Regular readers of my blog may remember my dalliance with word art and word-frequency checkers with my books Burning Embers and The Echoes of Love. I find it a fun and illuminating exercise to break down my books and see which keywords encapsulate the heart of the story.

For my new book Masquerade, I generated these word clouds from the synopsis:

What do you think? I love how these words jump out: gypsy, young, affair, love, deceptive, forbidden, entangled, secrets, Cadiz.

The following word clouds are based on an excerpt from the first chapter (available at https://hannahfielding.net/staging/1129/masquerade/).

You can see the prominent themes in the opening of the book, like the wild, windy beach setting and the horse and Luz, and her magnetic attraction for the mysterious and spirited gypsy she encounters: a brush with destiny.

On the WriteWords website, a useful tool allows authors to analyse their writing style. You paste in a section of text, and the tool breaks it down into words or phrases, so that you can see which occur most frequently in your writing.

I discovered that three character names are very prominent in Masquerade: Luz, Andrés and then Leandro. (It is interesting that Andrés, the gentleman, appears 594 times, against Leandro the gypsy’s 272; does this say something of where Luz’s heart lies?)

Words that convey the setting are notable; high up in the list are sea, beach, sun, rocks, water, sky, fire, ocean, wind, moon, trees.

As in my other books, eyes are important, and this word is one of the most common nouns to feature (539 times). Readers of Masquerade will understand the prominence of this word! Also important on this theme is gaze (126 occurrences).

A rich vein of romance runs throughout, of course, conveyed in words like love (176), heart (170), deep (110), need (99), lips (99), beautiful (75), touch (65), together (65), desire (48), pleasure (39), passion (45).

Key themes come forth: young (147), wild (71), blood (41), family (49), gypsy (189) and gypsies (80), dark (147), hurt (39), tears (38), truth (39).

Finally, I fully expected to find colours high up in the list, because I am a vivid writer who is drawn to colour. But I was surprised to find the follow palette comprises the most common colours in the book (in order, from left to right, of frequency):

The blue, of course, relates to the seaside setting for the book, and also to Andrés’s and Luz’s eyes; and the green to the flora and fauna, and to Leandro’s eyes. I think the dominance of the colour black says much of the darkness in the book; the vein of treachery and vengeance; while the white, encapsulated by Luz (meaning light), attempts to balance this. As for the red, I see at once blood, fire, passion, and flamenco.

So there you have it, Masquerade unmasked. I hope you have enjoyed delving into the depths of my book, and you are left with a good sense of what the story is all about.