Monday, April 22, 2019

Keeping It Short

According to an article I recently read, my blog posts are way too long.  Robert Lee Brewer in "30 Day Platform Challenge" writes, "WRITE SHORT.  Short sentences (fewer than 10 words).  Short paragraphs (fewer than 5 sentences).  Concision is precision in online composition."  Uh-oh.  Concision and I aren't terribly good friends.

I blame J.R.R. Tolkien, whose descriptions could take up full pages of text.  Okay, his description of the lives and habits of hobbits took up full pages - but that's what stuck with me.  I was eight and fell in love with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and my writing has been something less than brief ever since.  This is, needless to say, a problem for a picture book writer and blogger.

I suppose blogs need to be brief because of the conventional wisdom which holds that online, people's attention spans make those of gnats look positively meditative.  Online, if you don't keep things short, you won't keep your readers.  Got it.  Can't DO it, but I got it.

I'm not so sure about picture books.  My last editor told me that publishers are wanting picture books to run shorter and shorter in word count because modern children, raised on tablets and e-devices, simply don't have the attention span to sit still for the sorts of stories their parents did.  This is wrenching to me... I grew up loving Pussy Willow by Margaret Wise Brown, Christina Katerina and the Box by Patricia Lee Gauch, and many other dear old wordy picture books that would never sell in today's brief marketplace.

It also makes me wonder... aren't we, in shortening our picture books, contributing to the problem, rather than taking a stand against it?  Isn't it worth saying, "No, child, not everything is bite-sized - but sometimes, things that require you to sit still and pay attention are good"?  Aren't books supposed to teach as well as to entertain?  And isn't teaching patience something worthwhile?

It's something to ponder, anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment