I hate this whole modern "less is better" approach to writing and I really wish to write a huge maximalist 900 page novel but I find it extremely hard to write anything longer than 5000 word-long short stories. How do you even go about writing a large novel?
>>7392772
Be very smart. Read more.
>>7392772
Read more 900 page novels.
See what they do?
I don't know.
Why does it matter how long something is? Just write something good and let the piece decide how long it should be.
>>7392772
Good luck with that in 2015. You think anyone is gonna read a 900 page or greater novel from here to any time in the future? The epic is dead.
>>7392842
My Struggle by Knausgaard
>>7392772
haha loser. nobody reads Cohen. nobody cares about Wallace, Pynchon. Gaddis, Barthelme, and Barth were over before the 80's. Their imitators were laughable. Even that numbnuts Franzen dropped maximalism after two novels and just wrote social realism.
but don't give up. just shoot for 350 pages at the absolute most if you want it to be remotely comprehensible. also fuck you minimalist and realism has been the best style for more than a hundred years. system novels are fucked and it's better that way. stop writing about the forest and start writing about the trees.
>>7392846
You listed a novel. Good job. How many people do you know actually read it? Front to back?
I'm sure you'll tell me everybody you know. Their mothers and daughters. Uncles and Aunts. You yourself I'm sure has read it like 4 times already.
>>7392846
that's just some dude's livejournal though. surely op is talking fiction with 'big ideas' about society/psychology/etc.
>>7392872
My Struggle is a fucking bestseller
Just start writing scenes. What could be an interesting situation, find a character that you somewhat like. Then write more scenes with that character. Start building a story. Don't be afraid to ditch the scenes that you've written, if they start to not fit in the story. Write more scenes. Find a style that suits you, and rewrite. See if the style changes the appropriate content of the story. Write more scenes. Don't be set on maximalism, but let the story dictate at this point. Explore and write about all the perspectives and secondary characters that you feel interested in. Let them grow in the narrative or let them wither, according to your interest. Write more scenes.
There. Done. Make money. Obtain recognition.
>>7392863
>also fuck you minimalist and realism has been the best style for more than a hundred years
If anything op has a better shot at getting published by making it even MORE minimalist. No sentence more than 5 words. No words that are more than 3 syllables. Makes it future-proof for the idiocracy.
>>7392863
>stop writing about the forest and start writing about the trees.
give me a single excuse for how a short novel can beat a longer novel in this argument? There's literally nothing a short novel can do better than a long novel except, perhaps, be less boring for casuals.
>>7392882
A bestseller for people who want to say they own it and have read it.
How do I know this?
Because everybody is metaphorically sucking his dick and the book has only been out for like 3 years. Nobody will remember this book in like, 20 years.
>>7392772
>and I really wish to write a huge maximalist 900 page novel
oh gee, that's NEVER been done before, so creative! Are you going to pick up 20 books on obscure catholic doctrines and myths and some art books, maybe some Rilke, only to write 900 pages about a trite thesis presented within the first page of your novel?
> modern "less is better" approach to writing
it's not promoting that less is more, it's that garbage writers like David Foster Wallace simply don't know the boundary between acceptable and too much. Gaddis is fine, he's in tradition with Melville. DFW, who is shit, and still probably more talented than you, simply had nothing to say, no skill to say it, and still managed to pretend to say it like the autist he was.
Why are you fucking setting out to write a 900 page novel anyways? Do you even have anything worth saying in five thousand words? In five words? I doubt you can even say five worthy words.
>>7392910
I agree with this anon, OP. You're not allowed to write a 900 page novel until you can prove to us that you can write 5 worthy words.
Here. Now. In this thread.
5. Worthy. Words.
>>7392918
anal apples please my prostrate
>>7392924
That's about exactly what I expected from you.
>>7392918
I Really Like The Memes
>>7392906
that was a metaphor for your subject matter, not length, but interesting interpretation. idk what in the fuck you mean by 'beat'. idk what in the fuck you mean by 'do better'. idk what in the fuck you mean when you say that book length=amount of investment (or opposite of boredom)
books like The Sun Also Rises, or Under the Volcano, or The Mountain Lion, or White Noise are all 250-400 pages in length. it allows proper cohesion. Some of Ulysses, while most is resonant, is just stupid and dated. Gravity's Rainbow is painfully distant and removed from human experience.
>>7392906
>There's literally nothing a short novel can do better than a long novel except, perhaps, be less boring for casuals.
well uh, I suppose it could aim to actually be a good novel instead of a fucking game for psuedo-literary nerds and autists?
Take even some older work which you retards might call "maximalist" today, which is a useless term in all rights -- Moby Dick -- how long is it? My copy right here, in big print, has it just over five hundred pages. That's a relatively long novel, and it took the mastery of a Melville to actually put to use all five hundred plus of those pages to make a great work.
And it takes a Tolstoy to expand out beyond a thousand pages. In fact, it only was Tolstoy who could great a great work worth all of its nearly-thousand pages.
> give me a single excuse for how a short novel can beat a longer novel in this argument?
by being a good novel rather than a good experiment.
You could argue for Joyce as a good experimenter, maybe a master of the "new" novel, but you're not fucking James Joyce, and nobody since James Joyce has been even close to James Joyce. The contender is possibly Beckett, and he wasn't exactly attacking the page count barrier.
You're not worth 900 pages, you're barely worth my post. Stop reading garbage "avant garde" literature and read good novelists, like Melville or Hawthorne or Dickens, or great poets like Whitman or Shakespeare or Dante or Chaucer. Get some fucking taste.
>>7392944
I would have edited the fuck out of Tolstoy and Melville. Still would have been genius.
Nobody needs a fucking 900 page novel for what they want to say.
Can you imagine early man telling stories around the campfire to teach lessons, present philosophy, and entertain, and then pulling out like a 900 page story?
>>7392944
I like you, anon. I really really really really really really really like you.
>>7392951
>Nobody needs a fucking 900 page novel for what they want to say
Anything worth saying takes a long time to say.
>>7392958
You know what? You go ahead and keep believing that. Go ahead and write your 900 page or longer novel. We'll all wait for it and sit here in high anticipation of its publication.
Please offer all of us a free copy when it's done.
This thread is a lot of butthurt. Why not write a long novel? If it sucks it sucks, if it's good it's good. Judging a book by its volume is about as stupid as judging it by its cover. That goes both wayes, long and short.
And if all writers told themselves that they shouldn't write long novels, cause they're not Melville or Tolstoy, then fuck, we'll never get a new book of that scope and genius.
That said, it's kindof a stupid persuit to have the 900 page book as a goal in itself, without having any idea of the story or content.
>>7392944
get a load of this pleb
>>7392995
Here comes the cavalry. The White Knights who say Ni.
short stories > novels, to be honest in my opinion
>>7393042
Why is it that most short story writers can't write novels for shit and viceversa? I can think of only one instance in which a writer had equally mastery of both and that is Kafka. Joyce's stories are great but nowhere near Portrait or Ulysses.
>>7393048
tolstoy
>>7393048
you're retarded and arguably Dubliners had a larger impact on the short story than Ulysses on the novel. short story writers with good novels?
Cheever Salinger Hemingway Yates
>>7392958
I guess you're comment is pretty worthless then.
>>7393859
Um, not really. You should probably go to college, or actually read the books you're talking about. *pats on head*
