Making the Cut and Fictional Hormesis

Book lengths, who doesn't complain about them? I sure do. Sometimes they're too short, but I mostly find myself labeling them as too long. How useful and valid are such statements?

I thought of addressing this topic when I came across this statement in a two-star review of the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson:

At around 700 pages per book, Sanderson (or his editors) got really bad at separating what's necessary for storytelling from pointless drivel. In book 2, for example, the first 500 pages could be summed up as city under siege, Eland is a philosopher and not a ruler, gets overthrown.

First off, I'm always interested in reading the contrary side of things. If I liked a book, it helps me understand people better by learning why they didn't. Same for any political of religious issue. I think a certain way, so what is it that convinces you to think otherwise? But sentence 2 quoted above clearly shows the reviewer's lack of understanding of prose.

You see, every single book that you read can be summarized. But that's not the point. No one doing leisure reading just wants the summary. It's all about engrossing yourself in the plot and going through experiences with the characters. When I read the line city under siege, I really don't give a hoot about it. But when I read the book and I know the characters, it comes alive and I feel a portion of what they (theoretically) went through. That's the power of prose.

But certainly there's a point where it becomes too much. I found myself thinking this as I read Name of the Wind by Partick Rothfuss. I definitely enjoyed the book, but I felt as if a little too much time was spent on unnecessary description. I think I would have enjoyed the book a fair amount more had it been 100 or so pages shorter. It would still be over 600 pages long, but the story would move just a bit faster.

In the end, it's up to the writer to decide when the story is far too pregnant or barren. That's a good way to think of it. I've read some stories that were so pregnant I got morning sickness. I'm just sitting there thinking give birth already! But at the same time, you can strip any story down until it's just a plot summary. There are things that I write that don't straightway contribute to the plot, but they contribute to the overall experience. A good author knows when the threshold is crossed where these ancillary anecdotes start detracting. This is called hormesis, or the too much of a good thing model. Figure out how it works.

The Final Fluff Fight

First, welcome to the place I've deigned to deposit my ruminations upon such possible topics as writing, music, physics, religion, et cetera. Now you know. And since this post is about burning fluff...

Fluff. It's an essential part of every story. Without it the result is bone grinding on bone. Fluff is like the cartilage of literature. But imagine trying to walk with 5 inches of gristle between your femur and tibia. Your locomotion would be extremely unconventional. The same holds for writing. 

A good story can be drowned in excessive fluff. It can also get dehydrated from lack thereof. Our job as writers is to find that golden meridian and promenade down it. To illustrate, we generally type ourselves into one of the following situations:

1. Alright, Tyson is in the cave and now he needs to get the dagger. Run Tyson. Grab. Good. Stab troglodytes. Escape. Hey look, Tyson got out safely! Done.
2. Well, I've led Tyson to the mouth of the mountain and now he needs to swipe the dagger. But how are my readers going to know that this is a cave unless I sequence the molecular bonds on every stalactite and guano streak? And what about the several drippings? They must know how the stalagmites formed over the past million years! How else are they going to appreciate that the troglodytes are hiding behind them? AND THE TROGLODYTES! The readers must become familiar with their hygiene, temperament, and breeding habits in order to truly understand the danger Tyson's in.

I'll stop there. You've probably been in one of these two boats if you've ever written a scene. 1) I know what happens next and it shall occur immediately; or 2) the details are churning inside me like a gallon of ingested phlegm and must be vomited out extensively. Ooh, is that a thorn-encrusted salamancer?

Before the inventions of the television, computer, and internet, authors tended much more toward the second inclination. That's why the average survival rate of works such as War and Peace is only 15%. Even some of the more streamlined classics can get their drag on. Fast forward to TV and the internet. The average citizen thinks: I award my full attention to everything in the world. I'm not going to dedicate my time to a novel unless it gives me as much enjoyment as the Youtubes. That requires us as authors to change our game.

Introducing: show, don't tell. I quote Orson Scott Card on exposition:

"When science fiction was just beginning, it was common for writers to stop the action in order to explain the cool new science or technology that they were introducing in the tale. It was not until Robert Heinlein that science fiction writers began to weave their exposition more subtly into the action of the story. The classic example is when, in telling of a character leaving a room, Heinlein wrote, "The door dilated." No explanation of the nifty technology behind dilating doors -- just a simple statement that seems to take the new technology for granted. This was a great step forward, allowing science fiction writers to introduce a vast amount of novelty into a story without stopping the forward movement of the plot in order to explain it."

One method of fluff reduction as shown here, is to replace a description with a verb. It's highly effective. Also, it doesn't deplete the richness of the narrative. Look for opportunities to explain the backstory during the nowstory, but don't impede the nowstory in order to do so. Slip it in. Gentle accents.

Good fluff. But sometimes you want to include something that's non-essential to the plot, yet still entertaining. Feel free! Just don't drown yourself in such excursions. An author I think does this quite well is Obert Skye. Here's an excerpt from the fifth Leven Thumps that I remember even though I read it 4 or 5 years ago.

Leven shrugged. "That's not important; we should find Tim."
"I would have mentioned them leaving," Clover said. "But Tim was pretty insistent about me staying quiet. He said they were taking Azure because he promised to show them the way."
"So you saw them go?" Winter asked incredulously.
"I was writing in my dream journal," Clover said defensively.
"At two in the morning?" Leven asked. "Why didn't you tell us they had left?"
"I had an interesting dream," Clover insisted. "What does it mean when you dream about barns?"
Leven and Winter just stared at him.

Alright, so it's not the fluffliest bit of fluff, but it works. Skye could have just explained that they woke up and saw that Tim was gone, so they started following him. Instead, he created a situation that became a memory for at least one reader. That's good fluff.

At the end of the day, your readers want a ravishing tale with some spicy details, not a spicy mess with little substance. Give them what they want, or they will punish you.