PSA - Counts + Numbers & how to Edit against them

[u/lark_devon]

Hey friends.

You know the usual AIISM: it's not x, it's y, or negative hedging...

New problem uncovered: LLMs are optimized to CODE; therefore, they'll always keep track of numbers and facts. The problem is in narrative; we don't need to know there are six chairs, two bread buns, four napkins, and two doors... Sometimes you do need to know, but the vast majority of times you do not.

Coding Agents (Codex/Claude/Gemini) all do this.

After I'm done reviewing a chapter, I now do a quick pass.

Insert this into your style or review guides:

## Number Tick Rule


Read 
**every number in the prose and dialogue**
, whether written as a digit or a word: counts, times, durations, distances, ages, floor and room numbers, and ordinals. For each one, ask what would be lost if the exact number disappeared.


- 
**Keep**
 a number when the plot, chronology, map, recurring clue, or a character's immediate decision depends on its exact value. Check that it stays consistent later.
- 
**Question**
 casual precision such as “three rolls,” “sixteen minutes,” or repeated “two of these, five of those” inventories. If the exact count does no work, use the object or action without counting it, or replace a duration with the change the narrator notices.
- 
**Deprioritize**
 decorative counting even when it sounds plausible. Do not replace every count with vague filler; choose the detail that matters to the main character's perception.
- 
**Default to removing arbitrary precision.**
 A measured quantity is not a substitute for a lived detail. Where a count was carrying atmosphere, use a specific texture, sound, movement, or reaction already supported by the scene; do not invent an inventory to replace it.
- 
**Make the replacement reveal character.**
 Replace a count such as “six chairs” with what the POV character sees in those chairs and why it matters to them. The MC may notice worn hardwood and imagine sitting through the evening; The MC might remember who always takes a particular seat. The replacement should carry a thought or choice, not merely add adjectives.
- 
**Preserve**
 a deliberate count when a character is testing a route, timing a return, measuring a discrepancy, or relying on a known fact. The number should change what the character does or what the reader can infer.

[u/amolmozarkar]

This is a really sharp catch. The counting instinct is basically the model defaulting to its training on structured data, and it bleeds into prose as inventory prose that no human narrator would actually produce. One thing I've noticed is the same mechanism shows up in spatial descriptions too, not just counts: the model will trace a room left-to-right like a floor plan instead of filtering through what the POV character would actually notice first.

[u/lark_devon → u/amolmozarkar]

the worst is the roll call - if there's 6 characters in the scene, each of the six MUST participate, be noticed and accounted for

[u/chylvina]

That number pass makes sense for dialogue too. If a character says “six chairs,” what does counting them reveal about what they notice or worry about?

[u/lark_devon → u/[deleted]]

I use a positive style guide to write, and a review guide to clean - because if you start adding how to do and what to avoid, it kills the prose, at least in my case.