Welcome to Inkscribes!

editMinion

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I've come to love this little program. My writing background consist of text-based RPG's, Role Playing Games. And even though I haven't played in an RPG for a long time, all the years I spent playing them has done something to my writing that doesn't quite fit for novels. I'm detailed orientated, down to the point that I feel compelled to tell you how fast my character is walking, even when it's irrelevant. But in an RPG, everything is relevant, not being clear on what, where and when your character does something will cause confusion.  As a result, I have a close, unhealthy relationship with adverbs. Sometimes, I don't even realize I'm using them. You can click the little minion to go to editMinion to see where your relationship ranks. All you need to do is paste a selection of your work into the space provided.
Click Edit at the bottom of the box and watch the little guy do his thing. There are options to
choose, by default the first 7 is selected. Averbinator picks up your adverbs; weak words shows you words that could be replaced with a stronger alternative; Said picks up said alternatives; Passive voice lets you know if you're speaking in a passive voice opposed to an active one; Prepositions tells you if you end a sentence that way; Homonyns allows you to view your homonyns and so you can review them and make sure you're using the right variation of that word; Cliche will catch words or phrases are cliche. Plus several other features that I've never felt necessary to use.
After clicking Edit! the Minion will give you an analysis. At first I used Chapter 1 of my WIP Prince Phillip. But, I realized I edited that chapter and it wasn't nearly as fun to look at. Nor did it show my sordid love affair with adverbs. The Minion Analysis Results will tell you a ton of useful things. Total Word Count, with a list of anything you have selected at top and their number count.

11 Adverbs. Heh. Look at all that yellow! A Sentence Length Graph with the options to see the longest and shortest sentence. Frequently Occurring words. Besides the character names, 26 instances of 'that', 19 'said'.
And finally, characters and places.
When you continue to stroll down, all these instances are highlighted for you and there is a helpful little legend at the bottom. Though I wish it used more unique colors, as I get confused with all the variations of purple. Using this program has definitely helped me with my passive voice; finding more powerful/meaning words to use in my stories; and my adverb usage.
These are the 3 main things I use editMinion for. Definitely not ending sentences with Prepositions. Now, here's the thing. It doesn't tell you these things are bad or good. It just highlights them for you to see. You have to be the one to choose which adverbs (if any) to keep, if passive voice works best for you and so forth. It can't teach you any of those things. It just shows you how often you're doing it. For me, I found out knowing that I abused adverbs like no ones business was definitely an eye opener.

And just to see, I put this blog post through editMinion.
This is what it looks like.

Then I edited it.