Now I've posted all the first draft of Chapter 1, I thought I'd share a useful tip from this book by Jim Smith. It is one of the best practical guides I have seen.
One of the things it suggests is to keep track of readability statistics. These can be calculated by, for example, Microsoft Word.
Look at the table below. The Flesch score is a measure of how hard a piece of text is to read. Higher is better. The Fleach - Kincaid measure is an indicator of American school grade at which students can be expected to follow the text. I really only use the former. Smith recommends staying higher than 80. This tends to give a bit of a 'cat sat on the mat' feel to a story. It conflicts with those who tell us to write elegant sentences that involve semi-colons and such. I have decided to stick with Smith's advice at least until I have a first draft. Although you will see that the scenes in the first chapter don't always succeed in this.
Probably more importantly, Smith recommends a pacing of the rhythm of the story. You will see how the two halves of Scenes 3 and 4 pick up pace as they work towards the end of the scene.Also the final scene picks up pace and the start was with a bit of a bang. I was quietly pleased with myselffor those bits.
| Scene | Version | Words | words per sentence | characters per word | Flesch | Flesch / Kincaid | Passives sentences |
| 1 | 1.3 | 517 | 8.0 | 4.2 | 85.5 | 3.3 | 3.0% |
| 2 | 1.0 | 803 | 10.6 | 4.4 | 79.1 | 4.7 | 1.0% |
| 3.1 | 1.0 | 1,526 | nc | nc | 73.6 | 5.6 | 7.0% |
| 3.2 | 1.0 | 1,222 | nc | nc | 80.4 | 4.7 | 4.0% |
| 4.1 | 1.0 | 1,431 | nc | nc | 71.4 | 7.1 | 4.0% |
| 4.2 | 1.0 | 1,177 | 11.0 | 4.2 | 81.7 | 4.5 | 1.0% |
| 5 | 1.0 | 1,464 | 15.7 | 4.4 | 76.0 | 5.2 | 2.0% |
| 6 | 1.0 | 1,223 | nc | nc | 75.8 | 6.0 | 3.0% |
| 7 | 1.0 | 1,362 | nc | nc | 79.7 | 4.7 | 0.0% |
| 8 | 1.0 | 1,201 | 8.7 | 4.1 | 85.0 | 3.5 | 5.0% |
nc = not calculated
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