I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."
Eh, there are levels to this shit. You can get away with anything if you're good enough and know what you're doing and you can fuck up anything if you don't know what you're doing.
The reason you get all this "speed your shit up make it punchy and fast" talk is because its easier to do that than write/direct/compose an epic.
Its not bad advice for beginners but its often treated like a divine truth in spite of all the evidence to the comtrary from the many, MANY epics of the past.
Victor Hugo would get a right bollocking from his editor if he was trying to write les mis today.
