I'm a bit of a fan of statistics so I was hoping we could get a thread going just to share some pointless ones about our WIPs or our recently-finished pieces. Here's a few about my current WIP (teenage, action-adventure fiction, hopefully getting up to around 90,000 words): Words: 7015 Paragraphs: 218 Speechmarks: 375 Exclamation marks: 9 (that's surprising low for me - thankfully!) MC number one's name: 120 times MC number two's name: 49 times 'said': 37 times 'the': 666 times 'and': 233 times 'but': 47 times Any other stats anyone can think of would be cool to see, although I can't think of what other instances to look up right now. (For those who don't know how to search in Word, press Ctrl+F, type the word in the box and then click "Find In -> Main Document")
Ooh, I love stats Never thought of looking at things like words and names before For my current favourite project, which is going pretty well at the moment, if I say so myself... Words: 63524 Paragraphs: 1383 <- and I learnt something new trying to find out how to search those in Open Office Speechmarks: 2104 Exclamation marks: 185 MC number one's name: 20 times (first person) (and he's referred to by his surname a couple of times too) MC number two's name: 218 times 'said': 293 times 'the': 5046 times 'and': 1715 times 'but': 341 times (56129 words without the saids, ands, buts, and thes )
My first novel, aimed at kids aged 9-12. I'm aiming for about 50k. Words: 43,577 Paragraphs: 1,455 Lines: 3,695 aaaand I didn't know how to do the rest, lol.
WIP: What About Us? goal about 100,000 word fantasy novel Current: 524 words (was 20,000 until last night lol) Paragraphs: 9 MC name: 2 and: 8 times but: 0 times say/said: 1 time
Since I have about a billion works in progress, I've chosen one of the ones that is actually recognisable as a story, even though it's not finished WIP - romance (ugh, that is so embarrassing! lol.) TITLE - none yet WORD COUNT - 28,132 SPEECH MARKS - 1233 EXCLAMATION POINTS - 46 (Hmm, is that too many?) QUESTION MARKS - 266 PARAGRAPHS - 918 MC NUMBER ONE'S NAME - written in first person, so hard to work this one out! MC NUMBER TWO'S NAME - 276 times MC NUMBER THREE'S NAME - 97 times 'said' - 138 times 'the' - 1625 times 'and' - 793 times 'but' - 145 times
EXCLAMATION POINTS - 46 (Hmm, is that too many?) You have one every 600 words on average, while mine are more than half that, every 300 words, roughly. (yes I know that is exactly half but the actual maths was a bit more precise ) My story is a pretty silly one, though. Tends to be more extreme statements. Hm, now I'm interested what it is for one of my more serious novels. I have a finished one lurking. hang on, I'll be back. Apparently, I just really like exclamation points. This was my mostly-serious romance novel. Has a huge number of thes and ands compared to my fantasy. The other stats didn't seem too far out, except obviously it's 3rd person. Words: 77444 Paragraphs: 1981 Speechmarks: 3592 Exclamation marks: 295 MC 1 1017 MC 2 984 'said': 455 times 'the': 4996 times 'and': 2288 times 'but': 378 times
I know my exclamation point count is close to zero. We reporters are born with a certain amount of exclamation points, and when we use the last one, we die...in other words I've been trained to avoid them lol. How do you see how many times you use a name? I did the "find" thing and it highlighted each time her name was used, but not the number of uses. I'd be interested in learning this, actually.
Are all your characters reporters? They might use them. All my exclamation points are in dialog. To find how many instances of a word there are, do CTRL-F, type the word, select Find In -> Main Document. It highlights all instances of the word, and says in the Find window how many occurrences there are. At least it does in Word 2007. I have about seven or eight WIPs, but the biggest is a novel I only have the first draft of. That first draft stats: Words: 72,357 Paragraphs: 1,760 MC1: 419 MC2: 460 (Slightly more than MC1 - weird ...)
Well my primary MC is and I report too. The other main characters are shady government conspiracy types who talk vaguely about issues to skirt around them, so they're not doing much exclaiming. But I see what you mean. I'm going to try out the word-finder now. Thanks a ton. Rep given. MC's name used 82 times. Thanks again.
Exclamation Points!!! Yeah, there are a lot of heated discussions in this story, and the exclamation points just seem to wiggle their way in there. The things they say just don't look right without them
That's a pretty heavy use of bangs (exclamation marks). I would really recommend cutting back. You should be conveying the intensity more by context than by punctuation. If your character is leaning forward, red-faced, in inch from the other person's nose, and showering them with spittle, the bang is rather superfluous. Save the bangs for clearance sale ads, where they can be lurid and tacky in their twenty-four point bright red splendor.
I'm not adding another 30,000 words onto my story by putting a description before or after every heated discussion, loud comment, or personal exclamation... I save a strong description for where one's needed... It'd be a bit ridiculous to have a line like that every 3 paragraphs.
I couldn't agree more. Exclamation marks can be overused but they still have a place. Getting rid of them entirely is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I tend to use them on lines where emphasis is needed, but isn't actually, like, emotionally impactful. For example, here's a bit I was just typing up: it's pretty plot important, but neither character arguing are learning anything from the experience, so there'd be no point adding on a, "she cried in despair, flinging up her hands" because, well, if the reader wants to interpret that from the ! and my previous telling of the character, then great - if not, it's a line I needed to put in there, but really isn't going to be something in 100 pages you'll necessarily remember, or need to. But it's still dramatic because A: the character's a bit nuts, and B: monotone sucks. The first line from her gets a description, because I wanted to actually show her emotional response (horror that they were doing a lot worse at being in disguise than they thought) because it's a part of her established personality (being a perfectionist). After that line, it can act as a prompt for a "yeah but I know your type" and then a huge plot point is revealed.
I tend to use them when the dialogue comes right in without a pause, and I want the reader to realise this when they read the words rather than having to wait for the tag or beat to show them how the line is delivered, or putting the tag first, disrupting the flow of the argument.
No one said every bang must be removed. Nor is it necessary to inflate a story by 30000 words to cut back on them. Melzaar, in the example you just gave, the bang can be replaced by a period quite readily. The tone and tension are quite apparent from the wording alone. Overuse of exclamation marks is a bad habit.
Clearly you are not acquainted with my writing style. I'm in a constant state of trying not to put down 4 million extra words to every 2 I decide to type. I need shortcuts like exclamation points - trust me when I say there's more than enough stuff already being over-thought in my writing... Aaanyway, I read sentences which end in full stops as being quite measured - and if they're a statement like the one above, I'd start reading in a lot more for hearing it said in an understated way. Like, it could be sceptical, worried, and so on. Maybe if I wanted it up for interpretation I'd go with a flat tone. But exclamation points make it a lot clearer which of the million emotions it could be said with it should be read as.
This is very interesting, I should really check my stat count for some abnormalities as well when I get home, though I know on my last check, my word count was at about 120K, but still a considerable amount remains to be edited.
My first novel, in German, gave this: Total word count : 28329 Number of different words : 6380 Complexity factor (Lexical Density) : 22.5% Readability (Gunning-Fog Index) : (6-easy 20-hard) 6.5 Total number of characters : 182339 Number of characters without spaces : 147831 Average Syllables per Word : 1.62 Sentence count : 2493 Average sentence length (words) : 12.15 Max sentence length (words) : 66 Min sentence length (words) : 1 Readability (Alternative) beta : (100-easy 20-hard, optimal 60-70) 57 Most-used word: And (Und): 986 Commas: 2458 Most-used capital letter: S, 1109 Most-used small letter: e, 22840
