I wrote my first novel on a typewriter, and one of my most vivid memories of that is proofreading the final submission draft and trying to decide, over and over, whether it was worth retyping a whole page in order to get rid of one too-common word or phrase. Mostly, it wasn’t.
When I got my first word-processor, I was immensely pleased by the way it let me go back and tidy up at the last minute. The “search and replace” function was especially helpful for getting rid of words and phrases that I’d overused. The only catch was, I had to know which words I was overusing, in order to search for them.
Over the years, I’ve developed a search-and-destroy list of words and phrases that creep into my rough drafts no matter how hard I try to avoid them. Some are things I’ve noticed; some are things my first-readers have called to my attention enough times that I have to reluctantly admit that what I think of as a charming or evocative phrase has been overworked, to say the least. The list changes a little from book to book, and from viewpoint character to viewpoint character. Daystar had a terrible tendency to overuse “really” (and we won’t even talk about the semi-colons); Eff doesn’t have a problem with “really,” but I have to watch that she doesn’t overuse “a mite” and her sentences sometimes go on for whole paragraphs and need some breaking up.
One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that “search and destroy” is really the wrong name for that list. The words and phrases on it aren’t things that always have to disappear; they’re things that need an extra look. About 80% of the time, I don’t need them, but the other 20% of the time, they’re exactly right. For instance, the sentence “She seemed to be able to see a lot more from the high window” is a lot stronger and shorter as “She could see a lot more from the high window” (both “seemed to” and “be able to” are fairly high up on my search-and-destroy list; in combination they’re an instant kill).
On the other hand, the sentence “Even if he chose not to answer some questions, she would be able to tell a lot by which questions he refused.” is more ambiguous; here, the choice to change “she would be able to tell a lot” to “she could tell a lot” is as much a matter of voice as it is of over-use. I’d probably change it in most cases, but if I hadn’t used the phrase in a while (a couple of chapters, say) and my viewpoint character tended to be pedantic, I might very well leave it alone. And the sentence “He wondered if he would be able to swim all the way to the far side of the river” is almost certainly going to remain unchanged, because “he wondered if he could” probably isn’t going to imply enough self-doubt for what I want there.
The other thing I noticed is that “destroy” isn’t exactly accurate, either. At least half the time, I don’t just delete an overused word or phrase. Instead, I replace it with something else. “Would be able to see” often becomes “could see,” or even just “saw.” “Very red” sometimes becomes “crimson” or “scarlet,” if the character’s voice allows it. Sometimes it doesn’t; one of my characters prefers similes such as “as red as my grandmother’s cranberry sauce” to terms like crimson or scarlet, so that’s what I change it to for her.
The point, as always, isn’t really to come up with a list of forbidden words (which won’t be the same for every writer anyway). The point is to make the writing more effective by looking at the standard words and phrases the writer comes up with by default, and then making a conscious decision whether to look for a clearer or more vivid or more succinct way to say the same thing.
Wow, I was JUST doing this with my own manuscript! It’s wonderful to read about some of your overused words. Strangely comforting, really, to know that everybody does it, not just us amateurs. 😛 Revising my own manuscript has been a journey of discovering my own overused phrases, and boy, there are a lot of them!
‘Though’ and ‘however’ are two of mine. I’m certain there’s more.
Revision can be so much fun. For varying definitions of fun.
I usually start laughing at myself halfway through reading any of my own work – one-track mind, much? I once had a character who never walked or ran or leisurely strolled: he always, always “strode” everywhere.
I agree with Deborah – revisions really can be a lot of fun.
Run on sentences are definetly a weakness of mine, because I know how annoying they are for some people to read, but I quite like them. They say what you need to say all at once. I use them when I speak myself, and don’t think they sound wrong but I know others don’t like them. I know that’s a thing to fix for me.
And if it’s any consolation, I didn’t notice Eff’s overuse of any phrases. And as for her whole paragraph sentences, as I’ve said, I like them fine.
Louise – That’s why my list changes a little with every ms. There are a few hardy perennials, like “was able to,” but it seems as if every book there will be something else. I had one where nobody had any expression other than a grin, and another where people never just said anything, they always replied.
Kellie – Long sentences are, technically, different from run-on sentences. Either can work in dialog because, as you say, it’s the way many people speak. In narrative, though, run-on sentences are usually not acceptable, but long sentences are. The exception is in first-person viewpoint – in a lot of the variants of first-person, the narrator is supposed to sound as if he/she is telling the story, so the narrative can be a lot more like dialog (and can reasonably include run-on sentences).
Thank you for the advice. I do mostly work in first-person point of view.
Just. I’ve given up on this. I JUST write the damn thing and then go back and remove 9/10 of the ‘just’. And for some reason, my characters have started to nod. They nod to each other, they nod in agreement, and sometimes they nod to themselves. They’re not even on drugs. Soon, I expect to find a sentence ‘he just nodded …’
In first draft I have a terrible adverb problem and I love the words just and only.
Semicolons are a weakness of mine, too. I blame it on growing up with the old Book of Common Prayer; hardly a page was without–oops.
Mary,with my current characters it’s the raised eyebrow that shows up constantly. Occasionally someone gets carried away and raises both eyebrows. Ah well, at least I’ve reached the point where I feel that I dare to do some revising.
When I read your first sentence I was amazed because I am currently typing a story on a typewriter!
One of my defaults is commas. It is not like there, is, a, comma, after, every, word, but there are certainly a lot of them!:) The thing is, though, (grr-there are those commas again! :)) my sentences work very well with the commas and sound rather strange when I try to substitute other phrases. What would you suggest?
Mary – It depends. If your commas aren’t in the right places, you really need to fix that. If you have lots of commas, but all of them are grammatically correct, then your “problem” is that you are fond of complex sentences with subclauses. Some people would consider this a feature, not a bug; if you really want to cut down, however, then you will have to rephrase things in simpler form. For instance, if I wanted to take out the commas and semicolons from that last sentence I just wrote, I could do something like “Some people consider this a feature instead of a bug. You may still want to cut down the number of commas you use. You will have to rephrase things in simpler sentences to do so.” If the reason you use lots of commas is that you are fond of interjections like “however” and “though,” I am afraid all you can do is cut back on them (although you can sometimes save one comma by putting the interjection at the beginning of the sentence: “However, you can move the interjection” rather than “You can, however, move the interjection.”)