The Stats Behind See These Bones

With the release of See These Bones now less than two weeks away, I thought it would be fun to take a break from all the process-heavy, behind-the-scenes posts to share some quick, mainly ridiculous, stats about the book. All numbers provided here represent my best guesses after a less-than-careful review of the manuscript, and I reserve the right to be proven utterly incorrect by future readers. I’ve also tried to keep things spoiler-free.

Word Count

# of words¹ in See These Bones: 131,150

War and Peace: 587,287

A Game of Thrones: 298,000

# of words a modern publisher prefers in a book from a debut author: 100,000 or less²

 

# of chapters: 73

…including epilogues and interludes: 76

…which I considered creating subtitles for: 0³

 

The Cast

# of named characters: 71

…with at least one line: 50

…that the reader actually needs to keep track of: ~10-15

 

# of incoming first-years in Damian’s class: 25

…who ever get named in the course of the book: 21

…and have at least one line: 18

…and whose names and/or descriptions I may have forgotten at some point during the writing process: 6+

 

The Setting

# of positive things said about Bakersfield, CA: 1

…other than it having weather better suited for funerals than Los Angeles: 0

 

# of specific references to the pre-Break world: 14

…that are even close to accurate descriptions of 1980s culture: 8

 

And… Other Stuff

# of expletives in my original draft: 993

…excluding words like damn, hell, and crap⁴: 778

…that made it to the near-final draft: 639

…which I regretted when I realized my mom would be reading this book: 639

…and then, upon reflection, opted to remove: 0

 

# of drinking scenes: 3

…that end badly: 3

 

# of whisky references: 1

Hours of research to make sure that one reference was accurate: ~4

Hours spent searching if that specific bottle was available for purchase anywhere⁵: 12+

 

# of times Damian gets his ass kicked: Way too many to count

…by classmates: Still too many to count

…and by friends: 2⁶

 

Next week, I’ll be back with Chapter 4 of See These Bones.

 

1. We use word count for length, because, as every college freshman knows, page count depends on margin, font, line spacing and a bunch of other things, most of which are adjustable on e-readers
2. Whoops.
3. I can’t overstate how nice it is to just type ‘Chapter’, followed by the #, and then move on with my life.
4. Which google tells me are technically expletives. Whoops!
5. It was not. Not that I would’ve been able to afford it anyway!
6. Which probably says more about his ability to make friends than anything!