Change Character Length on [recent_posts]

I’m using this code on my homepage to pull in excerpts from my recent blog posts:

[recent_posts order=”DESC” columns=”3″ count=”6″ show_title_icon=”no” show_media=”yes” show_date=”yes” show_categories=”yes” show_author=”no” show_tags=”no” show_comments=”no” slideshow=”yes” animation=”slide” navigation=”yes” autoslide=”no” interval=””]

I found documentation on what most of these attributes do, but I’m trying to change the character limit. I want to include more text before it says “… read more”. Is there a simple tag for this or do i need to dig deeper into the code?

Thanks.