I did a little 'find and replace' to see which words I fell in love with this year.
***You may have to put a space before and/or after certain words like ‘a’ and ‘the’ or it will replace either the letter ‘a’ or words that begin or end in 'a', or parts of words like ‘there’ will become 're.' Have fun with your learning experience.
Here are mine:
(MC) Aaron = 120
(Sister) Sophie = 258
(Friend) Billy = 245
Mom / Mommy = 170 / 128
Dad / Daddy = 47 / 34
I = 3542
The = 2407
You = 1819
A = 1790
And = 1583
But = 667
He = 655
She = 599
Said = 331
Oh = 178
Fireball(s) = 32
Of course, you should really only do this on a copy of your final document, and also undo each one after you check its total.
----------
Winner 2001 - The "M" Word
Winner 2002 - Running Time
Winner 2003 - Changing Time
Winner 2004 - Time Out
Winner 2005 - Buying Time
Winner 2006 - Finding Time
Winner 2007 - Fireballs
50,115 / 50,000
déc. 1, 2007 - 00 54
I love RoughDraft-- you don't have to replace words to find out how many times you abused (er, used) them. Plus, you can search for whole words so you don't get every letter 'i' went searching for 'I'!
I have an enormous cast of characters, so I'll do them in a whole separate category. To say I overused their names would be an understatement:
Elli (MC): 757. (... was not expecting that, no)
Delilah (other MC): 353
Genie (final MC): 312
Nathan (antagonist): 416
Greta: 95
Ron: 125
Celeste: 81
Marigold: 137
Julie: 201
Ulysses: 82
Alice: 32
Those numbers were sad. Very sad, indeed. I have a couple thousand words of character names alone! Now, other abused words:
I: 600
the: 2,594
nod/nodded: 39
Corporation: 138 (in my defense, the main villain headquarters is called that)
car: 119
dead: 77
news: 28
said: 375
she: 1,072
he: 489
but: 384
asked: 119
and: 1,329
a: 1,021
... wow. I have a lot of overused words in my novel this year!
----------~Carrie
Nano '04 - Carson (Won)
Nano '05 - The Left on Aubrey Street (Won)
Nano '06 - 2000 Miles From St. Louis (Won)
Nano '07 - Corporation (Won!)
58,992 / 50,000
déc. 1, 2007 - 02 42
peered
----------pulled
stumbled
growled, grumbled, mumbled
tequila
carajo
scorpion--sure it's my title, but there is such a thing as an overused metaphor, isn't there?
anything involving tears, weeping, red-rimmed eyes, sobbing, etc.
and: I fell in love with the run-on sentence, and I kept using 'and,' and I know perfectly well that I could have used commas or semicolons, and I had to get this 'and' thing out of my system, and that's what the inner editor is there for, and there you have it.
Silencio ranas, que va a cantar el sapo.