Comments on: Keep Honking, I’m Reloading

By: Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:32:44 +0000

Saw it — thanks, Jason, glad you liked it!

By: Jason Jordan

Jason Jordan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:06:45 +0000

I commented on Necessary Fiction, so you’ll have to visit the page to see what I wrote, after its approval of course. Congrats!

By: Robert Swartwood

Robert Swartwood — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:17:24 +0000

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!

By: Charles Gramlich

Charles Gramlich — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:03:37 +0000

I posted a comment. I hope it went through. Nice how you interwove the two stories and made them connect.

By: Madeline

Madeline — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:49:06 +0000

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.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:07:55 +0000

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.