*Fingers crossed*

quote:

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Dear Donavan,

Your story has arrived and has been entered in the 1st
quarter of the 2010 L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future
contest. (1 Oct - 31 December).

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Thought I would add that the email also said thank you for your note and entry, but I didn't send a note. Do you think there might be some confusion, a mix up perhaps. I've never had an email before mentioning a note, so I don't think this is standard to the email Joni usually sends out.

They may tell you to save the one you're working on for the next quarter, because they certainly can't enter it in the quarter you sent it for (that's passed).

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Kathy Wentworth
Article 5263, Fri 26 Feb 2010 08:20:01p

I sent more than half the entries back today--minus the possible finalists of
course.

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I hate this part of the contest. Knowing that results are probably just around the corner and I don't have anyone beating down my door to tell me I've won. Just about kills me every quarter.

It most certainly DID NOT! It was fifteen words short of the 17,000 word maximum. So I guess WOTF DOES NOT ABIDE BY THEIR OWN GUIDELINES!!!!!!!

Blog has posted the first set of HM now.

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The problem is that people use their word processing program to count words and every one of them counts differently. The first thing my agent told me, once she accepted me, was to stop doing that. Mine was counting short. My manuscripts were longer than I thought. The industry standard is to use a count of 250 words/page for manuscripts that are correctly formatted. Go to Vonda McIntyre's file on the SFWA resources page (open to outsiders) to make sure [to use] correct format. A properly formatted 17K manuscript should run close to 68 pages.

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Vonda McIntyre's file is a downloadable PDF file, so if you right-click on the link and select SAVE TARGET AS, you can download it to your own computer.

I think everyone is owed an apology from WOTF.
ESPECIALLY ME.

That's no good. What is the cut off. IS it 68 pages or is it not?

That is just too much variation to use as a measuring stick. If they're going to discount people's word processor counts then they need to provide a word counter on their website, like NaNoWriMo does so everyone is held to the same standard.

Perhaps twenty years ago word processors were less reliable. AND perhaps they also count the # sign signaling a hard break when as a "word" but that would only mean a higher word count than actual which shouldn't bother anyone submitting stories if their mss is actually a tad shorter. Anybody disagree with that?

Maybe I should go through my mss and hand count the words. List on each page the word count and add it up and put THAT on the mss and resubmit it. If it is under 17,000 words it SHOULD be judged. Can you get WOTF to accept that, Kathleen? The rules for the time I submitted the story were 17,000 words. Let's be honest and judge my story on it's quality. I'm sure it won't even get an HM no matter HOW good it actually is after making this fuss, but I would like to it to have a FAIR reading.

I'm scrxxed either way. And it was a good story. I worked so hard to make it fit their stated guidelines and then it turns out they don't have any guidelines they abide by!

Genevive42 -- did you use courier or New Times Roman for your story when you sent it off? Was it 75 pages long?

Ask WOTF also about the font. If they will accept Times New Roman, then I can resubmit my story in that font and it will be under the 68 page length (if THAT means anything).

In New Times Roman my story is 68 pages long.

Will they accept that?

We don't know what the actual rules are, do we?

I just don't know. Since they misrepresented the rules at 17,000 words, who can depend on them. All the people writing 5,000 to 10,000 word stories PROBABLY are safe, but if you want to go beyond that --- !

Kathleen, can you get them to commit to some real guideline on length?

Truth is, this is a FREE writing contest that we enter. They post their guidelines. We are subject to their interpretations of those guidelines. <shrug> Winners get an awesome prize. We contestants do our best to put our greatest work forward, but we're just contestants in the end.

I just checked a chapter of my WIP. On one word processor, it's 1431 words (MS Word for Mac '08 verison.) On another word processor it's 1438 (Scrivener for Mac.) If I use 250 words/page of properly formatted (1 inch margins all around, Courier font) manuscript, I get 1750 words.

I'm glad this came up because I'm about to start shopping my novel, and I fear it's a tad short for the YA marketplace, as it's about 60k words when most YA works are in the 80k range. Well, now that I can see that my two word processors seem to UNDER count words, I will know to use the 250 words * number of pages (a formula I knew but hadn't used on the MS yet) to recompute.

In case anyone was curious, the formula caused my 61k manuscript to go up to 69k. An eight thousand word discrepancy. Works in my favor in this case, as it will be much easier for me to shop a 70k story than a 60k one (and in final edits I may end up adding enough to round up to 80k anyway.)

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If I put it in Courier New it comes up 75 pages, in Times New Roman it comes up 55 pages. I have seen both fonts referred to as 'industry standard'.

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Courier is a standard, but I've never heard Times New Roman listed as an industry standard. It's a proportional font - meaning the space a skinny letter like l or i or t occupies on the page is less than the space that a wide letter like w or m takes up. This means the letters smush together more, making more room on the line for more words, making more room on the page for more lines, etc.

