Books -- reading and writing.
Home, cooking, the weather.
And whatever connections I can make between these chapters of my life.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Revision Techniques, anyone?

Now this is interesting. In a scary kind of way.
Via Cheryl Klein's very thorough book: SECOND SIGHT.
(p. 295, if you're looking it up)

http://writewords.org.uk/phrase_count.asp

Paste your entire manuscript into this word counter and see how often you've used a word. Cheryl recommends it as potentially revealing a hidden theme or image to expand on during revision.



I, of course, used it to show how many times I've OVER-used a word.

The Phrase Counter tab was particularly revealing...

74 uses of THE FRONT

60 of NEXT TO

I've got a lot of fronts going on. Steps, porches, sidewalks.
And those were just 2-word phrases.
When I changed it to 3?
I mean, really? Sixteen IN FRONT OFs?

Yikes. Off to revise. Thanks, Cheryl...


Possibly related posts:  
With Help From a Pro

5 comments:

The TB Children's Book Writers and Illustrators said...

Augusta! That is rediculously fascinating! I either had 67 similes or my characters are all valley girls (like x 67). Missing you. Two regrets about missing SCBWI Miami--seeing you present and meeting Cheryl. See you in Jan!

Kimberley Griffiths Little said...

I am TOTALLY doing this with my revision next week via Lisa's editorial letter. I tend to repeat a lot and have to cut a lot. ;-)

Leslie S. Rose said...

What a great idea. Can't wait to give it a go.

Lisa J. Michaels said...

Thanks for posting this Augusta, it will be a great help to my writers/critters in The Yellow Brick Road!

PragmaticMom said...

Wow. Isn't it amazing how much free cool tech there is out there? Who knew a revision site to count words and phrases, but sounds very useful!