Have you discovered Wordle.net yet?
It’s a site that will make a word cloud of your entire manuscript. I copied a late-process draft of The Wednesday Daughters and pasted it into the handy-dandy box on the site–so if it has a word limit, it is something less than 80,000+ words. You can see the result to the left.
So why am I so jazzed about this?
In an instant, I could see which words occur most frequently. Some–character names, for example–were not surprising. Others (even, just, like) sent me off to do a global search in Word, so that I could consider where I needed them and where I didn’t.
The end result: a manuscript that is 15 “likes” shorter. It has 26 fewer “evens,” 41 fewer “backs,” and … wait for it … 183 fewer “justs.” Seriously. 183!
No doubt I should be embarrassed that I had a draft with all those “justs” I didn’t need. But better to find out now rather than when it is in print! – Meg
Ha, yes! I did the same thing with my novel, and “back” was on my top-most-overused words, too (along with seemed, might, and never, for starters). I must say I found that search-and-destroy mission to be the most tedious task of all, but Wordle was invaluable in getting it done. And look how fun it is to see what your novel is “really” about!