I have very mixed feelings about GlowFic which are a direct result of trying to read PlaneCrash.
Pro: they are a joy for the author, and gets an author to write many hundreds of thousands of words effortlessly, which is great when you want more words from an author.
Con: the format is anti-conducive to narrative density. The joy is in creating any words, which is great for the author, but bad for audiences. Readers want a high engagement-per-word ratio.
For context, my two favorite works are HPMOR and Worth The Candle, of 660K and 1.6M words. I spent 16 months podcasting a read-through/analysis of Worth The Candle. I’m not shy about reading lots of words. But when I tried to do the same for PlaneCrash I stopped after 200k words. The problem was not the decision theory or the math, which I found interesting in the brief sections they came up. The problem was plot and character development. 200,000 words is two full novels. In a single novel an author will typically build an entire world and get us to fall in love with the characters, throw them into conflict, build to a climax, drive at least one character through an entire character arc where they develop as a person, and bring an audience through emotional catharsis via a climax and resolution. Often with side-plots or supporting characters fleshed out as well. In 200,000 words this could be done TWICE (maybe 1.5 times if the books run long).
In 200,000 words of PlaneCrash we got through one major plot point and set up the next. It felt like as much action as you get roughly within 25k words normally. That’s an order of magnitude more cost-per-payoff compared to any general-audience novel (including HPMOR). This is more than even I am willing to pay.
As Devon Erikson says, every word is a bid for the attention of the reader, it’s a price the author is bidding up. They need to recoup that cost by delivering to the reader a greater amount of something the reader wants—enjoyment, excitement, insight, information, emotional release, whatever. In the GlowFic format, authors are primarily writing for their own enjoyment, and perhaps their onlooking friends. Mass audiences don’t get the expected per-word payoff.
I think a serious review of PlaneCrash such as this one should acknowledge that the narrative-to-wordcount ratio is way out of proportion to what most people will accept, and this is the major flaw of the piece.
Yeah I wish someone would write a condensed and less onanistic version of Planecrash. I think one could get much of the benefit in a much shorter package.
I liked it… but I can imagine a 2x or 3x shorter version that I would like even more, because some parts were just too long. The question is whether fans are correlated about which parts they liked less.
I had similar problem with planecrash and abandoned itma dn them read interesting experts, mostly anything i could find about dath ilan.
but then i went to read other glowfic, and read a lot of them, and enjoy a lot. and now my two main hypotheses is that i don’t like enough the characters to enjoy so many time in their presence—there are other characters that i would like to read planecrash-length story, for the experience of being in their head and see how they think about things and react to things. and that planecrash, specifically, is not dense enough.
but i’m very happy i encountered it—most of the things i read the last years are glowfics, and i wouldn’t discover them otherwise, and i generally find them much more enjoyable then regular books.
I have very mixed feelings about GlowFic which are a direct result of trying to read PlaneCrash.
Pro: they are a joy for the author, and gets an author to write many hundreds of thousands of words effortlessly, which is great when you want more words from an author.
Con: the format is anti-conducive to narrative density. The joy is in creating any words, which is great for the author, but bad for audiences. Readers want a high engagement-per-word ratio.
For context, my two favorite works are HPMOR and Worth The Candle, of 660K and 1.6M words. I spent 16 months podcasting a read-through/analysis of Worth The Candle. I’m not shy about reading lots of words. But when I tried to do the same for PlaneCrash I stopped after 200k words. The problem was not the decision theory or the math, which I found interesting in the brief sections they came up. The problem was plot and character development. 200,000 words is two full novels. In a single novel an author will typically build an entire world and get us to fall in love with the characters, throw them into conflict, build to a climax, drive at least one character through an entire character arc where they develop as a person, and bring an audience through emotional catharsis via a climax and resolution. Often with side-plots or supporting characters fleshed out as well. In 200,000 words this could be done TWICE (maybe 1.5 times if the books run long).
In 200,000 words of PlaneCrash we got through one major plot point and set up the next. It felt like as much action as you get roughly within 25k words normally. That’s an order of magnitude more cost-per-payoff compared to any general-audience novel (including HPMOR). This is more than even I am willing to pay.
As Devon Erikson says, every word is a bid for the attention of the reader, it’s a price the author is bidding up. They need to recoup that cost by delivering to the reader a greater amount of something the reader wants—enjoyment, excitement, insight, information, emotional release, whatever. In the GlowFic format, authors are primarily writing for their own enjoyment, and perhaps their onlooking friends. Mass audiences don’t get the expected per-word payoff.
I think a serious review of PlaneCrash such as this one should acknowledge that the narrative-to-wordcount ratio is way out of proportion to what most people will accept, and this is the major flaw of the piece.
Yeah I wish someone would write a condensed and less onanistic version of Planecrash. I think one could get much of the benefit in a much shorter package.
I liked it… but I can imagine a 2x or 3x shorter version that I would like even more, because some parts were just too long. The question is whether fans are correlated about which parts they liked less.
I had similar problem with planecrash and abandoned itma dn them read interesting experts, mostly anything i could find about dath ilan.
but then i went to read other glowfic, and read a lot of them, and enjoy a lot. and now my two main hypotheses is that i don’t like enough the characters to enjoy so many time in their presence—there are other characters that i would like to read planecrash-length story, for the experience of being in their head and see how they think about things and react to things. and that planecrash, specifically, is not dense enough.
but i’m very happy i encountered it—most of the things i read the last years are glowfics, and i wouldn’t discover them otherwise, and i generally find them much more enjoyable then regular books.