You'll likely need to make major structural changes before you use a word cloud. Word choice falls under "line edits." If you have an unedited first draft, word clouds won't help you much. No matter what you're writing, word clouds are something to use as a last step in your writing process. A word cloud on a blog post that’s not SEO enhanced won’t tell you much about your keyword density. Likewise, in copywriting for business, you wouldn’t use a word cloud when your content isn't optimized for keywords.
But using word clouds to compare your scenes against each other can show you where they’re too similar, use too many of the same unimportant word choices, or simply aren’t consistent between scenes when they need to be. Simply dumping a scene from your current work in progress into a word cloud generator might show you that you used “said” a lot, but won’t give you the insights you want.
You can make sure your language is accessible to consumers with a quick visual model. If you are in the business-to-consumer writing industry, a word cloud will highlight overuse of technical jargon. Imagine if “long wait time” cropped up as major emphasis words in customer feedback. If you collect feedback from your customers, you can generate a word cloud using customers’ language to help identify what is most important to them. You’ll be able to identify where you should have a new reaction or a new emotion.įor business purposes, word clouds can help you find your customers’ pain points. A word cloud will help you notice right away if your characters’ reactions are similar in both scenes. When To Use Word Cloudsįor fiction, you can use word clouds of different scenes to compare how your characters feel about the inciting action. Are your target keywords huge or tiny? What words have you inadvertently turned into SEO keywords? This will help you figure out exactly what edits you need to make to reach those high search engine rankings. Run your copy or blog post through a word cloud generator. The most important part of SEO is keywords. It can be the bane of copywriters and bloggers everywhere. If your book is about a war, but the words "war" and "battle" are tiny on your word cloud, you'll need to develop that plot more.
If your book is about Jane, but Jack's name is three times bigger, you might need to re-evaluate your manuscript. Do your characters smirk or shrug all the time? A word cloud can help you find the actions you repeat too often.Ī word cloud can also make sure you are focusing on the right characters, themes, and plot points. You can then go find places in your writing to add action or emotion beats. It's easy to see if the big words are the words you want to use the most.ĭo you have too many dialogue tags? If so, "said" will show up as a larger word. The most commonly used words are the biggest. A word cloud can help you identify your overused words. But when we use them too often, our writing sounds redundant. When we edit our own words, it's hard to see what our overused words are. Word Clouds For Fiction WritersĮvery writer has words they like to use over and over. Guess 10 classic novels from the word clouds that they generate. Or, if you are up for a challenge, try our Word Cloud Game. Can you recognise the novels from their word clouds? Here’s what a word cloud based on the reaping scene in the first chapter of The Hunger Games looks like:īelow are a couple other word clouds.
ProWritingAid has a Word Cloud Gallery that makes it easy to create word clouds based on the text you paste into the tool. So, the more often a specific word appears in your text, the bigger and bolder it appears in your word cloud. Google says a word cloud is “an image composed of words used in a particular text or subject, in which the size of each word indicates its frequency or importance.”
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