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The Colours of Murder

  by Ali Carter

(about 317 pages)
79,281
total words
40th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
79.07%
vividness
42nd PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
8.95%
passive voice
77th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
3.30%
all adverbs
75th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
1.13%
ly-adverbs
64th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
2.17%
non-ly-adverbs
79th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library

clippings from this book

We’ve analyzed hundreds of millions of words, from thousands of different authors, training our linguistic models to recognize the most vivid words in the English language… the words that create the most intense sensory experiences: colors, textures, sounds, flavors, and aromas.

Based on our analysis, we’ve scanned through the pages of this book to find the two pages at the extremes, both the most-passive and the most-vivid pages, so that you can compare them side-by-side and see the difference:

MOST PASSIVE PAGE
MOST VIVID PAGE
I do like to live vicariously through you. It’s natural; you’ll be just the same when you have children of your own.’ ‘Maybe,’ I said, hoping not. ‘When will we be seeing you next?’ This was my mother’s subtle way of saying it had been some time since my last visit. ‘I was thinking I could come up for the day and stay the night next Sunday?’ I did want to see them but I also thought if I was there for the night it would be a good opportunity to ask her in person why I was an only child. ‘This Sunday would be better.’ My parents rarely have plans and if they do they are hardly ever made over a week in advance. This Sunday, I knew, was better only because it was sooner. ‘I have Mel staying this weekend.’ Mum liked Mel. Mel had married young, a banker with good looks and good connections, and Mum continued to hope her life would rub off on mine. ‘Next Sunday it is,’ she said sounding happy. ‘We can eat in the garden; it’s been wonderful weather here. I hope the drawings are going well? It’s a big commission this one, isn’t it?’ Mum had asked after my work! Maybe after fifteen years she’s finally come around to the fact I would always be and only ever wanted to be an artist. ‘Yes, I have six horses to draw, it’s been tough but I’ve finally got enough material.’ ‘Horses, that’s tumbled out I wafted the air to disperse the dreadful smell before putting my head inside. I untied one of the sacks and sunk my yellow hand into its revolting contents. Out came more sandwich crusts than any hungry seagull could eat; tangerine peel; cocktail sticks with glacé cherries left to rot; half-eaten scones and a mountain of tea bags. I gave my hand one last ruffle before the stink became too much to bear and I had to leave this one for now and try the other. I wiped my hands on the grass, looking away for fear of gagging again. And as I untied the knot of bag number two my heart stepped up a beat at the sound of the glass clanking inside. With no thought for mess, I tipped its entire contents onto the ground. The pile of empty bottles at my feet smelt like a Soho gutter the morning after a frivolous parade. With one final shake a few vegetable crisp packets fluttered out onto the ingredients of Primrose’s punch. There was an empty bottle of gin lying next to the thick glass of some rare peach liqueur and by its side rolled a fancy bottle of blue curacao. An empty packet of Fortnum & Mason’s finest filter coffee stuck to my glove as I scrabbled through Fever Tree tonic cans to reach the plastic bottle at the bottom of the stash. I grasped it and the crystal blue liquid sloshed and frothed up the neck

emotional story arc

Click anywhere on the chart to see the most significant emotional words — both positive & negative — from the corresponding section of the text…
This chart visualizes the the shifting emotional balance for the arc of this story, based on the emotional strength of the words in the prose, using techniques pioneered by the UVM Computational Story Lab. To create this story arc, we divided the complete manuscript text into 50 equal-sized chunks, each with 1585.62 words, and then we scored each section by counting the number of strongly-emotional words, both positive and negative. The bars in the chart move downward whenever there’s conflict and sadness, and they move upward when conflicts are resolved, or when the characters are happy and content. The size of each bar represents the positive or negative word-count of that section.

similar books by different authors

other books by Ali Carter

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