Tl;dr: Sorry, but the length of chapters/paragraphs won't change.
In the month or two since I've been editing and publishing The Misanthropist's Guide to Philanthropy online, the most common critique I have received is in regards to the length; paragraph, chapter, and sentence structure have been pointed out as having been longer than what most readers are accustomed to. I would like to address that here.
While I am very grateful there are a handful of people reading, and even more grateful that some of you take the time to analyze and critique my work, I have to inform everyone that I unfortunately have no intent to change the story's composition.
I have to stress that I WROTE THIS MANY YEARS AGO. These days I work two jobs and as a martial arts instructor. As much as I'd love to turn writing into a profession, the entire reason I'm publishing online is because that avenue of my life has been closed. What you read on Webnovel or Wattpad is material I have completed long ago and am merely spending an hour or two a week editing.
As for why I wrote it this way…
If you have read the preface, you would know that I am a fan of both classical literature, epics, and fantasy. Gun to my head, I would probably name Edgar Allan Poe as my favorite author of all time. My style of writing was heavily influenced by authors like him, Mark Twain, H.P. Lovecraft, and Wu Cheng'en.
It is a product of the times, I feel, that you don't see works like theirs anymore. As more forms of media become the dominating vessel of consumption, books have kind of gone by the wayside. With television, social media, video games, and work dominating so much our time these days, I feel like many people don't have the time or energy to devote to a good, long reading session.
If you go back and look at books like "The Count of Monte Cristo," or the "Sherlock Holmes" stories, you'll see what I mean. People spent their leisure time reading when there was nothing more to do, and as such authors truly had to refine their craft to appeal to the well read masses. You saw expansive lexicons, references to other languages, and idiosyncratic styles of writing (such as Poe's excessively drawn out, macabre paragraphs).
MGP, which I wrote many years ago, sits at about a 120,000-140,000 word count (some of what I wrote is stuff for Volume 2 and material I never included in the initial manuscript, hence the word range). For reference, a book like Adrzej Sapkowski's "The Last Wish," whose story format heavily influenced Volume 1 of MGP, is about 89,000 words long. Homer's, "The Iliad" is roughly 150,000 words long.
Across the ~130,000 words are a total of 24 chapters spread across 15 individual stories. Like the authors of old, whom I have come to revere, I aspired towards that excessive, grandiose method of writing, with run-on sentences and a vocabulary non-conductive to modern colloquialisms. This is to exaggerate the main character's contemplative thought processes and age. Keep in mind, it's written in the first person and the protagonist is a very old man.
This book was written in my college years. I was, and sadly still am, a very jaded, very angry man. This book was written as my sort of "Catcher in the Rye." I was born on the Autistic Spectrum and have had little to no social interaction most of my life. As a result, I have born witness to the human condition from a sort of extrospective perspective. I have seen and been part of horrible things and have always looked at life with a lack of "humanity." I felt that this idea, this philosophy, could best be conveyed through the medium of books done in the style of that ye-olde vernacular.
While I could never claim to be as eloquent or impactful as Edgar Allan Poe, it was his style of writing which dominated my thought process as an author. From the contemplative, lumbering passages to the wildly eccentric and sporadic quips, I saw in his work a vessel for my disdain, for my misanthropy.
Obviously I could never hold a candle to people like Poe or Dumas, and as just another gen-y boy my vocabulary may be limited, but I tried my best to emulate without compromising my own style.
Unfortunately for most of you, my readers, this prolixity is, as I view it, integral to my style and not likely to change. I did not write this with the idea of "paragraph comments" or yelp(?) reviews. I did not write this thinking of Twitter or Youtube clout. I did not write this to appeal to the sensibilities of a generation of people who can't sit down for five minutes without looking at their phone or who only read Japanese Isekai LNs. I wrote this for people who know how to use a bookmark. I wrote this for people who can remember what happened in their story yesterday because they can't "binge watch" it in one day. But above all, I wrote this for myself.
I am glad there are some people out there interested, and I thank you all profusely for your time! But as I said, unfortunately - not only as a byproduct of my lack of time or energy, but also because it is integral to my style – the structure of this volume will remain unchanged.
I thank you for your time and patronage!
-Z