Writing Tool: Wordle

I wrote about Wordle last year, but didn't explain why I use it.

What I said then:

Wordle takes a block of text and gives you a cloud of words. The size of a word in the cloud corresponds with how often that word appears in the text.

As you can imagine, Wordle is a great visual tool to discover overused words in your work.

Here's the word cloud I made last year for JACK...

(link)

I made it right before I sent the second full draft to beta readers -- about 3 months before querying the manuscript. Overall, I was happy with how my words ranked -- not many weak words, and said was my most-used dialogue attribution (which is great because readers tend to skim over it).

Here's the Wordle for the first nine chapters of my current revision...

(link)

Thoughts:

* Said is nowhere to be found. I definitely used it -- a lot -- but it didn't seem to pick up. (Can you spot it? Am I missing it?)

* Peter is much more prominent, befitting his more forward POV. Jacob is also larger, and so is his story role.

* Jack refers to Bert as Willoughby, so that change shows.

* Stump is smaller than the other two POV characters (which is funny because she's physically smaller, too), but the name will get bigger as the revision is completed. Henry is now known as Goodfellow or Principal Goodfellow, so Henry is noticeably absent.

* Three new character names have popped up already: Tom, Francine, and George.

* Weak words have crept in. Like is bigger than I want it to be; so are back, around, and just.

* I want to use looked less.


Have a project? Make a Wordle and share your link in the comments. What did you learn from the exercise? How else do/could you use Wordle as a writing tool?

[images via Wordle]
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