Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

And certainly far less wordy than some who were obviously paid by the word, like that hack Dickens.

Granted wordiness is not a positive attribute and it can annoy readers.

I could agree with that if it was qualified as "excessive wordiness"

Terseness taken too far is also not a positive attribute for a story and can also annoy readers.

To me 'wordiness' implies an excessive number of words being used to convey something.

My perception is that those who spend a lot of time harping on wordiness as a problem in fiction take an overly minimalist view of what a story should be.

I agree. To me 'wordiness' implies an excessive number of words being used to convey something.

excessive number of words == higher word count, artificially increase the story size because those score higher.

You need to leave something for the readers imagination.

Well, you can specify everything that the reader is supposed to imagine. People who obviously were paid by the word (Dickens) did that crap all the time. I always thought the only thing that would take longer than a snail sprinting a hundred yards in subzero temperatures over a path of molasses would be trying to read Dickens or Steinbeck(at least in his 'Grapes of Wrath' era) describe that event.

That might be why I have never read any Dickens or Steinbeck. Of course the fact that I was not required to read said works might give an indication of the quality of the education system I grew up in.

Grade 13 English, our teacher explained the challenge of creating comprehensive exams and explained that in almost all cases in a class where a number of books were assigned reading, the probability of being able to skip reading one book without it impacting one's potential exam mark was almost 1... and that the probability dropped as you increased the number of books not read. Since that was the year Grapes of Wrath was assigned reading, I chose to not bother with that. (For some strange reason, most of the rest of the class did read it, and dropped Wuthering Heights, which actually had things happen in it.)

I also failed exactly one course in HS. English class in which we were to read Tale of Two Cities. Even taking the course twice, I was unable to slog through that bullshit. Although the second time around, I skipped the entire 'Book the Second' and as far as I could tell, there was about a fifteen minute gap between the other two parts.

Sure, there are times when the details are needed, but when you go into detail you better have a damn good reason for it show up within a reasonable time frame.

That brings up another thought. All the details of the character do not need to be revealed at the beginning of the story. I can't count the number of stories I have read where five of the first eight chapters are physical descriptions of the characters.

Sure, there are times when the details are needed, but when you go into detail you better have a damn good reason for it show up within a reasonable time frame.

That brings up another thought. All the details of the character do not need to be revealed at the beginning of the story. I can't count the number of stories I have read where five of the first eight chapters are physical descriptions of the characters.

n five paragraphs about the engine size, the carburettor on it, the exhaust system, the nox system, and 800 other fine details of how they tricked the car out.

Five paragraphs, I know the guy's a gearhead and possibly did the work himself. One line, he's a poser who had money and just had it custom built.

Mozart was accused of using too many notes.

"The peculiar thing is that this charge of "an excess of art", which was used to cudgel Bach in his last years, was one that dogged Mozart throughout his maturity. The famous complaint of Emperor Joseph II about The Marriage of Figaro - "too many notes, Mozart" - is generally perceived to be a gaffe by a blockhead.Jun 3, 2004

'Too bizarre, Mozart!' | Classical music | The Guardian"

Dickens summarily scoffed at

It is the truth, Dickens works were published in newspapers and he was paid by the installment.

"Rare Book Mythbusters #1
BY STEPHEN J. GERTZ ON MAY 1, 2009

The reason that Charles Dickens's books are so long is because he was paid by the word.

Contrary to popular belief, Dickens was not paid by the word for his books. He was, rather, paid per installment.

All but five of Dickens' novels were originally published in twenty 32-page installments in nineteen issues (the last a double installment) that sold for one shilling each, though some, i.e. Oliver Twist, were issued in ten installments.

This formula allowed Dickens, like a modern-day soap opera writer, to whet his readers' interest in each episode and stoke their hunger to find out what would happen next. He never wrote too far in advance of the next episode, which allowed him to incorporate feedback from his readers as to how the story should unfold, or ignore his rabid fanbase: Despite desperate pleas he allowed the Grim Reaper to prematurely claim Little Nell, from The Old Curiosity Shop, as his own. (Later, Oscar Wilde, who had no patience for sentimentality, would invert it and dryly tell a friend: "It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell")

More to the point, at one shilling each, the installments were so inexpensive that just about anyone could afford them: At the time, books cost an average of thirty-one shillings, six pence (£1, 11s, 6p), a lot of money for the average British citizen of the era. The average weekly wage then was one pound; a standard book cost over a week's salary.

Thus Dickens reached a much broader audience than if the novels had been originally issued in book form. Sketches By Boz and Oliver Twist, originally serialized in the weekly magazine, Bentley's Miscellany, were later issued in separate book form yet were subsequently issued in monthly parts: Once again, the cost of books was prohibitive for many of Dickens's readers and by reissuing the books in parts the publishers hoped to increase their financial return through volume sales of installments.

While I have yet to discover how much Dickens was paid later in his career, in 1836 he earned £20 for each monthly episode of The Pickwick Papers, an extremely handsome salary.

Yet it was not enough. For most of his career Dickens also edited and wrote for magazines. He was part owner of Household Words, which he also edited. For this, he received an annual salary of £500; with income from his contributions to the magazine his annual income was £1,163-£1,652, well over $350,000 in today's money.

