I think Shakespear had it right when he had a verbose character say, 'brevity is the soul of wit'. Very few writers can craft a compelling narrative on the same

I think Shakespear had it right when he had a verbose character say, 'brevity is the soul of wit'. Very few writers can craft a compelling narrative on the same scale as Tolstoy. There's something I observed around people who study literature full time where they spend all this time with classic epics and want to do that themselves. But Tolstoy had a lot to say and earned the reader's attention. Most people, even most professionals, are not at Tolstoy's level, and the sin isn't being less skilled than a generation-defining genius like him but in eschewing the tools of the journeyman.