The trials and tribulations of a self-published steampunk writer

Saturday 1 September 2012

Words and Pictures

I love Wordle and couldn't resist putting Red Mercury through it for a bit of fun.



As expected, the character names, or substitutes like "General" or "Major" etc, provide a chunk of the words in the book. However, I was interested in getting an idea of any other words that were coming up a lot, and thought this visual map might be useful to highlight any weaknesses in my vocabulary.

Wordle lets you click on a word and remove it from the analysis, so I went through and took out all the names, their substitutes, and the place names.


This was really interesting for me. Looking at this makes me think I need to broaden my writing vocabulary in the areas of character movement, and also around them looking at stuff. I think my characters might spend a lot of time "turning their head" towards things, and "moving towards" things! One to watch for the future.

I enjoyed fiddling around with Wordle, and I love the images that resulted. I might turn one into a print for the house with my first massive royalty payment. Hmmm. Perhaps an A4 printout in a cheap frame might be more appropriate.