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Pro-writing tip: if your story doesn’t need a number, don’t put a fucking number in it.
Nothing, I mean nothing, activates reader pedantry like a number.
I have seen it a thousand times in writing workshops. People just can’t resist nitpicking a number. For example, “This scifi story takes place 200 years in the future and they have faster than light travel because it’s plot convenient,” will immediately drag every armchair scientist out of the woodwork to say why there’s no way that technology would exist in only 200 years.
Dates, ages, math, spans of time, I don’t know what it is but the second a specific number shows up, your reader is thinking, and they’re thinking critically but it’s about whether that information is correct. They are now doing the math and have gone off drawing conclusions and getting distracted from your story or worse, putting it down entirely because umm, that sword could not have existed in that Medieval year, or this character couldn’t be this old because it means they were an infant when this other story event happened that they’re supposed to know about, or these two events now overlap in the timeline, or… etc etc etc.
Unless you are 1000% certain that a specific number is adding to your narrative, and you know rock-solid, backwards and forwards that the information attached to that number is correct and consistent throughout the entire story, do yourself a favor, and don’t bring that evil down upon your head.
Editor here. Can confirm.
“Two centuries later” just triggers a mental note to check if timing is consistent throughout the book, because it may mean more time jumps are ahead. “200 years later”, or heaven forbid, “201 years later” will have me draw up a time line. The more specific the number, the more critical people become.
Strange phenomenon. Well spotted, OP.
actually i think i might have an explanation for this from linguistics? i think folks get more nitpicky if you have specific numbers because of gricean maxims, specifically the maxims of quality and quantity
basically gricean maxims are a set of guidelines that we all carry in our heads that we expect other people to follow when having a conversation in good faith – i’m copying and pasting definitions from someone else because my attempts at summing up quality and quantity weren’t going so hot
The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
so basically, when you put a rough number in a text, people think subconsciously ‘oh, the exact number isn’t important, because if it was they would tell me an exact number, so i don’t need to worry about this’, whereas if you put something precise in, people’s brains go ‘wait, they think i need to know this information so i’ll remember it, but now it’s later and they’ve said something that contradicts it, so at least one of those times they were lying and i must figure out which time it was’
Also: don’t specify data storage sizes. Just, you know, don’t.
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