An odd question, but regarding word count, how do you persuade the editor of an appropriate length? I recently sold a novel to Daw. At that point, it ran around 114000 words. They've asked for it to be expanded to 140000. This is doable, certainly (and I'm rewriting it at present to spec), but I have some reservations about why. Some of this is down to them wanting more background in a few places, which is fair enough, but some of it seemed to be simply a desire for longer. Is this just marketing (big books are more popular)? I tend to be slightly suspicious of longer books and I try to be concise, so this is rather an odd situation for me.
Thank you: that's incredibly helpful. I'm a little thrown by the 'big fat fantasy' thing as I'm not really that sort of writer, but... It's still my book and my editor (who is lovely) hasn't asked for any plot adjustments beyond tiny tweaks. I'm Kari, btw: hello.
Wrong side of the pond to ask as well, but I find page count tends to go at different speeds for different authors or writing style -- where as yours sadly seem to be devoured all too quickly, often in 10 hours or less.
Though reading about the proofs, I'm left wondering why aren't they passed in a digital form. With proofs I imagine it has something to do with how it looks on the page, but I was under the impression that most printers worked off postscript or PDF at this point -- where the whole idea is that they show up the same on a computer screen as on the actual page -- so why are proofs still done in paper form?
I'll be interested to hear how fast TQB goes when you read it--it's a *totally* different style of writing. :)
As for why: it is easier to both read and write on paper. I mean, I suppose there could be other reasons, but for me, even if they sent them to me electronically I'd still have to print them out, because I can't do this kind of line by line reading on screen. I'm a speed-reader by nature and it gets worse when I'm reading text on screen. I utterly fail to *see* entire chunks, and if you compound that with "I have read this text a bare minimum of ten times, and far more likely I have read it twenty or thirty or fifty times," then it's increasingly hard to see what you're looking at even under the best circumstances. Editing page proofs is pretty much never the best circumstances. :)
This is because Kit understands about pacing. Pacing can make or break a book.
I've read books that would seem to be exactly up my alley, but because the pacing was poor, or odd, or off, I've been completely incapable of reading them all the way through (or picking up the second book in the series, as I am sometimes stubborn about finishing books I start).
*scratches head* What do you use as "actual" words? I always hear MS Word's counter is a huge no-no, but I don't see how else you'd do it.
I believe it was Anna Genoese's who gave the formula of taking a few sparse-dialogue pages, counting the chars per line, times the number of lines, divide by 5.5 (average length of chars in a word), and times that by the number of pages to get a more accurate word count. I'd have to look it up again. Ever hear anything like that?
You use MS Word's wordcounter, or whatever wordcounter you've got on program you're using. :) I have, yes, heard that it's hideously inaccurate, but my experience suggests it's really pretty close. It does count "something--like this--as" two words instead of four, or "Well...I don't know" as three words instead of four, and will count headers and footers if you tell it to, but when you're talking about a hundred thousand word manuscript, those aren't really significant discrepancies. (Not even when you use emdashes as much as I like to!)
I have heard of that method of counting words, too. No idea if it's more or less accurate (it's probably slightly more accurate than 250wpp), but I have yet to have an editor complain about a 250wpp * #oP estimate, so I'm pretty inclined to stick with the easy route, meself. :)
*laugh* I find it most efficient to write the right amount in the first place...not that you could tell that from how much I've thrown out while writing the Negotiator Trilogy...o.O :)
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I'm Kari, btw: hello.
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Though reading about the proofs, I'm left wondering why aren't they passed in a digital form. With proofs I imagine it has something to do with how it looks on the page, but I was under the impression that most printers worked off postscript or PDF at this point -- where the whole idea is that they show up the same on a computer screen as on the actual page -- so why are proofs still done in paper form?
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As for why: it is easier to both read and write on paper. I mean, I suppose there could be other reasons, but for me, even if they sent them to me electronically I'd still have to print them out, because I can't do this kind of line by line reading on screen. I'm a speed-reader by nature and it gets worse when I'm reading text on screen. I utterly fail to *see* entire chunks, and if you compound that with "I have read this text a bare minimum of ten times, and far more likely I have read it twenty or thirty or fifty times," then it's increasingly hard to see what you're looking at even under the best circumstances. Editing page proofs is pretty much never the best circumstances. :)
(Except I still *really* like this book!)
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I've read books that would seem to be exactly up my alley, but because the pacing was poor, or odd, or off, I've been completely incapable of reading them all the way through (or picking up the second book in the series, as I am sometimes stubborn about finishing books I start).
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I had a terrible time figuring out what this had to do with page proofs and hardcopies. *laughs* I finally figured it out, though! :)
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I believe it was Anna Genoese's who gave the formula of taking a few sparse-dialogue pages, counting the chars per line, times the number of lines, divide by 5.5 (average length of chars in a word), and times that by the number of pages to get a more accurate word count. I'd have to look it up again. Ever hear anything like that?
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I have heard of that method of counting words, too. No idea if it's more or less accurate (it's probably slightly more accurate than 250wpp), but I have yet to have an editor complain about a 250wpp * #oP estimate, so I'm pretty inclined to stick with the easy route, meself. :)
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