We all know the saying “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, but maybe what we should be saying is “Don’t judge a book by its length”. Seeing a large book when shopping around can be very intimidating, especially for people with full-time jobs, and thousands of other things that need to get done before they can even think of picking up a book. Ignore the enormity of a book, think about the contents, why is it so long? Some authors only write long books, and some only write short ones. The authors writing style can decide the length of the book, how much time has been put into creating this story? How in-depth is this story? Is this story just a bunch of filler with no real plot/meaning?
Leigh Bardugo is an author who tends to write books that are on the longer side, her upcoming release “The Familiar” will be 400 pages and a standalone. Though not her longest book, “Ninth House” is a hefty read at 450 pages, and it has a sequel. A book with this much depth involves a lot of planning, and Bardugo claims outlining is the bones of all of her books, and without it, her books would lose their layout which makes the length less daunting. As an author, it is your job to eliminate “word vomit” and create a book that is complex and intriguing without being too word-heavy. A good way to eliminate overuse is a lot of well-thought-out dialogue. Dialogue can make a book seem more manageable than walls of text, and can still offer just as much information as the rest of the text within the book. “Ninth House” is a very complex book with a lot of worldbuilding and a newly developed magic system, which can take a while to explain. Bardugo does an amazing job explaining all of this new information to the reader by having the main character Galaxy “Alex” Stern also be new to the magical world we are all getting to know.
This book focuses on Alex, a girl who has been able to see ghosts her entire life, and now has caught the attention of a secret society that needs her peculiar skill set. She joins this secret society and is introduced to a world full of magic, murder, and greed. After living the difficult life she has, to finding people who to a certain extent understand her powers but have lived extravagant lives because of it, Alex is forced to confront her demons and realize she might not be able to fit in anywhere. Reading this book can be a little bit confusing especially if you are the type of person to set a book down for a while (guilty). Bardugo does a great job of reminding the reader of certain rules within the universe without taking away from the overall story. As David Farland put it, “The thing is, if you set your story in an unusual setting, it almost has to be long” (Farland, 2021).
The more detail put into your story, the more a reader can connect to the story and will share those connections with others. Fanart can be traced back to the Greeks and the Romans in terms of their mythology and has only expanded since then. When people love a story they want to express that love in any way they can, and one of the most expressive things humans have learned to do is create art. A book with a more expansive story will generate more fanart. You can tell how much the reader understands a book, and how much they took away from the book by the fanart they create. The fanart found related to “Ninth House” is almost entirely character-based which shows the depth Bardugo was able to create with her characters. To the readers, the characters were the most important part of the story. Fanart can show the reader’s favorite part, the part they found most heartbreaking, the part they found most important and so much more.
Bardugo does an amazing job of interacting with her fans, and understanding your fans is one of the steps in knowing how long your books should be and what your fans want to see from your writing. As seen here, she talks about her characters like they are real people, making them even more real to the fans who have brought them to life through art.
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