My story “An Insurrection” is up today at Necessary Fiction. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like this story a lot. I’m very happy to have finally placed it, and with such a great market — big thanks to Steve Himmer for not only accepting it, but for helping me make it better — yet something does worry me. You see, the story is about 2,000 words, one of the longest pieces of fiction I’ve published in the past year. If it were in a print magazine, I wouldn’t be too worried, as longer fiction is suited for print magazines, but this story is online, and you know how people are with their short attention spans …
Anyway, please do check it out if and when you get the chance. Like I said, I like it a lot. Hopefully you will too.
When I decided to start publishing longer stories at NF, I thought a lot about reader attention, and decided (well, maybe hoped) the ‘problem’ is to some degree both a myth and a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we resign ourselves to the idea that readers will ONLY read shorter work online, and don’t publish anything longer, we’re teaching readers to think that way even if they already don’t, as well as widening the gap between print and online publications. And with so many print journals closing or reducing their frequency of publication, this makes it harder and harder for longer stories to be published at all, further cementing the notion that not only should stories ONLINE be shorter, but stories in GENERAL.
But more than anything, and most importantly, if a story is gripping and well-told — as ‘An Insurrection’ is — a reader keeps reading for however long the story goes on.
I can see why you like that story, Robert – it’s excellent! You took a moment of annoyance and frustration that a lot of us have probably felt and turned it into this tension-filled, David-and-Goliath with a twist story. Really well done.
The length of the story wasn’t a problem for me, probably for a few reasons – 1) it was well written and moved along, 2) you “warned” us it was longer than usual, and 3) the layout of it made it easy on the eyes.
I posted a comment. I hope it went through. Nice how you interwove the two stories and made them connect.
Steve – That makes a lot of sense, and I’m glad NF publishes longer works. It seems more and more web journals these days are not, which goes along with your point about readers being trained to only read those shorter works.
Madeline & Charles – Thanks for reading!
I commented on Necessary Fiction, so you’ll have to visit the page to see what I wrote, after its approval of course.
Congrats!
Saw it — thanks, Jason, glad you liked it!