He's never sucked on an ice cube again. It took me 128 words to tell that story. I think any discussion of story length should measure a story not just by the number of words or column inches, but how long it takes the average person to read it. I found this gem in a collection of radio reports from the great Edward R. Murrow of CBS News. In Los Angeles, a man smashed a radio over his wife's head in the course of an argument about MacArthur's removal.
Reports say it was a table model.
In other words, the man was kind enough not to strike his wife with a big piece of furniture. This report of 71 words can be read aloud in about 25 seconds. My rough calculations reveal that it takes the average person about 33 seconds to read 100 words. Let's round that off to 200 words per minute. That means that my new 15,000-word serial narrative would take a reader about 75 minutes to read.