Word Counts In Summaries

That's okay, easy mistake to make considering how I worded it

For my oneshots and drabbles, I always include a word count, only because I like letting people know what they're getting into, like kiss dru's... said. I personally, like to know the word count in peoples' stories, so I do the same.

Do you guys put word counts in your summaries? Never thought about it before. However, it is something to think about regarding shorter works. Like One Shots.
Do you like or dislike them? I am okay with them. I am on the fence about this.
Why do you put them in summaries? Why not? If I did put them in a summary, it would be for short stories and/or One Shots.

For my one-shots and drabbles, I'll put a word count in the chapter description or the summary so the reader knows what they're getting into before they start reading.

I only really put them for contest entries, but that's probably just because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to do it for chaptered stuff.

Plus, I'm never sure about the accuracy of the word count. There's a lot of discrepancies between word counters; I use Open Office, and its word counter is drastically different to MS Office. It can be anywhere from hundreds of words out to thousands of words out, and that could be misleading and extremely unhelpful during NaNo when you think you've finished and it turns out you have another two and a half thousand words to write.

But yeah. I don't really like them or dislike them. I judge length more on numbers of pages rather than words, just because I find it hard to visualise a certain number of words, so they're not particularly useful to me, but I can see why they would be to other people.

Rory Williams:

But yeah. I don't really like them or dislike them. I judge length more on numbers of pages rather than words, just because I find it hard to visualise a certain number of words, so they're not particularly useful to me, but I can see why they would be to other people.

So how do you judge a story you read online by length then? Since we don't have pages? Just curious...

^ If it's really really long, then I'll copy it into OO and see how many pages it comes to. But usually I just look at how much you have to scroll down to get to the end, and make a judgement based on that. I don't really read short short stuff, so I don't have any problems there.

It probably doesn't make any sense as a system, but I find it easier to judge this way than with word counts 'cause I don't think the number of words tells you much about length. If that makes sense.

Rory Williams:

[...] 'cause I don't think the number of words tells you much about length. If that makes sense.

It doesn't to me, but that's okay.

kiss dru's . . .:

It doesn't to me, but that's okay.

I know I'm not explaining this properly, but it's like if a piece of writing is 1500 words, for example, I can't visualise 1500 words. But I can visualise three pages of 10-point Verdana, which is roughly 1500 words, give or take. I'm not sure why, but I just find it easier that way.

Rory Williams:

I know I'm not explaining this properly, but it's like if a piece of writing is 1500 words, for example, I can't visualise 1500 words. But I can visualise three pages of 10-point Verdana, which is roughly 1500 words, give or take. I'm not sure why, but I just find it easier that way.

Oh, okay. And I can because I've written hundreds of oneshots of varying length so I can just compare it, quickly, in my head to a story of mine.

cho-nee-dono:

Honestly oneliners in the summary can be really nice

I guess my thing is that word counts make the story seem cheesy. You don't pick up a novel and look for the word count in it do you? If you wanna know how long the story is, click and look how far you have to scroll down.

This just got me thinking...

To me, sometimes a word count it like when you look at how thick a book is. I looked at Stephen King's Under the Dome (which is 1,072 pages) and said, "Well, that's going to take a while," and when I look at something like The Hunger Games which isn't that big, I think, "Well, this won't take too long." It's the same way with word counts. Lots of words = more time needed to read it.

How long it takes to scroll can be misleading as well. If there's a lot of one-line dialogue then it will take longer to scroll, but not creative a massive word count. I once wrote a story where there was one word per line.

Rory Williams:

I know I'm not explaining this properly, but it's like if a piece of writing is 1500 words, for example, I can't visualise 1500 words. But I can visualise three pages of 10-point Verdana, which is roughly 1500 words, give or take. I'm not sure why, but I just find it easier that way.

I actually think very similarly to this, which might be why I'm so indifferent to word count. I'm always the student in class that the professor has to say "x amount of pages" before I fully understand length requirements. I'm slowly teaching myself how to visualize word count, but it's still sort of translated via how many pages I think it'll make.

It looks like it doesn't really matter anymore. Word counts are going to be automatic with the new Mibba.

Or just for the next "two weeks" at least.

^Dujos weeks are amazingly.....long...lol.

I don't bother with word counts, or at least I don't bother to put them, maybe I should? I always take note of word count and number of pages when I'm writing my stories in Word lol. Mainly, because I compare my earlier fics to my latest ones.

I had a chaptered fic back in 2005 which was only 10 pages long with...~6000 words. And now my longest chaptered fic is over 300 pages long with ~160,000 words...

I have caved....I am adding in Word Count in the chapter summary/description area >.> I discovered it makes it a whole lot easier to count your total word count that way >.>

I only add word counts into summaries for a contest, otherwise I don't particularly bother. I keep a word count on Word if I want to keep it for some reason, but otherwise, it's not important.

I add word counts in if I'm writing one-shots or drabbles (if I remember) but I wouldn't for chaptered stories (mainly because I'm lazy and that would be too much effort). The only exception to that rule is stuff I write for NaNo because I tend to put the word count there are a progress bar of sorts.

I think word counts in summaries are pretty much outdated now that the story's info page provides a word count.

I like word counts in summaries, though I often forget to do it myself.