A colleague of mine introduced me to a website called Wordle. This site allows you to paste text (any text) and it will create a word cloud. The size of the word reflects how often its used in the text. For my experiments, I used a few short stories I’d written and posted on this blog.
This is from a blog post called “Do-It-Yourself Zombie Kit.” No surprise that zombie would get center stage. The story is tongue in cheek about what you’d really need to do to create your own zombie (voodoo style).
This is a piece of flash fiction titled “Selling Your Sister to the Goblins.” I like that Wordle put “teeth” next to “goblin.”
This is a flash fiction called “Beanstalk in a Box” which is a take on a reinvented fairy tale. Here beanstalks and Jack become a nineteenth century advertisement. I love that Wordle made cloud so big in a word cloud.
This is another flash fiction called “C: Terrible Consonant.” This is a surreal story about how the letter C is trying to kill me. I love how the word “ccccccCCCCCCcCCcCCCC” gets tossed at the bottom with a jaunty angle.
Give Wordle a try. So fun.
Tim Kane
It’s all in a Wordle… 😀
I just heard about Wordle too, and love the concept. Haven’t tried it yet myself, but after seeing your examples … now I HAVE to. Thanks!
I wonder what would happen if you dumped a whole novel in there. Would it break Wordle?
Ooooh…we could try. My day-job is as a technical writer for a computer company. I just LOVE breaking software! 🙂
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. I can’t figure out how to republish my wordle into my blog space, and tips for ‘one dumb blonde’.
I took a screen shot of it and then cropped and inserted the image. Try it.
That is definitely a cool app! I’ve got to try it! 🙂