Bloated fiction

It's too hard to generalize, because it all depends on the author. I just grabbed a couple of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (mass market paperbacks) off my shelf to check their page counts. They ended up being around 350 to 400+ pages each, and I know that I wouldn't want to lose anything out of them. The high page count doesn't bother me because when I read them, it all flies by so fast that it feels like it was only a hundred pages or so. On the other hand, I just finished reading Snarleyyow by Frederick Marryat, and the story didn't feel like it really got going until about eighty pages into it. I would have liked it better if those first eighty pages had been condensed into about fifteen.

Then there are novels like Les Miserables, where hundreds of pages could be cut without seriously impacting the main storyline. Get rid of the insanely long, rambling digressions about the convent, and Waterloo, and the sewer system, and all the rest, and the main characters can continue on about their lives and deaths as if nothing happened. However, if you did that, it would be a very different novel. Hugo made going off on tangents into an art form. The random fifty-page-long digressions become an end unto themselves. You might not want the life story of nearly every minor character who has a single speaking line, but they're there anyway, providing depth. Trimming away the excess might improve the narrative flow, but it would harm the work as a whole.

By the way, I like your Watership Down sig. quote.

God yes ....
some writer`s seem to have the equivalent to verbal diahorea even one`s i like, epecially the fantasy writers

Tad Williams
Robert Jordan
are probally two of the worse out there

with a good editor, page count means nothing.

unfortunately, far too many big name authors decide they no longer need an editor, and their work really really suffers for it.

see: Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Neal Stephenson

The first Neal Stephenson book in the post-editor era was a lot of fun (cryptonomicon), but since then the books in the Baroque cycle could really use some cleaning up and would seriously benefit from a good editor.

Tom Clancy since around Debt of Honor/Executive Orders suffers the same problems.

Stephen King I don't know when it started, but it was evident in Dreamcatcher.

These are all really decent novels at the core, so it is frustrating to have to suffer through so many superflous pages.

I've certainly read 700+ page books that didn't suffer at all though. Generally though I prefer around 400 pages for no reasonable reason.

oh and yeah robert jordan, but the entire field of epic fantasy is full of authors padding page counts and volume counts. so hardly worth a mention really...the only person who seems to care what they put on the page anymore in that genre is George RR Martin, and he is getting reamed for it!

Totally agree with that. Rainbow Six could've had "a good hour" (in moviespeak) cut out of it, and I don't think I'll ever finish 'The Bear and the Dragon'. It's a shame because Patriot Games, Red October are just brilliantly written, but over the years the bloat has set in.

Sure, I could rant about Robert Jordan's two page descriptions of meals in Wheel of Time, but what really gets me are the fantasy series that don't need to be series. Somebody writes a perfectly good stand-alone novel, and the next thing you know you're staring at Book Six with the same recycled plot and the son of the daughter of the son of the original characters. Piers Anthony and Raymond Fiest are some of the prime offenders here.

Or you'll have the trilogy that could have been over in one book, but the publishers see green and figure if one book will sell, so will three. Or five. Or 137. So you get a Book One with an empty climax, a Book Two that treads water, and Book Three that can't possibly live up to the expectations two 300+ page predecessors have created.

And then this creates the problem wherein any aspiring fantasy writer thinks that if they don't have at least a trilogy, they'll never get sold -- or worse, publishers who think that anything good should ber padded out to a trilogy to sell more books. Seriously, walk through a Borders or a Barnes and Noble and find me a fantasy novel that doesn't have Book or Part I slapped on it.

Funny thing is, sci-fi seems to be able to escape this (the efforts of Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert not-withstanding). Sure there are series, but they've always seemed more organic to me, born more of a need by the author to further explore their world than some of the fantasy series.

I will say that the sight of To Green Angel Tower made me give up on that series before I'd even cracked the spine. That was just fucking ridiculous.

Well, as AgentOrange said in the first post, he's discounting stories that obviously need more room to grow. Song of Fire and Ice works in the long format. The Wheel of Time, however, is just dragging its feet in circles, because Robert Jordan will write those books so long as suckers continue to buy them, and those big fat paychecks come in from the publisher.

Personally, I prefer condensed writing. I think very few people are capable of long form prose with lots of description. Usually, that sort of writing just comes off as flowery, and overly dramatic.

90% of all description is completely unnecessary. That doesn't mean it can't be well written and well rendered. If it's worth reading, leave it in. If it's not, cut it out.

Actually, when THE STAND was first published in hardcover way back when it was around 400 pages shorter than the version available now. King's editor told him the book was too long and he trimmed a lot of stuff. It was only years later that his original "writer's cut" was published. The problem with King is that he got so famous that nobody dared to tell him what to do anymore for fear he'd ditch them for another publisher so now he does whatever the hell he wants.

having read the whole Wheel of Time series last month I wanted to chock Jordan for the last book nothing happened. I wouldnt mind but book 9 had such a dramatic and world altering ending. Book 10 just seemed like it was treading water

THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON and MISERY were lean and mean for King novels.

The novel isn't a screenplay. It doesn't have to conform to a certain length. Sure, some novels ramble, but they are what they are.

Cryptonomicon wouldn't be half as effective without the numerous tangents about dentistry, Cap'n Crunch, and black nylon fetishes. The ramblng travelogue nature of the book is its soul, really.

If it's tight, focused narratives you're after, read James fuckin' Patterson. Leave bloated fiction alone.