Well you would be for that, Alan - as evidenced by Johnny Petto on your CD. Eight verses of nine lines, and 8 minutes. And it doesn't seem that long either. That's because there's no padding.

Things should take as long as they need.

But an eight minute spoken story wouldn't even be thought of as a long story. (So long as it was a good story, that goes without saying.)

I've a piece that started off as a song, but I found it seems to work better as a spoken monologue, and I think one of the reasons is that it seems to go more briskly. I can't understand how that works, but it does seem to work that way. You'd think it'd be the other way round.