Children’s Writing Web Journal

Wordle is a free online tool that takes any text and creates a “word cloud”.  The more a word shows up in the text, the larger it appears in a cloud.  Here’s a Wordle cloud I created using the text of Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

I can think of a few  interesting uses for children’s book writers (or any writer, for that matter):

• Run your manuscript through it to see if you’re overusing certain adjectives.  If a word that has nothing to do with the theme of your story is larger than those that do, perhaps it’s time to take out the thesaurus and vary your word choices a bit.

• Need to write a plot synopsis, but you’re not certain what to say?  Let Wordle show you what the overriding themes of your story are.  It’s pretty clear what President Lincoln had on his mind while crafting his speech by examining the Worldle above.

• Perhaps you can find a novel way to use one of these for storytelling purposes.  Maybe providing a Wordle of each chapter throughout a manuscript would be a memorable way of summing things up?  Or take the dialogue from each character and create their own Wordles and run them back-to-back.  I leave the possibilities to your own creative minds.

Have a look for yourself at http://wordle.net

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 3:07 pm and is filed under freebies, web resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.