one at all.
01/03/09
The British never take as long as they need to tell a story. Six episodes is every bit as much a traditional length for a TV season there as 22 episodes is here, and the primary reason why they run shorter seasons becomes obvious when you consider the average length of season for a US cable series (~13 eps per season). The smaller your audience is, the less money you bring in per airing. The less money you bring in per airing, the more times you need to rebroadcast that same episode to pay off your production costs.
The other thing that comes into play is that, from the production side, the more episodes you make, the more money they put in your pocket. So, the length of seasons is basically dictated by the size of the primary market, and how much money they represent.
01/03/09
Shelf-space is a shallow limitation that should never enter into the creative process, or the profitability of the end result.
It should always and only be about how many people enjoy the story, and how much they value it.
Ditto for TV,Film and Music. (well, enjoy the sound, but same principle).
01/04/09
01/03/09
Case in point, David Weber. His first novels (although overblown even for Horatio Hornblower) were a concise 400 pages and decent read. Now? It's an almost unbearable 800 - 1000.
01/04/09
01/04/09
01/03/09
01/03/09
That is as opposed to fantasy, which now seems to be sold by the inch.
01/03/09
Since this isn't a fantasy blog, I'm going to go sit in the corner and wait for George R.R. Martin to pull at Robert Jordan.
01/03/09