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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33704
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33704
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### This depends on your characters and story

If you have a happy fairy-tale story for young adults having a lot of smiling characters may be exactly what you want - a mostly happy world.

If, on the other hand, you are writing a gritty thriller where the main goal is to show the psychological trauma of police officers dealing with the most gruesome parts of human nature you definitely don't want someone smiling every other page.

Furthermore you might have a character who always smiles as a character trait. Maybe it's the nice guy who always helps out. Or the nice guy who is always smiling and turning into a horrible monster with a smile that shows way too many, way too sharp teeth. A smile that causes fear in everyone who sees it - for they know that it will be the last thing they will ever face in this world.

Going only by word count is basically always a bad idea. There are too many factors to consider with this. Of course it can give you an idea of what to look at - you know what you are writing and what your characters are doing right now. But we don't know what characters and what story you are writing. And how far they are in their story. Maybe you are writing a really long book of a couple thousand pages in the end and this is merely the starting point where the world is still okay and happy and bright - the time before chaos turns everything upside down and nobody would ever smile again, for the smile of a person will cause horrible abominations to arise from the depths of the abyss with their only intention being to wipe the smile off of your characters face.

They are making their victims listen to their eldritch speeches of how what they are doing is the best for everyone. Forcing them to nod - or be tortured. Though every nod and every half-smile will bring them closer to their untimely demise.

For they sinned. Smiling is only for the powerful. To smile is to show power. And power belongs to those who are from the other side.

Words can have vastly different meaning depending on their context and just because you have a smile every five pages doesn't mean that your characters are all happy. For you are the only one who can say whether it was a warm smile of gratitude or a dangerous smile of a wicked witch.

Original score: 21