Answers to Questions

Brian Sanderson Blog entry Posted on 08.25.08



I got a lot of feedback to my previous post about hitting the halfway point. Thank you all for your good wishes and support. Some of you had questions, and rather respond directly, I thought I'd post answers here for everyone to see.

How do I get my wordcounts? Well, early on, I was trained to do the old "250 words per page" method which has been the historic method of doing it. To get this, you write in Courier New 12pt font with 1" margins (I think) and you generally end up getting about 250 words per page. I actually still type in Courier because of this training. Then, you can just estimate word count by how many pages you've written. (And in this method, a "word" is being defined as around six characters, not an actual full word.)

The problem with this is that it's not really that accurate. People's computers, for some reason, often paginate the same document in different ways. Plus, I soon learned that not everyone does it this way. (And not everyone likes to write/read in Courier.) The longer I've been working in publishing, the more I've had editors and publishers just say "Use the Wordcount function on word processor." So that's actually how I go about it. Easy and simple, though it has its own problems (it counts actual words, not number of characters, so a person who uses a lot of big words can have a smaller wordcount than the size of the printed book would indicated.) Still, I think it's consistent enough for my purposes. (Note that I got the wordcounts for the Wheel of Time books on the list from Wikipedia.)

The other question that popped up several times is this one: Am I including the pages that Mr. Jordan wrote in that wordcount. The answer is yes and no. What I'm doing is writing through the book by viewpoint grouping. That means I start at the beginning, then write through to near the end with a certain set of characters. Then I begin again with a new set of characters. This helps me focus in on those characters so that I don't have to keep track of QUITE so many things at once.

When I reach a section that Mr. Jordan finished, I insert it, then keep going. So the 200k that I've "written" so far includes chunks that I didn't write. However, the unfinished portions also include large chunks of Mr. Jordan's writing that AREN'T yet included in the 200k. I'll include them when I write those characters and get to the parts he has finished. Does that make sense?

And now, since I finished another chapter on Saturday, we have an update to our list below!

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AMOL Relative Length Chart: 8/25/08

1. Alcatraz/Evil Librarians 60,400
   
2. New Spring 121,815
   
3. Elantris 202,765
   
4. ---A MEMORY OF LIGHT 204k So Far!---
   
5. The Final Empire 214,752
   
6. The Path of Daggers 226,687
   
7. Warbreaker 236,301
   
8. Winter's Heart 238,789
   
9. Hero of Ages 244,201
   
10. The Dragon Reborn 251,392
    
11. The Well of Ascension 252,739
    
12. The Great Hunt 267,078
    
13. Crossroads of Twilight 271,632
    
14. A Crown of Swords 295,028
    
15. The Eye of the World 305,902
    
16. Knife of Dreams 315,163
    
17. The Fires of Heaven 354,109
    
18. Lord of Chaos 389,264
    
19. The Shadow Rising 393,823