Since I’m a writer, I love to play with words. Recently fellow authors W.S. Gager and Joselyn Vaughn showed me a whole new way to turn what I write into a work of art.
Here’s the first chapter of my WIP, Reservoir, broken down to its core elements…those little 4-, 5- and 6-letter beauties that form a story.
It’s a word cloud! Formed courtesy of wordle.net and my own first chapter. Wordle takes what you feed it and creates these maps. Words that show up more frequently are in larger type-face. (Who knew I used the word ‘one’ so often?) You can tweak the shape and color of the cloud, but it generates from what you’ve built.
Cool! Just another way to make art from words.
Give it a try with an email, dissertation page (hint, hint), a blog, or a page from your WIP and let me know how it goes.
Tess Grant 
I did this with my second dissertation chapter after my advisor asked about its big themes. My dissertation looks a lot cooler in word cloud form, that’s for sure!
They are cool! They look a lot easier than the work it took to make them. 🙂
I never thought about actually putting a chapter in to make one of these. I’m going to try it for my WIP first chapter. And for a ton of other stuff. Maybe every blog post? Hmm, maybe too much, eh? Thanks for sharing this idea.
WS and Joselyn shared it as a way to look for passive versus active voice, which was a neat idea.
It is one of my favorite things for any writer to take a objective view of the words. My biggest word is was!
Wendy
I’m surprised mine wasn’t I and some combo of felt/thought, although I’m actively rooting it out!