According to this I write YA stories

[twopoint]

I usequestails for her computer geniousness. 

After the Singapore Incident, I went a-searching for online document storage because emailing stories and notes to myself (and backing it all up on three separate flash drives, or posting it and locking it here) didn’t fully satisfy my ocd. I discovered some nicely recommended storage sites, but I’ve successfully locked myself down with anti-malware everything and the sites won’t allow me to upload without turning it off, which I cannot do because something might explode.

So I askedquestails and she put up with my ignorance magnanimously (as always) and said, why don’t you just use the document feature on gmail?

Oh.  

I’ve been playing with gmail docs for a couple weeks now and I love it love it love it. I love that I can email stories in and send draft links without attachments to whomever I want (the rest of you might not share in my ease of sharing). It’s clean text that keeps the style definitions so that I can copy and post without having to fiddle with font, unlike Word 07 which is of the devil, notepad takes too much out, etc.  

Curious about word count last night, I searched around to see if there was any difference between Word and gmail and discovered – my writing is easily understood by the average eleven year old and I typically write at the fourth grade level according to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests. Occasionally, rarely, I step up to the fifth grade level. That puts me about even with Reader’s Digest and a little better than our local disaster of a newspaper. 

I’m sure Word offers the same information, but I never go deeper than the word count at the bottom of the screen. I know the tests don’t qualify as ratings, if it did, my fondness for a certain word that begins with f would push me at least into middle school (where I will eternally remain in heart and action). So, I’m going to be more polysyllabic this week. I’m going to keep tellingquestails that she’s magnanimous, because she is.  Andvictoriawiley, who writes shopping lists at the doctorate level, I’m going to tell her that she’s perspicacious, because that’s why I love her, and with her help I will use more semi-colons and develop complex sentence structures and I will finally understand the past perfect tense. I will try, and fail, to stop beginning sentences with And and But. 

So, using Flesch-Kincaid, who is your target audience?

Comments

[two-point.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try to reply, but that thing keeps looking at me.

Tonight I'll see if I can write a ninth grade sentence. It will be hard; (semicolon!!!) I want to know the criteria. And I like your sentences, which tells me that I, at least, can read at the 7.12 grade level.

Oxford commas. It might have something to do with oxford commas.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to suspect that my 7.12 was falsely achieved. Mostly, because the text I used was Unfinished Novel Excerpt, and Unfinished Novel is a transrealist mess of transhumanism and probably a bunch of other transthings, and if a proper science term for something does not exist, I just make one up, and they usually have a million syllables, because that's how I make myself seem knowledgeable. Anyway, the whole point of that was: syllables. Your rating has something to do with syllables.

Also, whenever someone says Oxford Comma, I get that Vampire Weekend song stuck in my head for two weeks. Thank you.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

It was the least I could do. After the monkey.

Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız, is an actual Turkish word. I'm going to use it in my next story.

[ahpookishere.livejournal.com]

My brain can't even absorb that.