For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a problem writing essays with an assigned word length. I like to say as much as I can with as few words as possible, because to me good writing is concise and to the point. When I’m required to artificially lengthen my work, the result is always weak and diluted.
I think that this paradigm can be applied to all media. For instance, the film Strange Days had some interesting ideas, but as a two hour long feature film they were lost in a sea of pointless action and terrible drawn-out dialogue. Done right, it could have made a great 20 minute short film. Consider the last 80 hour RPG you played: could it have been an even better 50 hour RPG by removing a tedious dungeon crawl or two?
I was on vacation earlier this summer at a friend’s cottage near Parry Sound, Ontario. While in town one day, we walked over to Bearly Used Books, a terrific used book store where, along with about eight other books, I picked up a copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune. I was vaguely familiar with the general plot, having seen parts of the televised miniseries years ago, and knowing that it was considered a classic among sci-fi fans I was eager to read it.
