The Case of the Shrinking Novel

The mystery of saying more with less

a typed manuscript page showing many crossed out lines of text in an ancient language I recently re-discovered

Some novelists are capable of writing deeply satisfying doorstoppers that exceed 100,000 words and hold a reader’s interest all the way through.

But most of us, even the most committed big-world fantasy writers, can’t pull that off.

It’s tempting …