king of nowhere Posted February 20, 2020 Report Share Posted February 20, 2020 just a random curiosity here, but if your purpose as an editor is gauge the amount of paper you'd need to print it, won't it be more accurate to directly count the characters? the average length of a word can change a lot (i'd hazard perhaps as much as 20%) depending on the kind of prose and one's preference for long words. and i can't think of any single reason why counting characters would be worse. so, anyone knows? thanks 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger Posted February 21, 2020 Report Share Posted February 21, 2020 I am not an expert on the subject but I am sitting next to someone who is... Got it. Considering the number of possible fonts, styles and margins the word count gives you a much better idea of how long the book is. A page count does not actually tell you anything. The entire system is for the reader's connivance not the editors who might choose to reformat after reading anyway. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Istiban Posted February 21, 2020 Report Share Posted February 21, 2020 I think because it gives you a better idea of the actual lenght. For example a book could have 300 pages but lot of drawings or ilustrations 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted February 21, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 21, 2020 i did specifically say character count, not page count. of course page count is even more finnicky, depending also on font, character size and page size. but both "preposterous" and "the" count as one word, yet one is four times longer than the other. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snorkel Posted February 21, 2020 Report Share Posted February 21, 2020 Perhaps it's an artifact from the days when we didn't have software to count words or characters for us? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakenaps Posted February 25, 2020 Report Share Posted February 25, 2020 If I had to take a guess, I would assume that it is because word count is a little more manageable to look at than character count. For instance, the rough draft of the book I am writing is 119,595 words or 668,947 characters. Imagine, for a moment, what the character count must be for Way of Kings, which, if I remember Brandon mentioning on Writing Excuses, is somewhere around 250,000 words. What is easier to mention to other writers, or your agent, editor, or publishing company? 250,000 words or 1,400,000 characters? Of course, this is a pure guess, but it the most logical one I could arrive at, based off of my own personal experience. I tried to find an answer on Google, but the Internet has failed me in the five minutes I hunted. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucky MOPper Posted February 25, 2020 Report Share Posted February 25, 2020 I think that it is based on reading speed, and it takes about the same amount of time to read each word. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+ILuvHats Posted February 25, 2020 Report Share Posted February 25, 2020 10 hours ago, Snakenaps said: Imagine, for a moment, what the character count must be for Way of Kings, which, if I remember Brandon mentioning on Writing Excuses, is somewhere around 250,000 words Actually, WoK is almost 400k words. A 250k book would be closer to Mistborn Era 1 or Warbreaker length. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakenaps Posted February 25, 2020 Report Share Posted February 25, 2020 40 minutes ago, ILuvHats said: Actually, WoK is almost 400k words. A 250k book would be closer to Mistborn Era 1 or Warbreaker length. Thanks for catching me! This is what I get for not fact checking before bedtime. It only helps prove my point, though. Imagine how many characters WoK must have! My other thought is - and, again, this is only conjecture - that maybe we measure by word count to encourage variety and good prose. Let's take the Writers of the Future contest - you submit a story of a maximum of 17,000 words. What if they did character count instead? Then people might choose to have characters with shorter names so that they had more to write with. Maybe if we measured by character count, then Voldemort might only be Volde or something. Or the Lord Ruler only going by Lord. But that's just my thoughts. I have nothing to back it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
king of nowhere Posted February 25, 2020 Author Report Share Posted February 25, 2020 i appreciate all the speculations, but i was hoping that maybe we could attract the attention of someone who is into the editorial process and actually knows this kind of stuff. Perhaps by summoning @PeterAhlstrom? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snakenaps Posted February 26, 2020 Report Share Posted February 26, 2020 I hope we can catch the attention of someone who knows, because now I am incredibly interested. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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