Avi

word craft

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Counting words

Word CountMy com­put­er pro­gram counts words. It’s use­ful in a num­ber of ways. My nov­el con­tracts usu­al­ly ref­er­ence the kind of a book I am meant to write by word total. More or less, that’s my goal. A big nov­el might be 60,000 words or more. Novel­la, 20,000. Short sto­ry, 5,000. Rough figures.

But I use that word counter in oth­er ways. When I am edit­ing my own work, and I set out to tight­en the text, I watch the word count. If the word count goes up, it’s a hint I’m padding the text, adding bloat. Num­ber up. Bad. Num­ber down. Good.

There are times I will tell myself I need to cut a thou­sand words. Why might I do this? An intu­itive sense that I can and should, know­ing that cut­ting is almost always a good thing to do. Buck­mas­ter Fuller’s “Less is more,” should be attached to all com­put­er screens. So I work though the text, cut­ting a word here, slic­ing a sen­tence there, adju­di­cat­ing adjec­tives, and all the while my word counter will tell me how I’m doing until I reach my goal.

In sum, add word coun­ters to sub­tract wast­ed words.

3 thoughts on “Counting words”

  1. Dear Avi,
    What about read­abil­i­ty in grade lev­el? Do you use some kind of soft­ware to keep your writ­ing in a grade lev­el con­sis­tent­ly from chap­ter to chapter?
    We are big fans of your books. Just won­der­ing if you will be writ­ing a sequel to The Book with­out Words: A Fable of Medieval Magic?
    Last ques­tion — when will your new book, Wolf (about your old dog) com­ing out? Can’t wait to read it. =)
    Hope you have a great summer!
    Hertha

    Reply
  2. In regards to readability–a sub­ject which deserves a com­ment in itself–I use my intu­ition. No plans for a sequel to The Book With­out Words. As for Old Wolf, it will be out a year from now.

    Thanks for check­ing in,

    Avi

    Reply

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