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Spinners for overused words and phrases


Steve E

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Hi all.

 

Spinners are little programs with large databases that can help you create variations of a short story or article. Basically they take a line and provide columns of lists of alternative words or phrases for each word or phrase in the line. You select a suggested word or phrase from each column and the substitution is made. It is providing the function of a good thesaurus but not simply one word at a time.

 

So why would you want this?

 

Previously I made a feature request to help identify overused words and phrases. But once you've identified them what do you do with them? You spin them. A thesaurus helps immensely with this but using it (whether it's the System thesaurus or an app) is too slow for something the size of a novel. You need a spinner to speed things up.

 

I suspect their original purpose of spinners was to avoid being charged with plagiarizing other people's articles. But never mind that. Our intentions are pure.

 

These programs exist but, as far as I know, none of them work on a Storyist file. In any case, I'd like a Storyist imbedded version to help with rewrites.

-Thoth

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  • 2 weeks later...

That actually sounds pretty interesting. I have a pretty good "mental thesaurus" and it's almost ingrained in my brain to be cognizant of what I'm typing and how many times I've typed it, but from time to time I do get stuck/forget. Knowing I could just type in something anyway and be able to quickly go back and change/fix it would be wonderful.

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That actually sounds pretty interesting. I have a pretty good "mental thesaurus" and it's almost ingrained in my brain to be cognizant of what I'm typing and how many times I've typed it, but from time to time I do get stuck/forget. Knowing I could just type in something anyway and be able to quickly go back and change/fix it would be wonderful.

So that's two for a Storyist spinner?

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  • 5 months later...

So for a common phrase like "it was a dark and stormy night" it might come back with "storm clouds gathered in the deep of the night"? I like it. Sometimes when I'm writing I can't help but think of a single line because I've heard it so many times before. I'd imagine it could help with he said, he said, he said, she said, we said, they said too, particularly when you don't realize you're doing it.

 

We'll head 'em off at the pass boys! -> We shall rout them at ravine chaps, what ho!

 

Okay maybe not. But I like the spinner idea.

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  • 2 months later...

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