Forum / "Long stories"

Henry Standing Bear
Oct 24, 08:11pm

Long stories are okay, folks. I realize we live in a time when attention span is about eight seconds on the conservative end, but, come on, writers have to read. It's the first three rules to becoming a true writer. Read, read, read. Not everyting we read should be able to be finished while sitting on the toilet or during a break at work. I write my share of flash fiction, but it's not the only fiction worth reading. I know this, and you know this. Hate me, agree with me. It's doesn't matter, or make it any less true. Peace.

Matthew Robinson
Oct 24, 08:21pm

You're 100% right, Sheldon. Long work is often neglected on this website often for very lame reasons.

Personally, I struggle with reading long work on a computer screen. The longer I stare, the more I feel the border of the screen between me and the words. I know that sounds weird, but it also prevents me from submitting long (3,000+ words) stories to online journals, so I take it pretty seriously. If a long story online intrigues me with its first couple of paragraphs, I will print it and read it later.

Carol Reid
Oct 24, 08:48pm

Absolutely. In general, I'm thrilled to see a word count over 1200 words . I've always made a point of paying attention to longer stories here and will continue to do so.

Javed Hayat
Oct 25, 05:21am

@Sheldon: I agree with what you said word to word. I may be wrong, but this website, like any other social networking website, seems to be suffering from the usual enduring rat race of reciprocity, a lot of them seem to be too busy patting each other on the shoulders, and it all needs to be done in a hurry.

I think that's where short fictions end up getting more attention. For me, it kills the very purpose of a place like Fictionaut.

I am not at all suggesting that the work churned out here doesn't have quality. Lots of quality here in terms of both writers present and the writings.

I can understand what Matt also said regarding focus issues on a computer screen for a longer duration of time, but surely it cant be the case with every one.

Flash fiction is fine for fun n games, but longer stories are the real thing.

Matthew Robinson
Oct 25, 05:53am

I'm not sure I agree with that last point, Javed. Flash fiction can deliver a punch in 400, 500, 800, 100 words in a way that longer stories just can't. Perhaps there's more to prove in writing longer stories, fulfilling the reader through extended development of plot and character and language, but flash fiction can tell harsh truths and exit the building before anyone can catch its name or license plate number, AND last in the reader's mind. In that way, maybe flash is closer to poetry than fiction.

And, yeah, I'm probably on my own in regards to concentrating on words on a computer screen, but there's no way that computers aren't changing the way we read. The rise of flash fiction may be an example of that. Sound bite fiction?

Javed Hayat
Oct 25, 06:44am

@Matt: Not at all suggesting that flash fiction don't have quality. There are some extraordinary stories told in flash fiction, great epics in few lines.

It's a rise of sound bite fiction for sure. And I find it rather scary. I have seen writers who have focused too much on flash fiction, and end up struggling with larger formats. Likewise for general readers when it comes to their reading preferences.

Don't you think this avalanche of flash fiction, great as it is with its own merits, is also damaging in a way. If people keep getting too exposed to quick reads and writes, it can develop its own bad habits in the long run.

What about the enduring pleasures of reading great epics, both past and modern, books like Gravity's Rainbow, Les Miserables to name just a couple. Too much exposure to e-reading will certainly take that away, if it isn't doing that already.

Mine's just another POV, my friend :)

Christian Bell
Oct 25, 01:43pm

Matt, I have to agree with you. Reading longer works onscreen is problematic for me, though I have no problem with reading longer stories/novels in print. For me, the experience is just not the same in front of a computer screen.

For me, writing flash fiction is where I've found the most literary comfort. Maybe it's my own laziness or lack of attention span, who can say. Over the years, though, I've written longer stories, novels, and poems, but I keep returning to flash (I blame Brady Udall's "The Wig" for putting me on this course).

Fictionaut to me seems like a good place for a certain reciprocity, in that, if you're writing and posting longer stories, you should also read and comment on the longer stories of others. Not saying anyone's guilty of not doing this, but there seem to be enough longer stories posted here that a sub-community of like-minded writers should sustain itself here. I don't consider it trading reads or returning praise--a bit of a dangerous topic here--but more along the lines of connecting with others who are writing in a similar vein.

Carol Reid
Oct 25, 07:21pm

When I first joined this site,three or maybe four years ago, it used to bother me a lot that almost everything posted here was either poetry or flash fiction. I was really stuck on the idea that stories had to be at the very least 1500 words and I had not yet come to enjoy or understand or accept the value of flash or micro.

I have to admit that Fictionaut has changed the way I write-- 0r at least the way I write when I'm not writing longer stories.

I wonder whether it would help the cause at all to see the word count of pieces right on the front page.

Gary Hardaway
Oct 25, 07:26pm

I agree with Christian about how difficult it is to read anything very long on a computer screen. Digital media almost demand abbreviated text offerings. Print media encourage greater and longer attention- in my experience, anyway.

David Ackley
Oct 26, 12:23am

I don't find it any harder to read long pieces on a computer screen. There is a greater risk of boring the reader when you write longer and that does seem to come through more painfully on a computer screen for some reason, but that turns out, as the writer, to be fairly useful. When I'm reading something of my own onscreen and my lids begin to droop--time to cut.

Henry Standing Bear
Oct 27, 01:51pm

Lively discussion...much appreciated!

Frankie Saxx
Oct 28, 10:46am

I tend to agree with the comments about it being difficult to read longer on a computer screen.

