Why is a novel typically several hundred pages long, and a typical play or a movie around an hour and a half in duration?<\/p>\n
Yes, there are many novels, plays and films that are longer or shorter, but there seems to be a remarkable adherence to this statistical norm.<\/p>\n
My theory is that there is only a certain emotional bandwidth in any medium, and that these lengths represent the minimum informational budget required, using reasonable economy, to sketch out a certain kind of arc of human experience. In a short story or a half hour TV drama, there isn’t quite enough time to render a complete enough stand-alone portrait of a protagonist and his or her world to convey a powerfully transformational experience for reader or audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why is a novel typically several hundred pages long, and a typical play or a movie around an hour and a half in duration? Yes, there are many novels, plays and films that are longer or shorter, but there seems to be a remarkable adherence to this statistical norm. My theory is that there is … Continue reading “Length of novels, plays and movies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8034"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8035,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8034\/revisions\/8035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}