Discussion: Length and Complexity/Simplicity

I confess that I would have put up another review last night, but then this small event called the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies happened and I got a tiny bit distracted. I'm also nothing short of scatter-brained sometimes and really need to work on that. Speaking of Olympics, that was a such great Paul McCartney performance, especially with all those people in London singing along to Hey Jude! It almost makes one forget about things like nationalism and xenophobia. I've also never seen so many Visa ads since the last Summer Olympics.

Anyway, now that some boring sport like Woman's Basketball is on, I have time to actually post something. (More after the break)

You might have noticed that the stories I have reviewed so far are one-shots. This isn't because I don't like long stories, but it is easier to review something if it takes less than an hour to read overall. I would like to change this in due time, seeing as I do have a few completed stories under my review list that are actually longer than one chapter. I'm keeping my mouth shut about what titles those are, though.


 So anyway, are stories better when they're long and drawn-out with lots of detail and backstory and other good fluff, or is it better to be more simplistic and straight to the point?

With longer stories, it feels a lot better when you finish a longer story, because if its written well enough, you feel more accomplished after reading a grand and epic story. There's also more material in it for a reviewer like me to bitch about critique and share with you guys. I've mentioned before in my review of The Good Ship Lifestyle that Allegrezza is one of my favorite fanfics ever, and its pretty decently lengthed at seventeen chapters long. I might just do a review of it because of one little aspect that's been bugging me about it, though, so look forward to that in the future!

I find myself reading shorter fanfics and one-shots more often because I don't have time to read a 100,000 word epic sometimes, so something I can read within ten minutes of my time makes me feel like I don't have to commit a really long time to. I mean, sometimes I can read just one chapter of something and read the rest later, but it'll be on my mind and I can't focus sometimes if its that good of a read. I'll also have something like schoolwork or be inbetween classes when reading fanfiction sometimes, which is when I read most fanfics last semester. Call it poor planning, and its not that much of a deal, but its just a preference of mine.

Another thing to note is the pacing each story has. See, you can have long-winded, detailed paragraphs about how mysterious and spooky the Everfree Forest is and how all the monsters are dangerous and/or unknown, but if it takes up the better part of the current action going on in the story, and the main action is otherwise rushed because the author couldn't focus on said main action, then there's a problem here. Its like how The Scarlett Letter has a whole chapter dedicated to the piers and seamen life and stuff. By the way, I hate The Scarlett Letter so much because of how boring and drawn-out it is, and the big plot-twist at the end doesn't make up for it. Screw you, 11th grade English class, and screw the five page long essay I had to write on it.

Source: Some guy on 4chan.

You also have really short stories that have absolutely zero fluff or detail with conflicts and plotlines that start and resolve along the lines of "X character did something, and then this bad thing happened, but then X took care of it." I'm going to review a story along those calibers soon enough, but I need a perfect example of it first. See, I don't just review fanfics like a typical movie reviewer, because I pick the ones that can give me the most material. Plus, there're hundreds of fanfics being posted everyday (that's a rough estimate because I don't feel like counting), so I gotta choose one that's more than a typical HiE (Human in Equestria) story or really bland shipfic.

My final verdict is that if its written well enough, it doesn't matter how long or short a story is. Entertainment value is everything when it comes to any artform. It doesn't matter if its good, bad, short, long, or a combination of those,  as long as you can make it entertaining. I'm sorry if it seems like this isn't very much of a discussion or rant, but I think my point still stands that if a story can peak my interest and entertain me, then I think its a good story.

~30kbpm~

(On that note, I try to avoid posting pics on here because sometimes I can't find the original source even with a reverse-image-search, but I think I won't get into trouble with this picture. Professionalism!)