Back in 2009 I blogged a word cloud of Leviathan as a NaNoWriMo tip.
Word clouds (made easy by the lovely and clever people at Wordle) are graphic representations of which words appear, and how often, in your novel, blog, or whatever. The words are sized, of course, in relation to how many times they pop up.
Word clouds great for spotting words that a writer uses too often, like my terrible habit of people frowning before they say something, or my once-rampant obsession with the word “effulgent.”
They’re also kind of fun for creating quasi-spoilery anticipation. And with that goal in mind, I offer you the Goliath word cloud five months before the book comes out!
Click here to see the full-size version. You know you want to.
Your sharp young eyes will no doubt note that I had to remove one word from the results. It was just too spoilerizing, and rather big as you can see. But the rest remains unaltered.
Of course, certain words that are missing (or quite small) can be just as spoilery as the ones that are there. So don’t look too close unless you want to suffer from S3krit Knowledge You Cannot Forgetz.
For my own purposes, I’m glad to see that “frowned” is very wee, and “effulgent” nowhere to be found. Sadly, “barking” is smaller than I thought it would be, and “perspicacious” totally missing! (But don’t worry, “Bovril” is happily medium sized.)
Best of all, the dreaded “just” is either not there or too tiny to see, so that’s another bad habit of mine expunged. Yay.
If you’re a writer, this old NaNoWriMo post of mine will give you a few more hints how to use word clouds in your own work.
See you on Fan Art Friday!
OMG I found the spoilery synopsis, it was surprisingly easy…): now I feel bad, was it pirated or something? but still…no japan…hmmm…
Oh, and people were talking about how Scott Westerfeld said something about “bursting into flame”…now I know what he’s talking about!!!! argh
Dereck, yes, that works, doesn’t it?
Why mix just their first names? Why not go all out with this portmanteau?
Sherdinand? Ferdisharp?
I see girl! That makes me so hopefull, as do many other words. I want the spoiler word to be “Love,” but that’s just my hopeless romantic side of me wants.
I’m so excited!
It makes me sad that ‘beneath’ is there and so is ‘never’. But Deryn is massive and I know that she calls herself deryn but other people call her Dylan so if Deryn’s big then its a good sign!
Ideas on spoiler: Kiss (hussah!!!), inauguration (for Alek, duh), manta ray (although it’s on Goliath’s cover), girlfriend/boyfriend, love, peace, death, etc. etc. etc.
@pikol: Hmmm… Good ideas. KISS. Hehe… XD Well, maybe. WHO KNOWS!!!!
Only Scott. And Keith. 😀
The real question is what will Alek’s reaction when he finds out Deryn is a girl(>_<)
What about the word Tesla in the place of the censor?
Can I say that I hate you?
I see “miss” and “girl” and “voice” in there… hee hee. Can’t wait!
I have never even read these books:(
THE SPOILER WORD IS TESLA, isn’t it?
I honestly don’t think it’s anything like ‘kiss’ or ‘love’ since Leviathan is a war book, the romance aspect is just a slight garnishing on top….
anyway, can NOT wait.
Westerfeld, you tease.
I love that “Aye” is huge. It makes me think that pirates invaded…
For the record, I think the spoilery word is “Tesla.” Nice job trying to hide the plot from us, though. 🙂
Thanks for any other informative website. Where else may just I am getting that kind of information written in such a perfect method? I’ve a mission that I’m simply now operating on, and I’ve been at the glance out for such info.