[Suzerain of Sheol]

I've never attempted a fantasy short story for that very reason. All my shorts seem to end up being these postmodern, stream of consciousness, self-reflective explorations of the Hard Problem of Consciousness. >_>

But even in the larger fantasy stories I've worked on, I am extremely sparse with details. I think it's something I picked up from Erikson, come to think of it. I'm an addict of show-don't-tell and will only include a setting reference if it follows logically in the narrative. I'd rather throw the reader in over their head and let them sink or swim on the natural references that arise in the flow of the story than deal with info-dumps of any kind. Which is why I struggle with length, my stuff ends up coming out so to-the-point that it simply doesn't take up the kind of space that's commonly seen in fantasies where you're dealing with heavy explanations of the setting.

I've been getting better about it, though. I'm not exactly sure what changed, by chapters have gone from barely 2k words to 4-5k lately, which is a much more reasonable length for a novel.

I really struggle with my main novel, as it literally features 7 characters, major and minor, which doesn't leave a whole lot of room for "Let's go see what he's up to, now" digressions. It follows one story straight through from beginning to end, and ends up feeling very fast, I fear, because of it. Does something need to be long to feel "epic"? I'm honestly not sure.