Size matters

Word counts! What are they good for?

Last week I spotted someone who was observing that the entirety of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has a word count equivalent to single entries in more recent fantasy series. While LotR clocks in at roughly 455,000 words (give or take tens of thousands of appendices, and whether you include The Hobbit etc), A Storm of Swords from the A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series by itself hits 420,000+.

The fantasy genre’s tendency towards epic tales also makes epic word counts rather common. The two go hand-in-hand, the assumption being perhaps that for a story to feel big it has to be big. Later authors have made Tolkien’s work appear succinct and efficient.

On the flipside, this week I also read

Mata Haggis-Burridge

’s astonishing ‘I Could Gobble You Up’, a 400 word slice of micro-fiction which you can read right here:

Micro-fiction: I Could Just Gobble You Up

400 words! And Mata does so much in so little space, crafting a story more impactful than entire books I’ve read. There’s an efficiency here, but without it being a compromise. There’s nothing missing from ‘I Could Gobble You Up’. It does use some coded genre shorthand,¹ but everything it needs to be memorable and captivating is right there on the page.

It’s one of those stories that lodges in your brain, taking out a long term rented apartment and refusing to leave even when the landlord has had quite enough. Part of me wants Mata to expand it, to write a longer novel based on the concept. I want it to be a TV show and a film, and for there to be comics, because the idea is so compelling. I want to explore it further!

Yet, that would most likely be a trap. ‘I Could Gobble You Up’ is brilliant precisely because of its tiny size. There’s a scarcity to it, which makes it extra special. A Disney+ TV show and Funko Pop merch would undermine its impact.

There have been some excellent spin-off shows set in the Star Wars and Marvel universes, but has the existence of all that Extra Stuff really served to improve upon the original, focused intent? Every ‘franchise’ becomes over-saturated at some point. The enormous scope of George RR Martin’s work may have been vital to the tone and themes of the early books, but as the series continues to not be finished (years after the TV show concluded awkwardly), its size is looking like more of a handicap.

Movies regularly bloat past a two hour running time, with even blockbuster entertainment sitting closer to three hours. We’re a long way from the 80s when movies could be an hour and a half and be entirely satisfying creations. There are some stories that justify a long running time or word count; there are probably more which do not.

Each time Ubisoft announces that their latest game takes 50+ hours to complete, I make a mental note to skip it. It’s a rare game that justifies such enormity. I miss the 90s and 2000s, when it was common to have a neat and tidy game that would provide intense entertainment for a solid ten hours or less.

All of this is on my mind because my own Tales from the Triverse recently blasted past 330,000 words. Is anything in Triverse as visceral, as immediately enthralling, as Mata’s 400 words of ‘I Could Gobble You Up’? Perhaps it doesn’t matter, because Triverse is trying to do something quite different, weaving a tapestry of short stories across a connected universe. Or perhaps I’ve been indulgently wallowing about in my own fictional space like a pig in the mud, oblivious to the mess I’m making.

As Triverse continues to draw closer to the word count of The Lord of the Rings, I can’t help but think of it as hubris. No wonder it’s difficult to attract readers to a long-running serial when there’s so damned much of it. This is something I was acutely aware of even back in 2022, it turns out:

The problem with long form serials

“This is the big conundrum for anyone serialising long form content online. At the beginning of a project, there’s the excitement of getting on board with something new and being there from the start. But the longer the project continues, the bigger the barrier to entry. The more the back catalogue starts to feel like homework.” 2022 SKJ

For much of the run of Triverse I’ve watched enviously as my short and micro fiction comrades have published their bite-sized, compartmentalised, standalone pieces. Reading ‘I Could Gobble You Up’ doesn’t require a thesis in background lore of Mata’s other work, and you’re not committing to years of reading an ongoing. It’s a single, beautifully executed idea that does exactly what it needs to, and then stops. Its rarity multiplies its impact. Which isn’t to say that it works simply because it’s short; Mata’s writing is what makes it work, matched to the format.

That’s the genius of the short story format. It’s a space in which a single idea can be explored, turned over and prodded, but without having to work out the structures and underpinning that would be needed for a longer piece. Suspension of disbelief functions differently with shorter works, and we’re willing to go along with an idea even when its outlandish or entirely unexplained. Longer texts tend to require an increased level of verisimilitude, a scaffolding of sorts to maintain reader interest and help them to remain in the fictional space.

Listening to the needs of the story is vital. That’s what it comes down to: figuring out whether your idea fits into 400 words, or 4,000 words, or 40,000 words and so on. Some stories are best told succinctly and quickly, while others need space to breathe and flex. It’s not always obvious which is which, of course, which is the ongoing dilemma of the serial fiction author. Audiences won’t always agree: there are many who I’m sure would be quite happy to excise all the songs and hiking stuff from The Lord of the Rings.

‘Story’ is a strange and ephemeral construct. As with so many aspects of human society, we’ve made it up. It’s a fabrication, even while having the power to reveal deep truths, and pinning down definitive notions of how long or short a tale should be is likely a fool’s quest. But when an idea matches with the perfect length of story, we can all feel it. It just works, and our brains feel energised and renewed simply for interacting with the words.

All of this is a long-winded² way of saying: go and read Mata’s ‘I Could Gobble You Up’.

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Meanwhile.

I’ve had an exceedingly busy couple of weeks. Finishing one job and starting another, including a jaunt to London. Driving to Newbury and back for a family gathering. Driving to Leeds and back for a 50th birthday party. Busy, and tiring, but invigorating nonetheless. Life always has that odd push-and-pull, between doing too much and doing too little.

Anyway. Some things I enjoyed along the way:

• The Game Maker’s Notebook podcast interview Tom Francis about his career and especially Tactical Breach Wizards, which was probably my favourite game of 2024. Tom is exactly the kind of designer that I love learning from; even if you’re not a game designer, his insights on story, pacing, audience frustration are always on point.

• This discussion about how having a successful Substack doesn’t mean you’ll get a book deal was really interesting. My hot take is that newsletters (Substack or otherwise) remain the single most efficient way to get people to do something, or to engage with work. Better than socials, better than ads. Doesn’t make it easy or a magic bullet, though. My personal experience is that having a newsletter certainly does help drive sales of novels, but probably not on the scale of usefulness that Parker is talking about.

  P.S. Don’t forget you can buy my novel No Adults Allowed. 🙄

• T K Hall
  ’s fantastic retelling of Robin Hood myth is complete and the third book will be published in May. Huge congrats to Tim! We’ve written about our respective processes and recently chatted about Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

Right, that’s me for today. Hope you all have lovely weeks.

1. My one quibble, not that Mata asked, would be to remove the direct reference to ‘zombies’. It feels unnecessary to me and is distracting; it’s the only moment when I paused while reading, because it approaches being a fourth-wall break. Characters in a zombie film referencing zombie films. Which is fine, but doesn’t seem to be the tone of the piece.

2. Ironic, given the topic.