The Sayer and the Namer

Brevity is Wit

It's been a blah book week. I love to read fiction, and I always have to be in the middle of a book. This week, I'm struggling through The Life of Edgar Sawtelle, and I'm not sure why. It was raved about in Bookmarks Magazine, it's Oprah's Book Club pick, it's up for several national book awards, so why don't I love it as much as everyone else? I really enjoy the setting of the book, and the characters are endearing, but I'm at a really dry part in the middle of the novel, and I can't seem to find much motivation to finish. I hate it when writers do this. They start their novels with a bang, they develop an interesting plotline, then it seems to flatline in the middle. There's one consistency among each of these flatlining novels: they're too long.

I have a strict brevity rule that I use for books and movies. If a movie is longer than 2 hours, it had better be an epic story brilliantly written. If it's not, it breaks the brevity rule. 3 hours is too long to be sitting watching a movie, no matter how epic it is. Sorry, I know that a lot of people disagree with me, but I don't think a movie should ever be that long. You know that Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan could have cut a few of those fighting scenes, or that Lord of the Rings could have cut...a lot. SNOOZE!!!

For books, I think that they should all be under 400 pages. Anyone can tell a brilliant story in under 400 pages. If a book is over 400 pages, it had better be an epic retelling of some unbelievable historical event. I'll also give a pass to Leo Tolstoy or Henry David Thoreau, because I'm in love with them. Either of them could write a 2,000 page novel about dust and I would read it. Other than Leo and Henry, if an author is writing a book longer than 400 pages, it is too long to be fully enjoyed. Brevity is wit, get to the point!

I notice the irony about my complaining about brevity while writing an extremely long blog post about it. Maybe I should make a brevity rule for blogging. Maybe not, because I'm sure I would break my own rule!

posted by Erin @ 10:50 AM