There is but ONE important thing here: ALWAYS LISTEN TO TREYDOG! Always! What he says...RULES! If you do..you can't miss, I promise! This is the ultimate TRUTH....so there

Some snippage



THIS. You know the story that you want to tell- even if you don't know "what is going to happen." Most of us- at least the ancient dachshund contigent- already know the MQ quite well. What YOU get to do is show us how Adryn reacts to it. A number of others have done the same with the Oblivion start- taking a familiar sequence and turning it into something new.

If you took out Adryn bonding with Ajira, you would cut out the heart of the story- which is Adryn herself. The night at Desele's still makes me laugh- but did it "move the MQ forward?" No. Was it absolutely brilliant and essential to the story YOU want to tell? A resounding YES!

What do folks here use to determine the size of their post? I find that if I cut and paste a section from a large file I have no idea how big a chunk I'm getting. Saving it to a local text file gives me a rough idea, but only if I have a yardstick file to compare it to, as the value is bytes, not words, or anything relevant.

I don't use (or like) MS Office, or I could look at a word count in Word.

About 42 kb is right around 2000-2250 words. It depends on what else you have in there besides words (example: Bolding/Italics will stretch it out some, hence the difference in word count for the same kb)






This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 10 2013, 06:22 PM

I think if you're going to post fic routinely, you need the technology to know your word count. And the technology is pretty simple.

I shoot for an episode word count of around 1500 words. I confess that when I read a post that flirts with or exceeds 2000 words, I tend to skim.

In fact, I find that if an episode is particularly important and meant to be powerful, that quite a bit shorter is more effective - even to the tune of 800 words or less.

If in doubt, I generally break updates up into smaller posts. The only exceptions I've made is when breaking an episode would lead readers to undesired erroneous speculation and the required answers to preclude that are necessarily very late in the episode. Complex but very rare, I've found.

I copy and paste into a word count site.

Lol, we've all been there,

Example: Your last post (story only, not the comment acknowledgements or note at the bottom) was 2896 words = 49 kb

I usually try to shoot for 42 kb or below; 2000 words or below.

(by the way, a blank sheet is between 18-20 kb)


Anytime you want to check one, feel free to PM it to me and I'll check the word count and send it back if you want to do that. No problem at all.





This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 10 2013, 06:34 PM

Well, that's why I'm asking. The technology is simple, but it only seems to be included in elaborate packages that do a lot of other things I don't want done. I googled for a word-counter application, and found none that do only that. There were a few that would run as plug-ins to other software, but nothing stand-alone.

I'll probably break down and write a Perl script to do it. If I can remember how!

Spell-checking comes with Firefox, so I see the wiggly red lines when I post. That doesn't mean I notice them all, especially when there are a lot of names being flagged. And it took me some time to get it set to English, rather than American.

P.S. I just saved the last episode as .rtf (from Wordpad) and it was 17kB, - I usually post 10kB or less. What did mALX use to get 49kB?

This post has been edited by ghastley: Sep 10 2013, 06:52 PM

Do it!

I try to aim for 1200 or so. I've posted longer episodes and regretted it later.


EDIT: Word files are bigger?

This post has been edited by King Coin: Sep 10 2013, 06:56 PM

The page alone uses 18-20 kb if it is blank. Oh, and I've never seen a single spelling error in your stories that I can remember.

I don't have Word, I only have "Works for Windows" - the free Microsoft stuff that comes built on a storebought PC. It is being saved as .wps




This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 10 2013, 07:58 PM

Ugh, I hate how windows programs that should be standard are ridiculously expensive. Cause every student can shell out over a hundred euro's casually.


Anyhow, the forum has a word counter as well, right below the block where you write your post. It isn't the most convenient thing to use, but it is there.


Ps: I aim for roughly 2000 words apiece.

Pps: I just checked. The 'word counter' counts the individual characters, not the words. So forget everything I said.

This post has been edited by jack cloudy: Sep 10 2013, 08:04 PM

Another possibility is Open Office- which is freeware.

As to length, I generally aim for 1500-2000 words, which=3-4 pages single-spaced.

Mine counts both!

http://www.wordcountertool.com/

Gave it a whirl. - my next section comes in at 1951 words, as long as I don't add anything before next Monday!

I hope I helped :]

Just out of interest I counted up the words in the last 3 parts I wrote - ("Rescue" 1, 2, 3) - which I had split into 3 natural breaks, because of it's length:
1 - 1,848
2 - 1,609
3 - 5,753

The total of all of the parts of the story I'm currently on is approx. 16,830 split over 7 parts, thus far...
Get in!

Not that I'm planning on reducing the wordcount you understand, the story will be as long as it needs to be, and it has enough natural breaks in it; but it's interesting nevertheless, as I tend not to count - it is what it is, if you see what I mean - I do read everything and if I start drifting then I'll rewrite to refocus or trim it or try and look at the pacing.
What's been challenging at the moment is that some of parts I've written have been somewhat slower paced and certainly longer than I've been used to writing, or felt used to writing, so it's been an experience; especially since in the past I've been more comfortable with flash fiction or vignettes that moved along faster.
Writing longer more contiguous pieces does really allow you to "settle in" and play about with ideas though, I've found; really get to grips with the subject matter - so that's been good...
...We'll see what happens, though I've a pretty good idea as I've handwritten most of the rest already...

Concerning length I tend to write in the way I prefer to read. Shorter segments for dense, introspective parts and longer for scenes with multiple characters and a lot of dialog. I also like short scenes to be presented together when one fits or sets up the mood of the other. I’ll generally warn folks when one of my posts nears 3,000 words or contains less than a full scene. That way readers can plan to take a look later when time permits or just go ahead and skip to the parts that they might find interesting.

When reading I like to take in the whole scene at once, so sometimes I’ll wait until I can read two (or more) updates together. While it may cause me to delay until I have time, I find it’s much more satisfying to read complete scenes as they were intended rather than broken into more forum-friendly bites. Still, keeping posts shorter accommodates more readers.

With my current chapter I’ve found myself writing to the format as much as to the story. Growing pains, I suppose. Of course all of that material gets tossed out as it’s not really worth posting.

So would you say that you personally at least would rather have say, a 4,000 word post if it meant that a scene was not broken in half? Rather than having it divided into a two, 2,000 word posts?

I bring it up because I tend to feel the same way, though I do not put off reading until the entire scene is up. But when a scene carries emotional weight (or at least I hope it does! ) I have always thought that breaking it up also breaks the mood. So for important scenes that are long, I have just posted the entire thing, word count be darned. The first scene in Dibella's Dance was like that. I just counted it at 3.5k words. But given that it was Teresa's first attempt to seduce someone (well, she thought she was trying to ), and her first time having sex, I felt it was a true landmark moment. I still remember my first time, though I don't remember the second, or the twentieth, etc...

I do post a warning that it will be a long episode though. As you said, that gives people time to wait for some time when they have more time. (how many times can I say time in a sentence? ). I typically just flip through a new post when I see it just to roughly gauge how long it is before I sit down to read. That is why I might not post a reply for some time after first seeing it.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Sep 11 2013, 07:37 PM