Friday, March 21, 2008

More on Story Lengths

Referring to the chart in the previous post, you might notice some flat spots around 2000, 4000, etc. I don't think this is any kind of rhythm as we discussed on Codex. I believe those flat spots are an artifact of word count restrictions from markets.

For example, if I write a 4100-word story and I want to sell it to a market that accepts only to 4000 words, I may surgically remove 100 words to qualify for that market.

It has been suggested (by Gray Rinehart I believe) that I look at this as a time sequence and pareto. I think most people can do the pareto in their head. The time sequence would be interesting but difficult due to the way I document my inventory. The unsold material is stored in roughly the order written, but anything that sold is stored in the order sold on a separate page in the spreadsheet. I'm just not certain it's worth the trouble. My work is tending longer with experience, but my most recent story is also the shortest.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rick, I was just making conversation! I do think it's an interesting analysis, though.