The Trash Stats Project
So, you want to write a romance novel?
That’s what “The Trash Stats Project” started out as in college. I wanted to see if it was possible to write a romance novel based, not on a brilliant idea or a character idea I’d fallen in love with, but entirely upon cold hard facts. As I read a romance novel, good or bad, I noted the important bits like how far in the first kiss was or the first sex scene or whether the heroine fainted and when. The more I read, the more complicated the spreadsheet became.
And then I lost it all.
That was in the dark days before cloud backups. Grim times, indeed. But now we have beautiful things like DropBox and Google Drive and all is safe once more. I’ve started afresh, though no longer with the intent of writing an award-winning kilt-lifter. Feel free to use my obsessive curiosity to your own benefit if you wish, however.
The statistics given here are only up-to-date through the episodes posted. I have a much lengthier, much more convoluted spreadsheet that I might release one day. But since it contains spoilers for future episodes, hidden for now it must be.
If there are additional bits of info you think I should be tracking, drop me a line either through the contact form or on Twitter @gistofitpodcast.
(Please note that any novella of less than 200 pages has been excluded from the Average Page Count and any other non-percentage-based numerical statistics so as not to skew the data too far.)
| Episode Total: | 6 | Average Page Count: | 274 |
| Time It Takes: | Likelihood Of: | ||
| First Kiss First Sexy Time Punching Slapping Fainting |
23% 58% 48% 36% 31% |
Punching Slapping Fainting Dueling Faking It Arranged Marriage Ears as Shells |
50% 50% 67% 17% 0% 17% 67% |
| Female Main Characters: | Male Main Characters: | ||
| Angelina Emma Gwendolyn Isobel Minerva Pearl |
1 1 1 1 1 1 |
Bernard Blake Jack Luke Robert Taj |
1 1 1 1 1 1 |
| Title Keywords: | Male MC’s Rank: | ||
| The And Beast Behind Bride Duchess Honor Left Life Rogue’s She Treasured Wallflower War Wicked |
5 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 |
Duke Earl Laird Sheikh |
2 1 1 1 |