CRAFT: Weed words

[shalanna]

When you're polishing a manuscript, it's a good idea to search for "weed" words. These are the words you can generally tighten out.

(These are perfectly good words when used in moderation. Use your judgment.)

JUST
VERY
NEARLY, ALMOST
REALLY
QUITE
FEW
RATHER
THING
STUFF
ANYWAY
BECAUSE
SO
THEN
EVEN
ONLY
DOWN/UP (as in stood UP, sat DOWN, other redundancies)
THAT, WHO (People are "who"!) (Kill most "thats"!)

Watch for misuses of:
SEEM, APPEAR (when not used to avoid POV violation)
FELT, FEEL (when used to avoid showing)
BEGIN, BEGAN (when not needed for action that isn't completed
"-LY" ADVERBS (especially in dialogue tags)
AND, BUT, YET (Usually good, but check for excessive starting of sentences/fragments with these)

Shalanna's very little list:
just little
very but
that and
then oh
suddenly well

Comments

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Hee. I try to limit my use of all those words just because they are waffling words. And now I'm working on a story involving a character whose whole conversational style is waffling and roundabout. I'm trying to compensate by making the other characters much more direct.

And it could be worse. Actual direct quote from the musician who inspired most of the Jordy character:

[Speaking of how he collaborates with his father on artwork for his CDs]
We kind of just-- we sort of worked together at it. It's one of those things where we conceive an idea, and usually when any record I'm involved with is finished, I can sort of see the colour in my head, which sounds kind of weird. But I tell him what colours I can visualize and yeah, we sort of went through it as a band and sort of kind of got it all sort of together, and my dad is really good at sort of getting what we want and coming up with his own ideas, so that's basically it.

Yeah. Perfectly clear.