Yet Dickens enjoyed the fruits of fame to the extent that he was frequently in debt due to his lavish lifestyle. By early winter, 1843, for example, sales of Martin Chuzzlewit, whose first installment had been issued in January 1843, were poor and his publisher, Chapman & Hall, threatened to reduce his salary. He owed money, his wife was pregnant...

And so Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, and at warp speed, completing it in six weeks on top of all the other writing and editing he was simultaneously engaged with. Originally issued on December 17, 1843, it sold 6,000 copies within five days. Another 2,000 copies were printed and sold out by January 6, 1844. It was a smash success.

But a financial disaster. Priced at five shillings to stimulate holiday gift sales, the elaborate production that Dickens, with contractual rights, insisted upon - John Leech was commissioned to produce eight illustrations, four to be hand-colored steel engravings, the others as woodcuts; expensive green end- papers were used, and then replaced with others of similar quality but yellow; the titlepage, originally printed in blue and red was re-printed in green and red; all edges gilt - was such that the book was unable to earn a profit. Dickens blamed Chapman and Hall and broke with them.

Most of the thirty-two page installments were forty-nine lines to the page; total words for each installment approx. 18,800 words; times twenty installments equals 376,320 total words per book. At £20 per installment, Dickens earned £400 per book. Many believe that Dickens earned a penny a word. It was less than that. He earned a farthing per word. A farthing is a quarter of a British penny. But a farthing went a lot farther in those days. That £400 in 1836 equals approximately $238,000 in today's money.

And, remember, that was for his first novel, Pickwick Papers. Nowadays, a first-time novelist needs a super-agent to get a deal like that.

The pay scale for writers has declined dramatically over the last 170 years. A farthing is beginning to look pretty good to me: "Please Sir, may I have some more?"

_____

References

Hatton & Cleaver. Bibliography of the Periodical Works of Charles Dickens.

Smith, Walter. Charles Dickens in the Original Cloth.

Allingham, Philip. A Review of Unequal Partners: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins & Victorian Authorship.

The Dickens Project, University of California, Santa Cruz

University of Glasgow, Book of the Month, December 1999. Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol.

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens at dickens-literature.com

Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde. (1988).

A tip o' the hat to David Brass for providing images, and for explaining the mysteries of the British monetary system to me; I couldn't fathom farthings.

farthings

Aren't you going to deconstruct this word - something to do with farts and hinges.

You misread.

Steinbeck could write well. He just didn't when he did Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck and Dickens both could've learned a lot from Hemmingway. Supply the words needed to tell the story...but TELL THE STORY. Don't get lost in descriptions so detailed that nothing happens for half the book.

Steinbeck and Dickens both could've learned a lot from Hemmingway.

I think we'll agree to disagree that there were too many words from Dickens and Steinbeck. Perhaps Hemingway's economical use of words was due to the exercising of his elbow at Harry's in Paris and Sloppy Joe's in Key West, and he forgot some of them. His best work is in his short stories where brief and concise works best.

Great storytelling not only encompasses character exposition and development, but time, setting, place and general ambiance of the tale the author wishes to tell. Since Dickens wrote in installments, more words were required for continuity and a self contained installment. If Dickens is lacking in a major way, it's his one dimensional portrayal of female characters, a problem many male authors possess.

With both Dickens and Steinbeck their "wordiness" was necessary to their stories. Whether it be Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, the descriptions are necessary for the horror of the Depression era Dust Bowl in America and the effects it caused to property and people. Dickens descriptions of post-Industrial Revolution in England with its child labor, forced deportation, debtors prison, and coal dusted London sets unforgettable scenes. I confess to rereading David Copperfield and Little Dorrit every few years. "Heap!! Uriah Heap!"

I'm afraid the current "woke" generation is going to "cancel" the works of all the great authors of the past and dismiss them summarily. The feminists have declared war on Austen and the Bronte sisters. Dickens, Stevenson, Twain, et.al. are simply old dead white men inculcated with racism, anti-feminism, homophobia and other attendant failings. Thus, they're no longer worth reading.

I'm afraid that to many Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram constitute literature. If Melville were alive today he would have started and stopped his Twitter post at "Call me Ishmael," a post that would make even Hemingway proud.

Note: I must also confess I could never finish War and Peace... too many words and characters.

I'm sure some of Dickens is probably decent. Luckily for me, I only ever was forced to read Dickens for that one class... and so if Tale of Two Cities is his worst work, like Grapes of Wrath was definitely not Steinbeck at his best... then I'll apologize to Chuck's fans. Still, I think it's fair that if I'm gonna invest my time reading someone's book, they should endeavor to ensure that it isn't the literary equivalent of Seinfeld - it shouldn't be about nothing, something should damn well happen. The Bronte works I read weren't bad. Ol' Sam Clemens wrote well. I quite enjoyed reading Doyle in third grade. Tried Melville, didn't think much of him, went on to Rand, was pleasantly surprised.

went on to Rand, was pleasantly surprised.

Well, now we know you're not adverse to fantasy if you read Rand. One of the great things about literature is that there's something appealing to everyone. These days, a lot of people read Chomsky, more fantasy material.
I'm partial to Dickens and Melville, and you're a Hemingway aficionado. Makes the world go around, doesn't it? Happy reading...

Runaway Train doesn't end with a cliffhanger, or anything like that. It wraps up without requiring a sequel to get closure.

Runaway Train doesn't end with a cliffhanger

Obviously, it end in a train wreck.