Story Word Clouds

[shudai]

Someone mentioned a while back how it would be interesting to see the word clouds of our favorite or most recent stories. That stuck in my mind until I had to take a look at mine.

So here's the world cloud for my story, The New Principal (so far).

https://imgur.com/a/8fe281X

I'd love to see your clouds! What are the words that pop up that surprise you?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Interesting.

Here are some of mine:

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574497

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574518

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574504

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574508

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/3574506

No surprises, except how much I use my character's names. An interesting perspective on my words.

 

[yukonnights]

This is a great idea. I didn't even know something like "WordItOut" was available. Seems that this would be really helpful at the edit phase to avoid those over used words.

EB, questions: Some of these terms seem troublesome? Are there other options for producing such a cloud?

1. I noticed you linked directly to the web site. Does that mean that you can't get the resulting word-cloud file onto one's own computer?

2. This part of the use agreemant raises a question;

User Content will not contain any item that may be unlawful or otherwise unfit for publication, including but not limited to items that (1) may be... (2) may cause... (3) may... (4) are pornographic, obscene, profane, vulgar, indecent, or threatening, (5) are culturally... or (6) suggest or...

3. You hereby grant to Enideo, its subsidiaries, affiliates and partners a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty free, non-exclusive and transferable licence to use, reproduce, prepare derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transmit, translate and publish User Content provided by you, on this Website or any other Enideo site or in other Enideo marketing or public relations materials in any and all existing or future media. You also grant to us the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.

 

[ElectricBlue]

This is a great idea. I didn't even know something like "WordItOut" was available. Seems that this would be really helpful at the edit phase to avoid those over used words.

EB, questions: Some of these terms seem troublesome? Are there other options for producing such a cloud?

1. I noticed you linked directly to the web site. Does that mean that you can't get the resulting word-cloud file onto one's own computer?

2. This part of the use agreemant raises a question;

User Content will not contain any item that may be unlawful or otherwise unfit for publication, including but not limited to items that (1) may be... (2) may cause... (3) may... (4) are pornographic, obscene, profane, vulgar, indecent, or threatening, (5) are culturally... or (6) suggest or...

3. You hereby grant to Enideo, its subsidiaries, affiliates and partners a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty free, non-exclusive and transferable licence to use, reproduce, prepare derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transmit, translate and publish User Content provided by you, on this Website or any other Enideo site or in other Enideo marketing or public relations materials in any and all existing or future media. You also grant to us the right to sub-license these rights, and the right to bring an action for infringement of these rights.

1. I'm sure there are plenty of free tools - this was just the first I found.

2. This was the output from the "save" routine - I suppose one could do a screen dump, but could I download an image file? Not obviously, that I could see.

Contents - burden is on them, not me. If they object, I'll take it down. Their blurb says that Users can set an adult content filter, which I assume finds "rude" words - their term, not mine - and blocks them from view. I turned the filter off (the default is adult filter on, which is as it should be).

Their FAQ acknowledges that people might use adult content, and as KeithD points out regularly, the law allows a broad brush when it comes to allowable content. But, as a gesture of (vague) good faith, I used some vanilla stories in terms of content, explicitly stated they were "erotic stories," and linked to Literotica. Now, I know that Lit flags as an adult content site on just about every Public wi-fi site I've ever used (airports are so boring, waiting for planes), so that flag is available to these guys, and they allowed the link.

3. Big deal, so what? A non-exclusive licence to promote my stories? Go for it, boys! Somehow, I can't imagine them actively promoting my stories using these four clouds, but you never know your luck in the big city.

Anyway, the User Content might just be limited to the word-cloud image - I didn't read that far. I can also purge all my content with a single button push, so this doesn't fuss me, to be honest.

 

[yukonnights]

Thanks for answering my questions EB. I think I recall reading something you said some where about being in IT/programing...I may be wrong. But, I had a feeling you knew more about it/them than me. It does seem like a helpful tool to check over used words. ~

 

[ElectricBlue]

Thanks for answering my questions EB. I think I recall reading something you said some where about being in IT/programing...I may be wrong. But, I had a feeling you knew more about it/them than me. It does seem like a helpful tool to check over used words. ~

Me, IT programming? Not on your life - but regularly writing / managing contracts with Intellectual Property clauses - this is standard, boiler-plate stuff, I see it all the time.

What I found quite pleasing was that I write equal emphasis for my leads, and that (in the three longer stories at least) I spread my other words around quite evenly.

 

[yukonnights]

Me, IT programming? Not on your life - but regularly writing / managing contracts with Intellectual Property clauses - this is standard, boiler-plate stuff, I see it all the time.

What I found quite pleasing was that I write equal emphasis for my leads, and that (in the three longer stories at least) I spread my other words around quite evenly.

Something I've never even considered. The clouds are sounding more useful all the time.

 

[shudai]

I like your clouds a lot, electricblue66. There is a very pleasing spread of words that do good heavy lifting in a story. I'm always concerned that my clouds will be full of 'like,' 'then,' 'so,' and all that filler.

Another thing I like is trying to see if I can feel the overall mood of the story through the words. There is a nice "place around now kiss belly again" in your first cloud "Water." There are a lot of those lovely connections in all of yours.

As for the site, I used WordArt which seemed aesthetically pleasing. They've got heaps of tools and buttons and knobs to adjust. I just screen-grabbed the image and hung it up at imgur.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I like your clouds a lot, electricblue66. There is a very pleasing spread of words that do good heavy lifting in a story. I'm always concerned that my clouds will be full of 'like,' 'then,' 'so,' and all that filler.

Another thing I like is trying to see if I can feel the overall mood of the story through the words. There is a nice "place around now kiss belly again" in your first cloud "Water." There are a lot of those lovely connections in all of yours.

Yes, it would be an interesting exercise to drop only the words in the cloud onto a page, and use only those words for a poetic render of the story, to see if the microcosm catches the whole thing. These clouds catch the moods of my stories very well, I think.

FYI, the first story (Water) was about 9,000 words, the others two or three times longer - which I guess explains the different densities (I have no idea how the counting thresholds work).