[Blaaaaaaaah]

Real paragraph:

"my father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name being "Philip", my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more expicit than Pip. So, i called myself Pip and came to be called Pip."

The same could be said for this paragraph, but in a much less discriptive way:

"When i was a baby, it was hard for me to say my first or last name. I could only say "Pip" in refference to myself. So i called myself that, and people called me that."

that's more descriptive than the one i posted first, and a less dramatic way of making my point. Which of the two paragraphs do you prefer?

First.

Yes, it is more descriptive. But, in other words, it has the right amount of descriptiveness.

Now, can you imagine someone writing a paragraph twice as long as that with more fancy words, but pretty much saying the same thing?

I find that people often try to be too descriptive and start repeating the same things over and over. Not saying any entries were, I don't think they were, but it sometimes happen.

Like I said, it depends on how you do it. When I said 'having lots of descriptive words =/= better quality', that's what I mean.

Anyway, long stories are good. But short stories are also good. Having someone write a story in 200-300 words is too short, of course. But a length of 600-800 words isn't unreasonably demanding for short story "challenge", imo.