Late last week, I came across a website called Wordle. This website allows you to make word clouds out of any text you input into box on their website. I tried it out and I was very impressed. When you visit the website you go to the create section. When the page loads you have a text box to add your text or you can choose the second option which is to add a website URL. For my first attempt and to see what the fuss was all about, I decided to use the text from a new short story I was working on.
I copied and pasted the text into the box and hit the create button. I was then presented with a word cloud from my story. It was very clear to me what my short story was about and the main focus of it.
I decided to try something different and this time I took a piece that I had written about smiling and once again Wordle delivered. Just looking at the image I knew exactly what the piece was about.
For my third creation I used one of my short stories called Awakened Pain. I wanted to test something. I was wondering to myself if Wordle could actually be used by writers to give readers an insight into their work. Rather than typing up a detailed synopsis or description of the piece I placed the contents of my short story into Wordle and let it do its work.
As you can see from the image above, Wordle summed up my entire short story and anyone looking at this picture can clearly see what it is about. This really could be an amazing marketing tool for writers and it could also work well as an editing tool. You could add your first chapter into Wordle and you will instantly know if you are over using a word.
Wordle is a free website and you can choose to save your word clouds into the website’s gallery if you like. You can’t download or save your creations to your computer which is a pity and you can’t Pin your word clouds either. In order to save the word cloud as a graphic you will need to take a screenshot which is what I did.
I have to say, I am really impressed with Wordle and what it can do. I think it will be a very useful marketing tool and very helpful to all writers. If you have used Wordle, please do let me know what you thought of it and if you want to share links to any of your word clouds you can do so in the comments.
Will Wordle become the next big thing to help writers market their work? Who knows, but I for one will definitely be watching what happens with this website.
Amanda J Evans is an award-winning Irish author and writing coach. Amanda writes adult romance that often crosses into paranormal and fantasy. Growing up with heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, her stories centre on good versus evil with a splice of love and magic thrown in too. Her books have all won awards and her novella, Hear Me Cry, won the Book of the Year Award at the Dublin Writers Conference 2018. Amanda is also the author of Surviving Suicide: A Memoir from Those Death Left Behind, published in 2012.
Great post. I find Wordle.net brilliant for displaying the results of a marketing report visually. When presented to them it’s always the page/slide that my clients/fellow marketers love most. Unfortunately Wordle requires Java for it to work on Firefox so I sometimes uses an alternative tool called http://www.tagxedo.com/
Thanks Anne Marie, I had a look at Tagxedo but found it much slower than Wordle. I probably need to spend a little more time looking at it. I do like the fact that you can share your word clouds on Facebook which is great.
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
Very cool. I was JUST looking for something like this. Thanks!