[Meta] What is the Average Length of Your Story Hour Installments?

[el-remmen]

I was looking through the Story Hour index that Sterverooo started way back when and got caught on this part of the entry template he came up with.

Average Installment Length: Short/Medium/Long/Verbose (No hard & fast rule, decide for yourself).

And I thought, most people write up their installments in word or some other word-processing program and must keep saved copies of previous installments, we should be able to figure out an actual guideline.

So I went back to my ten most recent installments (including the one I will post tomorrow after proof-reading it) and did a word count and figured out an average.

Here is my data:

The average word count was: 3740.7 words per installment (an installment is any single posting of the story of a story hour, whether it be one whole session, part of a session or multiple game sessions)

The longest one was the most recent, at 7012 words. This was one of only two of the 10 installments that were longer than 4000 words.

The shortest was 2528, which was one of only two that were shorter than 3000 words.

So anyway, take 5 minutes and figure out your numbers and post them. At the very least, it will just be interesting to see how much variation there is among this group of writers.

I am adding a poll as well, but that is just for a quick gander at results - I still would like people to actually post them.

 

[megamania]

I tend to keep my Installments or "Segments" as I like to call them short. Part of this is time related and the other part is I like to show background activities of the bad guys or supporting caste. Since one or two players watch these I try to limit what is exposed ahead of time within the segment. Since each segment is numbered, it is easy to track also.

I did not count the words. I guessed. In word I fill between 1 and 2 pages per installment so I guess that places me at the < 1000 word section.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Word count wise...I have no idea.

I have a minimum, though. I make sure to write AT LEAST 1 full page. Note that this is in Wordperfect, with 10 Font, so one page is a bit more than text for me than for some.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

I'm around 2500-5000 words, usually avergaing around 3500. I really think that's the sweet spot; it's long enough to give your readers something to chew on, but not so long that it becomes difficult to read on a message board.

BD

 

[Lazybones]

Between 1.5 and 5 pages in Word, single-spaced with 12 point font. Most times I shoot for 2-3 pages, but I will go longer if it ends in a juicy cliffhanger. I think that comes out somewhere between 1000 and 4000 words, give or take.

 

[shilsen]

I'm generally somewhere around the 2,000 - 4,000 word mark, usually hovering around 3,000.

 

[talien]

After going back through one of my word docs, it's almost exactly 500 words per posting. I'm now on Chapter 42, so I'm way ahead of what's actually posted online (uh...chapter 15).

 

[Jon Potter]

After doing a sampling similar to el-remmen's I come up with an average of 1,573.1.

Shortest was 743.

Longest was 2,441.

 

[Silver Moon]

I've never done a word count before. My rule of thumb is five pages +/- a page in Microsoft Word. I just checked and that puts me in the 3400 to 4200 word range with an average of around 3800. The exception to that are GameDay logs, where a 30-45 tape block works out to around two Microsoft Word pages (around 1500 words) which tends to be sufficient material for a chapter.

 

[spyscribe]

When I started out three and a half years ago, I kept updates shorter than I do now, trying for right around 1000 words. Mostly because when I'm reading a story hour, I don't want each new update to be a huge time commitment.

These days, as long as the story is tight, I don't worry if an update is running on the longer side. I've found that how long an update feels is only partly related to the number of words involved. Format and pacing matter a lot more.

Which is the long way of saying, recent updates have run between 1,500 and 2,500 words.