Glare report: 3/29/05. Not.

Zero words added. I didn't get to it until 9:45. I'm sorry, all I accomplished tonight was glaring, and fixing some minor formatting nitpicks. I don't know what the fish say in the Lake Nokomis scene, so I have to move on, pick what to write next.

Nothing springs to mind. I think I'm still struggling with a sleep deficit from Minicon, which doesn't help.

Tomorrow I'll try again.

At the suggestion of sleigh, I ran the grammar check in Word, which includes the Flesch-Kincaid grammar stats checker that's built into MS Word. sleigh had linked to a post of Toby Bucknell which examines the sophistication of language used in best-selling fiction. He reports a certain James V. Smith, Jr examined the works of best-selling authors using the Flesch-Kincaid grammar stats checker that's built into MS Word. Here's what Smith concluded:

The amount of passive voice the writers used ranged from 2.3% to 13.43%.

The number of characters per word ranged from 3.72 to 4.58.

The readability ranged from 72.34% to 91.84%, with an average of 83.1%.

Finally, on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level scale, the range was 2.68 to 6.3, with an average grade level of 4.4.

I ran the stats on the ice palace novel so far (sixty-eight pages in manuscript, which I don't think is a very big sample yet):

Passive voice: 1%

Number of characters per word: 4.3.

Readability: 85.1%

Grade level: 3.7 (Argh. I'll fix that eventually, if nothing else.)