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How Stella Got Her Groove Back

  by Terry McMillan

(about 450 pages)
112,502
total words
81st PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
39.93%
vividness
28th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
10.12%
passive voice
95th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
3.90%
all adverbs
95th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
1.03%
ly-adverbs
54th PERCENTILE
of all the books in our library
2.87%
non-ly-adverbs
99th 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
least seven times already.” “You’re kidding.” “I kid you not… I sure wish you were here,” he says. I sigh. “Do you really mean that?” “Yes, I do. I think about you so much it’s starting to wear me out. Why? What’s going on, Stella?” I can hear him laughing. “Maybe I can arrange something.” “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” “Yes. I’m coming back.” “You’re serious?” “Very.” “How soon?” “How about two weeks from now?” He’s chortling. “Wonderful! This is great! You’re not joking with me, are you?” “Nope. But I’m not coming alone.” “And who will be accompanying you?” His tone is deeper. “My son and my niece.” “Oh, fantastic!” he exclaims in a higher voice. “So think about it for real, Winston. Do you think you really want to see me again?” “Now that’s a ridiculous question, Stella.” “You sure?” “I’m sure,” he says. “I want to see you again. Is that clear enough?” “Well, we’ll be staying at the Frangipani this time.” “I’ll see if I can get two days off in a row. It might be tough since I just started and I have no seniority but I’ll see if I can switch with someone. You are something,” he says. “And you’re sure about this, Winston?” “You’re not listening to me. My only concern is if everything will be okay with your son. I mean I’m not sure… you’ll have to tell me what you want me to do.” “He’ll be fine. We’ve predictable but good little life. I try three remotes before one works. And as soon as the TV comes on of course there’s a commercial and without looking up I hear this melodic baritone voice almost singing “Come to Jamaica” and I swear it seems as if he’s talking to me and when I look at the fifty-five-inch screen it is filled with turquoise water and hot white sand and a blazing yellow sun and then a bronzed white man in a flapping white cotton shirt and baggy white linen trousers strolls along the shore and a tanned white woman in a straw hat and sunglasses is stretched out on a chaise longue with a book resting across her chest and they are both holding tall frothy glasses filled with something melon-colored and I think I can smell the papaya juice the pineapple juice and coconut oil and that tropical breeze is whispering in my ear and when I look closer that white woman’s legs begin to turn brown and she is wearing my chartreuse bathing suit and my good straw hat and that’s my Swatch watch on her wrist and my Revo sunglasses and when I look closer at this woman who now looks like she could be my twin sister I realize it is me lying on that chaise on that beach and when that lilting voice once again says “Come to Jamaica,” I sit up then stand up and I say to that man, “Why the fuck

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 2250.04 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.

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other books by Terry McMillan

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