At 07:31 PM 5/13/99 PDT, Helge Moulding wrote:
>
>I've heard various fans of Alfred Hitchcock comment on how
>he used the audience's imagination to avoid supplying the
>gory details himself. There's the famous shower scene from
>"Psycho," where we're only shown the knife, her face, and
>then something dark going down the drain. (Its a B&W, so
>the substance originally was black ink, I think.)
>
Nope, too thin. It was chocolate syrup (Hershey's, I believe).
>Most attempts of turning a short into a novel are as if
>some tabloid journalist had managed to film in color every
>stab, every wound, and then played the whole thing back in
>graphic slow motion. Possibly with voice over clinical
>commentary about the particular injury being done.
>
>One example of a successful novel deriving from short
>stories is Janet Kagan's _Mirabile_. (I keep looking for
>more novels by her, but she seems to be a case of quality,
>not quantity.)
>---
In general, I agree--when the conversion is one-to-one or the
novelization appears to be an afterthought--like Brin's "The Postman" (It
may not *be* an afterthought--but it *appears* to be).
On the other hand, when a series of stories requires little, if any,
modification or expansion to glue together as a novel (the Foundation series
and KIRINYAGA come to mind) there is no problem at all.
Also, when an author takes a good short story and *builds* upon
it--using it as-is, as a *piece* of the novel, that is usually quite
readable. But to take a story that is adequately told in a few thousand
words and then add forty or fifty thousand more--well, that's usually as bad
as it sounds.
Which brings to mind another point.
Short stories can be written *very* tightly--especially short-shorts.
Few writers can do short-shorts well (Asimov was one of the best). I'm
grateful to Analog for keeping up the tradition in their "Probability Zero"
feature.
So, here's the question:
Does anyone know of any tightly written *NOVELS*?
I know there are some out there, but my first cuppa hasn't quite kicked
in yet, and I come up empty. The closest I could come up with is Golding's
non-genre _Boys and Girls Together_ which grabbed me by the throat and
wouldn't let go until several days after I finished it.
But that could just be because I was a snotty-nosed frosh when I read
it. :)
I remember other novels that were so intense they drained the energy
out of me--but no titles come to mind right now--and without re-reading them
I couldn't tell if that was because of tight writing or powerful
conceptualization.
Any nominations for "Tight Novel"?
bob
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