Times New Roman may be a preferred font in certain situations, e.g., academic settings it may be the preferred/standard for submitting assignments, but in publishing I've not heard of it as standard.

One of the primary reasons that editors want manuscripts in courier is because it's predictable. They know how many lines fit on a page, how many words per page (hence the 250 word/page estimate kdw quoted) and all that. They can flip through the MS and see at a glance whether it would fit in the space they're trying to fill. And then there's a sameness to each of the manuscripts they receive so the focus is on the stories the manuscripts tell, rather than on interpreting the MS.

In my first few months here, I learned 12 point courier was the most common font and size for proper manuscript submission. I also found that other fonts were acceptable, but that they all should amount to 10 words (average) per line, 25 lines per page. (250 words per page.) Funny how KD Wentworth's word approximation falls neatly in line with that, huh? Failure to use Courier 12 point, when it has long been the industry standard, is a choice you chose to take. There are consequencs to ALL decisions.

The sad thing is, we've tackled this discussion many times here on Hatrack. That you should act surprised is ridiculous.

Troubleshooing: Does you word counter count hyphenated words as one? Mine does. In 250 words-a-page approximation, the blank spaces on a page are also counted as words. Do you have your Widow/Orphan control off? Do you have space before and after at 0?

Either way, throwing a tantrum for a perceived wrong does nothing to impress any editor. That is something all newbies should know.

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The font isn't important except that it be very readable - which means use a serif font. It used to be necessary to use a monospace font like Courier, where all the letters are the same width (as with a typewriter). But now that publishers are getting the final manuscript electronically, they can handle an ordinary proportional font. Times Roman is standard, but I use Bookman Old Style because the letters are so open and the text is warm and readable.

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STILL can't find the word counter on Vonda McIntyre's site. Point me the way, please.

quote:

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Either way, throwing a tantrum for a perceived wrong does nothing to impress any editor. That is something all newbies should know.

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I don't believe Danielle is throwing a tantrum at an editor but instead venting her anger here, an appropriate place to do so.

Yes, KDW's 10 words per line approximation does fall neatly in line with a 68 page count (granted it doesn't take in account that the first page is actually a half of page), but when you do the math of arriki's script, hers comes out to 9 words per line. An easy outcome if you write a Science Fiction story filled with inventive terms and off-wordly names.

You deserve our symapthy, Danielle. To work so hard on writing and editing a piece of that length is a monstrous endeavor. I hope you take whatever steps it needs so you can resubmit it. Stick with it. KDW liked your writing enough to award you with a semi-finalist. That is more than most of us can say.

WriterDan's Word Count Question

If it hasn't been permanently banned, edit it down and resubmit. No need for anger.

And in the future, don't play so close to the edge. Being within 1% of a target word count is playing with fire. 15 words is 0.1%. Give yourself just a little more leeway. This isn't flash fiction, where absolutely every last word counts.

Words...Pgs...Words/pg
6000.....23......261 -- Times New Roman (Returned, no comments)
8000.....31......258
10000...46......217
11500...53......217
16300...73......223 -- Not submitted
12000...60......200
9600.....47......204
11000...50......220

Starting with my 8k-word submission, my manuscript has been formatted with with Courier font, but it always had 1-inch margins with proper headings, and blah, blah, blah. Sixty pages is the closest I've ever gotten to the "limit" on a submission. As an aside, I seem to be a bit light of the 250 words/page average that is always quoted. Maybe that's why I'm not published yet. Not enough dense paragraphs full of plot-stopping description.

Anyhow, I got a response back from Kathy, but had to ask a follow-up question. I'll get everything back here once I've figured this question out to my satisfaction.

PS -- Sorry about all the periods. Guess the text parser here didn't like the white-space in my tables cause it kept erasing it.

They offer the contest as a service. It is not a contract, and they are not committing breach of promise when they are not very clear about their entry rules. As I understand it, they have a website where anyone can ask questions and receive answers in a timely fashion.

And I certainly am not going to demand that they apologize to anyone.

The most I can do is suggest that they consider clarifying their length requirements, which I fully intend to do.

So there are places to hunt up the footnotes, but why should I assume they don't MEAN what the most prominent source they promote says?

I quote from their web site --
3. To be eligible, entries must be works of prose, up to 17,000 words in length. We regret we cannot consider poetry, or works intended for children.

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That's thinking from the last century when they were dealing with hard copy coming from typewriters.

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Vonda McIntyre recommends against using proportional fonts.

Pretty much what I got out of this conversation with her is that the REAL limit is about 68 pages (give or take 1, MAYBE 2 pages) but that she didn't want to say that right out because it'll directly contradict what the rules on the WotF website say. This limitation of "number of pages" instead of "number of words" is most likely due to the publication issue of "page space in print". Why don't they change the posted rule then? I don't know. Not our call though.

Thus, the rubric that I'd suggest going by is 68 pages, properly formatted (according to Vonda McIntyre) in a constant-width font. In other words, forget about the 17k thing, because that's not what is used in practice.