There was a time when a writer’s paycheck was tied to how many words they could churn out.
If you were Charles Dickens, you had no qualms about describing a teacup in excruciating detail, because that was money in your pocket.
You could spend pages unraveling the intricacies of a simple breeze or the way a foggy London morning crept through alleyways like an old ghost.
That era—where every object, every character, every insignificant moment was given the weight of eternity—was marked by verbosity.
Writers weren’t just telling stories. They were constructing entire worlds with their words.
But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Between the rise of Hemingway’s spareness, the decline of readers’ attention spans, and the growing dominance of television, fiction started shedding its excess weight.
Sentences grew tighter. Descriptions became leaner. Modern fiction? Well, it’s become a strict diet, only feeding you what you need and no more.
1. The Word Count Play
In the good old days, writers had a pretty sweet deal. Novels were often serialized, chopped up into chunks and doled out over weeks or months.
The longer the story, the more installments. The more installments, the more cash in the writer’s pocket.
Simple economics. So, when a writer like Dickens had to describe a street corner, he didn’t just give you the essentials.
Oh no. You’d get an exhaustive recounting of every crack in the pavement, every passing stranger, and every shift in the weather.
Modern writers don’t have that luxury. There’s no time for extraneous details anymore.
Editors demand efficiency. Readers crave brevity. The modern publishing world doesn’t care how many words you can string together if your story doesn’t move quickly enough.
2. The “TV Killed the Literary Star” Theory
Before cinema and television, books were the only way to see the world.
Want to travel to India? Open a novel.
It would take you there with detailed descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells.
Never seen a lion? There’s a page or two dedicated to its sleek coat and gleaming teeth.
But now? You’ve got a phone in your pocket with endless access to information.
A five-minute YouTube video can show you the exact same thing, probably in better quality.
People don’t need books to see the world anymore.
So, fiction had to shift gears—less explaining, more doing.
Less description, more action. Show the reader what’s happening, don’t tell them.
3. Attention Spans Committed Suicide
Once upon a time, reading a book was a commitment.
The average reader had the patience to get lost in a book, no matter how long it took.
A 19th-century reader would spend months poring over a hefty novel like Moby-Dick and savor every page.
But now? If a book doesn’t grab you by the first chapter—or, let’s be real, by the first few pages—it’s a goner.
Our brains have been rewired by the digital age.
We scroll through Twitter and Instagram in seconds. Books had to adapt.
Writers started chopping their sentences into bite-sized pieces.
Scenes got faster, sharper, and more immediate. And readers?
Well, they grew a little less patient, and maybe even a little dumber, for it.
4. The Hemingway Effect
Ernest Hemingway didn’t just rewrite the rules of fiction—he bulldozed them.
He walked into the literary world, took one look at the flowery prose of his predecessors, and said, “Not for me.”
Hemingway’s style was like a cold slap in the face. Sparse. Brutal. Every word counted, and nothing was wasted.
His influence was seismic.
The bar for writing had been lowered, and suddenly, every writer had to either strip away their fluff or risk sounding like some Victorian relic lost in a sea of adjectives.
If you couldn’t make it short, sharp, and punchy, then you didn’t make it at all.
5. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop Ruined Everything
Enter the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and other creative writing programs.
These programs loved Hemingway’s minimalist approach, and before long, they had an army of writers being taught to “show, not tell” and to cut, cut, cut.
Don’t bog down your readers with flowery descriptions. Skip the adjectives. Get to the point.
So, writers—fresh from these programs—started pumping out books that felt more like grocery lists than stories.
Long sentences became the enemy. Wordiness was a sin. A generation of writers emerged with a deep-seated fear of anything resembling excess.
6. War Changed the Game
After the world had seen the horror of the Great War and the devastation of WWII, there was little patience left for grand, eloquent storytelling.
No one had time for long-winded descriptions when entire cities had been leveled to the ground.
The world had grown grimmer, tougher, and more direct. People wanted the truth—and they wanted it fast.
Literature followed suit. It became a blunt instrument rather than a finely crafted tool.
No more flowery monologues in drawing rooms. No more polite conversations in well-lit parlors.
The world had changed, and so did fiction. It was now sharp, hard, and devoid of unnecessary fluff.
7. The Rise of Genre Fiction
The Victorians often wrote novels that were as much about social commentary as they were about family drama.
You couldn’t have a good mystery without a deep dive into the societal structure of the time.
But these days, genres like thrillers, horror, and sci-fi rule the roost. Nobody wants to wade through pages of description when there’s an alien invasion happening or a serial killer on the loose.
With genre fiction, pacing is everything.
And pacing requires precision. The long-winded ruminations of the Victorian novel just don’t fit in a world where the action is constantly moving forward.
Writers have to keep it tight, or they risk losing their audience to the next book or TV show.
8. The Internet Finished the Job
Why spend hours reading a book when you can get the gist in a few clicks?
Why suffer through Dickens when Wikipedia can tell you who dies and why you should care?
The internet has made everything fast, easy, and instantaneous. It’s all about efficiency.
No one has time to wait for the payoff of a long-winded story when they can just get the highlights in 140 characters.
As a result, fiction had to adapt. Writers had to cut through the noise and grab attention quickly.
Stories had to be fast and to the point, or else they risked getting lost in the digital sea of content.
Table 1: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Literary Styles
| Era | Writing Style | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Victorian (1800s) | Flowery, descriptive, verbose | “The moonlight fell in ghostly beams upon the cobblestone street, where every crack and crevice whispered secrets of the past.” |
| Modern (2000s) | Sharp, concise, minimalistic | “The street was empty. Cold. Silent.” |
Table 2: Reasons Why Fiction Got Shorter
| Factor | Impact |
|---|---|
| Serialized Novels Ended | Writers stopped padding for money |
| Cinema & TV Took Over | No need for heavy descriptions |
| Shorter Attention Spans | Books had to hook fast |
| Hemingway’s Influence | Minimalism became popular |
| Post-War Brutality | People wanted honest, no-nonsense writing |
| Rise of Genre Fiction | Faster pacing required |
| The Internet Era | Instant information killed patience |
Conclusion: The Ghosts of Dickens and Twitter Fights
The sprawling Victorian novels that once dominated the literary world are now relics of the past—revered but rarely read without a cheat sheet.
But here’s the thing: Did we lose something in all this trimming?
In our rush to be efficient, did we sacrifice the richness, the depth, the soul of storytelling?
Maybe the next great writer won’t be the one who can get a point across in ten words or less.
Maybe the real genius will be the one brave enough to say, “You know what? Let’s take our time. Let’s add a little detail back in.”
Or maybe, we’re all too busy scrolling to notice.
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