As a stop on the current Making Connections Blog Tour, I'm allowing Robert Downs to take over my blog with a guest post! I've also got a special one that will be going up the day before the blog tour starts, a special little treat for all you lovely people, and it fits perfectly with the blog tour starting up on the 1st of November. Without further adieu, I turn this blog post over to Mr. Downs and his topic of choice, MANfiction Length.
When it comes to MANfiction, size really does matter. You don’t want a long-winded tale, filled with flowery descriptions and language, and a novel that feels like it will never end. Instead, what you want is a tale told in approximately 75,000 words or less, and that is filled with action,
concise dialogue told in the most efficient manner possible, and strong characters with even stronger motivation.
If you look at the pulp fiction stories of old, they followed this formula effectively, and they used it to their advantage with characters that practically erupted from the pages themselves. It’s important to feel these characters through action and violence, much more so than the words that
might erupt from their lips. Men are notorious for our short attention spans, and shorter novels will serve you well as you cater to the hard-boiled audiences of old. Shorter novels also allow the action scenes dispersed throughout the tale to stand out even louder and prouder.
If you follow this formula men will appreciate your conciseness, and many women will as well, as your books stand out on the shelves from the rest of the novels that in many cases will exceed the length of your tale. And when you work hard at some creative endeavor, isn’t that what you’re really looking for anyway? A way to stand out from the crowd and to be heard above the dull roar in the background. Your readers will thank you and so will the MANfiction
heavyweights of old: Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett to name just a few. Let’s bring back the noir of old, since it was a perfect marketing concept executed fairly flawlessly when it was done correctly.
Robert Downs is the author of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator. A sample
chapter of his MANfiction mystery debut, as well as other interesting information about the
author, or his main character, can be located at his website.
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