Vignettes/Sketch Stories Versus Longer Fiction

There is an apocryphal tale of a budding writer breathlessly rushing into a publisher's office and asking "What is the average length of a novel?" The publisher thinks for a few seconds, and answers "About 90,000 words." The writer gives out a great big sigh of relief, and says "Thank god. I've finished!"

Me, I've hardly ever written a story I couldn't make longer. Initially, I would send them in as a whole, almost always more than 5000 words. Then I chopped a few up into shorter, more "readable" parts, but I wasn't thrilled about the way they came out. So I went back to writing the longer stories, realizing there would likely be fewer readers, since LSF readers - or possibly most readers of this genre - seem to prefer stories of 3000 words or less. Lately, I have worked out an imperfect solution: I am not writing any stories, so I have no worries about how long these unwritten stories will be. Also, I find editing these stories to be far easier than ones I've actually written.

I generally agree with what previous commenters have written: If a story is good, it dosen't much matter how long it is. People will read it (eventually), and enjoy it. But if an author is looking to increase his or her readership beyond the LSF average, shorter is probably better. Either that, or create a rip-roaringly, universally titillating title, which grabs all potential readers so hard they cannot stop themselves immediately opening the story.

@Seegee: Word limits are always helpful in that instance. I've read one of your shorter pieces, just to get a feel for your style, and I enjoyed it very much. I find that, at least with spanking stories, for me it is a lot more about the scene than the plot, and writing my longer fiction has made me so much more conscious of the importance of good characterization and narrative, in addition to a good spanking scene.

I have heard of the Wheel of Time series; I think it depends on the writer's skill as well. If you decide what is necessary and unnecessary in a piece, then it saves you a lot of trouble. I like to work with Chekov's Gun principle, myself.

I think Chekhov's Gun Principle is sound as far as guns (and other equally dramatic props) are concerned, but it must not be applied so strictly that it kills all atmosphere. Some elements of a story act primarily as tuning forks, picking up the resonances of the theme and the mood of the story.

Oh most definitely, I don't want my writing to lack in atmosphere and tone. I would say a nice blend of both, insofar as purple prose doesn't obscure the meaning and trajectory of the narrative.

I've written both long and short ones. Most of the "series" I have were written as long stories and broken into parts for this site because of how this site works.

And while I have done some snippets, I find it hard to write brief stories. Most times there are details in my mind that I feel I need to add to the story. I have long envied Grace Brackenridge's ability to tell a complete story in under a screen of text.

Thanks for your input Goodgulf-I'll have to check out some of your works.

While I do like writing flash fiction and what have you, sometimes I feel I leave too many details out, which I need to remedy. Other times, I like to keep my readers guessing.

I think that is a really tricky point. I want my readers to "see" and experience the story for themselves, which means I shouldn't feed them things with a teaspoon, but on the other hand I don't want them to be confused and think of the story as a jigsaw puzzle. I find it very hard to separate what I know from what the readers are likely to know. With one of my stories, I had clearly done something wrong as several readers had problems keeping the characters apart, but I have never been able to figure out why they got confused! It seems all so clear to me

Yeah, I think that's a problem in my own work as well. I do want to leave readers guessing at some instances, because I think that's what good writing is about, but at the same time I think essential details need to be pinned down.

For a longer story, you might try my stories "The Magistrate" and "The Magistrate Part II" - they were imported to the library as single files, and today I break up files of that length into series.

For a short, completely self contained one, long at any of a host of Grace Brackenridge's stories. She is able to sum up an entire story in perhaps a screen or two of text.

Fiction writers seem to get to a point these days where if they're successful they're not well edited. Jordan's wife was also his editor, so that may explain things like Crossroads of Twilight. 700 pages where virtually nothing of interest to the plot happens. Reviewer and writer Adam Roberts summed the entire thing up as: drivel.
Certain successful authors (mostly fantasy here, because that's what I know) like Terry Goodkind and George RR Martin quite openly ignore editorial advice and sell well enough to get away with it. The last 2 or 3 Harry Potter novels could have benefited from some more ruthless editing.