Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Word Manuscript Template and questions...

This is topic Word Manuscript Template and questions... in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Hi all,

I'm building my very own, state-of-the-art, perfectly formatted MS Word template to use for all of my (soon-to-be) award winning stories. I've done exhaustive research on how the "proper" format for a manuscript should be laid out and such, and my newest design incorporates all of these things properly via Styles, as well as a few "extra bits"* that I thought might be useful.

*extra bits means being able to rapidly switch between underlined and italicized text in an entire document, and switching from double-space to single spaced lines in a single bound... you know, useful stuff for sending out a story to a friend who cares less about manuscript formats.

So... my question:

How do the majority of you calculate your Word Counts?

I've always done it by counting the max number of characters on a given line and dividing by 6, then multiplying that by the number of total lines in the story -- often accompanied with some rounding of the result and adjusting for space here and there. In my template's case, the max characters per line comes in at 61 characters per line...

But I'm ahead of myself. MS Word calculates a few things for us already... Total number of characters with spaces, without spaces, total lines... even says the ACTUAL number of words -- which isn't what an editor would use, correct? So, let's not use Word's "word count."

Right. So I'm able to automate and approximate the word count in a few ways:

I can multiply the total number of lines by 10.17 (or 61 / 6)(ignoring extra line breaks [#], Title, byline, and address bits, of course). For simplicity's sake, I'd probably just multiply by 10. Of course, this may not be ideal, because it doesn't take into account really short dialogue lines and such.

Or I can divide the total number of "characters with spaces" by 6 and have another approximation. This gives me a truer result overall, but still may not be desirable, since I can't leave out the title and stuff...

Or, I could just stop worrying about Word Count and not make an automated entry for it.

Again, the question is how does everyone count up their words? This is important to me, because I hope to be able to freely share this simple-to-use template with anyone who would like it, after a proper beta test w/ feedback and recommended changes, of course. I guess I would like to know the absolute best way of tackling this issue.

Wow, this is long... sorry about that. And I apologize for any confusion. Thanks in advance.

HSO

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

I use the same formula you use OR I multiply the number of pages by 250 which is the average for Courier 12pt with 1 inch margins.

Posted by GZ (Member # 1374) on :

Actually, you give a word count for the line breaks and the short dialog just like you would for a regular line of text. The reasoning is that it takes up the same about of paper.

I usually figure the total number of 6 character words per line(~10 for Courier New, 12 pt. font, 1" Margins), and muliply by the total number of lines in the story. Then round up to the nearest hundred. Which, as Mary said, is ~250 words per page.

[This message has been edited by GZ (edited July 17, 2004).]

Posted by goatboy (Member # 2062) on :

I've just been estimating at about 260 words to the page.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Whatever you do, don't give an exact count when you send in the manuscript. Editors really only want a ballpark figure.

So round short stories up (give yourself the benefit of the doubt) to the nearest hundred and longer works up to the nearest thousand.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Cheers, everyone. I've made my decision. I'll just leave the Word Count blank until I'm done w/ a story and manually enter it in. No point in using MS Word to automatically calculate it...