User blog comment:Goldenshane/This Is It, Guys, the End./@comment-1874924-20110203040711/@comment-1874924-20110203042728

If that's 18 typed pages, your word processing software probably has a Word Count function, so you can run that to see how much you've got. My experience is that a single-space, typed page that doesn't have a lot of hard page breaks (e.g. a lot of narrative and not so much dialogue) will average 400-500 words, so 18 pages might be getting pretty close. The words-per-page count will probably be less if the chapter has a lot of dialogue.

Note that, in comparing word counts, I didn't include TDI-G&S' Glossary (~3k words) because it's not part of the story or the technical commentary. For the same reason, I didn't include the character descriptions at the top of the TDTP page. I did include things like chapter headings, because it was too much trouble to exclude them and they don't really change the big picture.

In any case, its good to see that competition stories have been getting longer of late, because that's a sign that the writers are getting better--more detailed plotlines, more sophisticated writing style, or both.

As I mentioned, there are some very long stories in the pipeline. I'm guessing that LTDI will eventually clock in at over 200k words. TDNC, which will blow everyone out of the water if Ult ever finishes it, is on a pace for over 700k words, and has over 75k already.