MId-week Morsel: Word Frequency Counter

As they say, variety is the spice of life.  That sentiment also holds true our writings.  Whether you are working your way through my Writing for Storytellers program, writing your own blog post, or writing an essay for school, you don't want to be repetitive with your word choice.  It is easy to fall into a rut and over-use words, which can give the appearance that you have a small vocabulary and make your work less interesting.  Write Words, an online writing community, has a simple word frequency counter to help solve redundancy problems.  Simply paste your text into their box and press the submit button.  To show you how it works, I pasted the text of this post into the box.  Here are the result...

6 the

5 your

5 you

5 writing

5 to

4 a

3 into

3 have

3 for

3 and

2 words

2 word

2 they

2 that

2 text

2 post

2 of

2 it

2 is

2 frequency

2 counter

2 box

2 are

2 an

2 also

1 writings

1 write

1 works

1 working

1 work

1 with

1 which

1 whether

1 what

1 way

1 want

1 vocabulary

1 variety

1 use

1 true

1 tips

1 through

1 this

1 their

1 submit

1 storytellers

1 spice

1 solve

1 small

1 simply

1 simple

1 show

1 sentiment

1 school

1 say

1 rut

1 result

1 repetitive

1 redundancy

1 program

1 problems

1 press

1 phrase

1 pasted

1 paste

1 own

1 over

1 out

1 our

1 or

1 online

1 my

1 make

1 life

1 less

1 interesting

1 i

1 how

1 holds

1 here

1 help

1 has

1 give

1 fall

1 essay

1 easy

1 don't

1 do

1 community

1 choice

1 check

1 can

1 button

1 blog

1 better

1 be

1 as

1 appearance

They also have a phrase frequency counter to check out. What tips do you have for better writing? Karissa

Writing For Storytellers

As you may recall, I like to have my kids do some sort of school work over the summer.  My kids don't like it as much as I do, but I do try to make it more fun than regular school-year type work.  I try to use the kids' interests to build fun and interactive elective-type classes for summer time.  One year, we spent the summer learning the science behind cooking.  There were some lessons to read, some worksheets to complete, and a lot of cooking & eating.

Lately, my 12 year old has been very busy writing.  She has taken a real interest in storytelling.  She has several works in progress, from short stories to screenplays to full-on novels.  So this summer I thought it would be both fun and beneficial to give her a class on how to write a novel.

Of course, I'm NOT a novelist!  I am, however, pretty good at scouring the internet for information.  I spent a few weeks doing research and gathering resources from people who ARE novelists, and came up with a 7 unit course to take her all the way through the writing process.  I'm still debating whether or not to add a unit to the end about the editing process.  I kind of feel like that could be a whole course of its own.  

The included units are:

• Before You Write
• Story Formats
• Theme
• Character Development
• Set Building
• Subplots
• As You Write

To make all this information easier to access and organize, I compiled all the articles and worksheets into one website.  If you have a budding author in your house, are one yourself, or are just looking for quasi-educational summer activities for your tween or teen, please take a look at Writing for Storytellers.  As always, the resources and worksheets are free for personal use.  If you wish to share them, please link directly to either that website or this post.

Karissa