Having adapted, rewritten or edited several older stories lately, I'm getting very frustrated with myself and the number of completely pointless words I fill my writing with. All those 'so', 'really', 'a bit', 'that', 'almost', and 'already's are bad enough, but now I've noticed that I constantly use 'began to' or 'started to' instead of just saying what the character did. The number of 'he began to wonder...' or 'she started to feel that...'s I've had to chop out of stories is incredible. I can't believe I didn't spot them while I was writing!
So, does anyone else have any 'words from hell' that they use when they don't need to, and fill up their word-counts with? If so, I'd love to know what they are.
3 comments:
I call them my crutch words. Among my worst crutches are the double verbs (started to ....), "just" and "that". And then are those dreaded modifiers that multiply like tribbles.
Earlier this year, I went through the rough draft of a novel I was working on and removed 3,000 crutch words out of a 73,000-word manuscript.
I now have a comprehensive list of crutch words that I use to weed out the clutter from rough drafts.
Oh and don't beat yourself up. The fact that you recognize them now shows that you're growing as a writer.
Actually drawing up a list that I can then compare with my ms sounds like a great idea. Thanks!
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