Take a look at classical writers, like Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, and Charlotte Bronte. They had books, written documents, and pieces of works with probably more than 200 pages. But does all those words really make a difference in how good the writer is?
Possibly
When reading many classic books by classic authors, I also noticed something else: description and details are every where. I've read books and essays and writings in which the writer actually takes up more space than necessary to describe the room or the temperature. It is exactly that, however, that makes the writer so good. He/She is showing up, not telling us about the scene.
In my humanities class, when writing essays, our teacher (Ms. Tran!) is constantly telling us: SHOW, NOT TELL!
These writers are doing exactly that with those long paragraphs, maybe sometimes pages, of description. They are showing us the scene they have in their head so that we can get the same picture. The writing is so long because there are so many descriptions that are to help us envision what we are reading.
When you are able to read a text and understand it completely, getting so many images of what the author has written, that's when you know that the writing truly is powerful.
But maybe the text doesn't have to be so long. Extraordinary details is something that can be applied to books, but not necessarily other kinds of text like poetry or articles.
Emiy Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Walt Whitman are all considered to be great, influential poets. If you have read their work, you will notice that their poems vary in length. Some are long, some are really short, yet they all have the same quality.
Magazine and newspaper articles aren't long either. Elijah Lovejoy, Margeret Fuller, and Samuel L. Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain) were all wonderful journalists. And as wonderful as they were, I'm pretty sure they didn't write 15-page reports on women's rights or adventures across the nation. They knew who the audience was and where they were presenting their work.
The Longer the Better?
Eh, maybe. It all really depends on what you are writing. If it's a book, then yes, go for it! The more details you add to your text, the more you will be praised as a powerful writer.
However, when it comes to poetry, articles, etc., it's more about word choices and how writers manipulate words to still evoke the same feelings one gets when reading something like "Native Boy" by Richard Wright or "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
However, when it comes to poetry, articles, etc., it's more about word choices and how writers manipulate words to still evoke the same feelings one gets when reading something like "Native Boy" by Richard Wright or "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.
