see Ratios graph

see Ratios scene stylistic outliers

• Standardized ratios of paragraphs, sentences, and words can also be examined for comparison of scenes. This reduces the length of the scene in words from the comparison of absolute quantities.
  • The periodicity of high words per sentence scenes ( W / S ) becomes noticeably more frequent. However, they seem 'front loaded', that is more frequent in the first half of Lehane's Mystic River.
  • Long paragraph scenes appear 'back-loaded', that is, more frequent in the second half of the novel, yet a prominent exception outlier lies at scene 01_02_02 (first act, second chapter, second scene).
  • The distribution of S / P appears skewed. There are many observed scenes above the mean because large negative outliers shift the mean downward, leaving more observations above the x axis.
  • Words per sentence correlate with sentences per paragraph. Narrative description requires longer sentences and paragraphs, while dialogue requires many single sentence paragraphs of short sentence length. It may be interesting to examine the exception scenes long sentences, short paragraphs, short sentences, long paragraphs.