It's not physical discomfort, not at the lengths we're talking about, but attention and how I'm accustomed to using the tool in front of me. Online there are links to click and comments to read (and make) and buttons to share whatever it is I'm looking at, whether it's a story or poem I'm reading or my latest purchase of ecological toilet bowl cleaner from Amazon, and if something makes me curious, it's about two steps from reading the story to googling whether there is such a thing as a giant, shark-eating jellyfish, and then looking at pictures of said jellyfish, and a link to a youtube clip of said jellyfish attacking a shark, and then a link to the blog of the diver that posted the youtube clip...

That said, it depends on my mood. Some days I'm better at tuning out the distractions. I've also made an effort on Fictionaut to pay extra attention to work that has the fewest reads/votes on the "most recent" page which means I'm reading more new-to-Fictionaut writers and longer stories.

(Raise your hand if you just googled "shark eating jellyfish".)

David Ackley
Oct 28, 02:00pm

I'd be curious to know, from those who write longer pieces, whether they read them onscreen as they're working on them. I'll print them out occasionally just to compare my sense of how they read in each medium, but for the most part, I read and work on them onscreen.

Matthew Robinson
Oct 28, 07:27pm

David -

When I'm composing longer work, I mostly do it onscreen in 30-60 minute intervals, interrupted by 5-10 minute "eye breaks." I can do this for 4-5 hours, 6 days a week, and I try to.

However, whenever I have a new draft or version of a piece, I always print it and line-edit by hand. (I have upwards of 40 copies of some pieces stacked in my desk drawers.) I have to do it this way because I find that I frequently miss words, have typos that spellcheck won't pick up, turn some pretty awkward phrases in the stream of writing, and just generally arrange paragraphs incorrectly when writing on a computer screen. The backs of pages of my drafts are always filled top to bottom with re-writing and notes, the front sides with slashes and marks and margin notes. It works out pretty well most of the time, but it can take me months to finish something that exceeds 2,000 words. (It can take me months to finish something that's 500 words.) I should add that technical mistakes don't happen so much when I'm composing by hand, but it takes a lot longer and my handwriting endurance is very poor. I have awkward technique with a pen (left-handed, involuntary flexing of the tendons at my elbow) and I cramp easily as a result.

When I'm reading long work online, a bunch of different things happen to me physically. My eyes dart up and down, not side to side, skipping over words and lines. If there are ads on the site, they always distract me (they distract me in print mags as well, but not to the same effect because they're not videos or animated graphics). Visible links to other stories/essays/articles are bothersome as well. Comment sections. As far as the actual screen goes (and my philosophy of the screen as a barrier between my eyes and the words): Sometimes I'll feel a "flashing" effect, like the screen is flashing at me, but it's not. Glare, the outside world interfering, looking over my shoulder, distracts me as well. Sometimes just becoming aware of the physical presence of the screen is enough to throw me off. In other words, there's just too much damn other shit going on/I'm crazy.

My main solution is to print pieces out and read them that way, and now I have several folders in my filing cabinet that contain a personal collection of great online writing, which is pretty cool, I suppose.

All right, time to go edit a 2,100 word draft of a short story I started in March and haven't worked on (before last night) since July.

Wish me luck.

Chris Okum
Oct 28, 07:38pm

I write them on screen and edit them on screen and read them on screen. I do find that editing on screen is harder than editing in print. My eye misses a lot when I'm trying to edit and proof on screen.

Carol Reid
Oct 28, 07:44pm

I write first drafts and sometimes second drafts longhand, then edit as I type them. Revisions and edits of revisions are all on screen.

James Lloyd Davis
Oct 28, 08:16pm

David, the novel I've been working on got up to 235,000+ words at its peak. I had to cut it down to at least no more than 175,000, so I had the word file printed out at Kinko's and tried to edit the hard copy. The task was ridiculously slow that way, so I am back to editing on the computer in a process that works like winnowing wheat. It's like raking through the text, cutting here, enhancing there. It will probably take three more edits, but its the only way that makes sense, considering the size of it.

I did a first draft on the computer in a dead heat. The editing is the hard part and I'm probably on my seventh edit, but I cannot imagine going back to hard copy.

The one hard copy I have sits on the floor in a binder the cats use as an elevated throne

David Ackley
Oct 28, 10:18pm

The old WRITERS AT WORK pb collections of Paris Review interviews used to have on the facing page of the beginning a facsimile page of a draft of the interview subject's work, with crossings out, insertions, corrections. They were often wonderful miniature demonstrations of craft, almost like looking over the writer's shoulder as she wrote, seeing the process enacted, not only the changes but being able to infer the reasoning for them, and see how a nip here and a tuck there improved a piece. Something else of value mostly lost to the computer, I suppose.

Happily, some of Matt's, Carol's and JLD's original Mss will have escaped and hopefully be preserved for posterity.

I sometimes write sections of pieces by hand in the moleskin notebooks which everyone gives me for Christmas and birthdays from when I used to draw more than I do now. Sometimes I don't even look at these when I go to the computer to convert them to typescript. LIke someone says, " I can't write one word without I rewrite two." The truth is though, more and more, the whole process takes place sitting at the computer keyboard, from first through god knows how many other drafts. I suppose I don't even think in terms of drafts much anymore, the computer having melded them into one amorphous and continuous extrusion like manufacturing taffy.

James Lloyd Davis
Oct 29, 11:53am

Extrusion is a complex and rather interesting process that's also applied to plastics and soft metals, combining intense heat, mechanical compression, and both cold and hot mixtures of component elements. At the end of the heated head, where the mold produces shape, cooling begins, another process altogether. Every part of the process, heat, mixture, pressure, and cooling is finely tuned through control devices that use electronic sensors to consistently monitor the ongoing production.

I like the analogy, but I think of editing with a computer more akin to tending a garden of stones with a wooden rake and the patient, persistent eye of zen.
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