So anyway, here's a list of the words you should delete or replace and why!
1. Filter Words
These are words that filter the experience of your novel, making it less immersive for your reader. These are usually sensing words (felt, smelled, saw, etc.) and it's fairly easy to remove them!
Example: "I heard the iced blades of grass crunch under my feet." would be "The iced blades of grass crunched under my feet." See the difference? Easy enough to fix, right?
Here's a list of the most common ones to look for:
- Heard
- Saw
- Felt
- Thought
- Smelled
- Touched
- Wondered
- Etc.
This counts for all tenses of each word! (See, saw. Hear, heard. Feel, felt.)
2. It
Nobody likes clowns... Nah, nobody likes it. It is a bad word. As in, the word it is totally non-specific and not descriptive, not to mention how the word can cause confusion if used in the wrong context!
And you know what? This word is literally everywhere... In my book, geez this is kind of embarrassing, it appears 2,978 times! (Please keep in mind this is the draft, I am most definitely editing that out...) 2.8% of my precious book is a completely useless word that I hate!
So anyway, take the word it out of your book, it (ugh I did it again! Oh, and again... Ha..ha...) is a very non-descriptive and lazy word. Here's an example... "My head was clearing, but I wished it wasn’t." --> "My head was clearing, but I wished the clarity of what'd happened wasn't materializing in my mind." See? Replace "it", and you're forced to have more descriptive writing.
3. Yep, Gonna Bring These Up...
In the writing community, it's virtually impossible to not hear about this... Don't use adverbs! As in, the words that describe a verb. Ran quickly, Jumped lightly, etc.
But why shouldn't you use these? You learned them in school, right? It's because in general there are better words you could use to get the same effect, and using too many of these can make your writing look cluttered. Instead of "ran quickly", you could either assume that running is fast and leave it there, or replace the words with "sprinted", "Dashed", or some other synonym that better describes the pace. Same with "jumped lightly", you could use "sprang", "leaped", or "hopped" for a better, more compact and clean way of saying the same thing.
4. Of That, Just
That and of, same as just in the first paragraph, is sometimes really unnecessary... Sometimes you do need "that" in a sentence, but many times your writing will make just as much sense without that.
Here's an example: "It was obvious that she was happy." --> "It was obvious she was happy."
"All of the puppies were sleeping." --> "All the puppies were sleeping."
Get rid of the words, your writing will just be a lot cleaner because of it!
5. Really, Very...
These words weaken your writing, they're more unnecessary clutter words. I won't go too into depth, but a lot of the time they're kind of like adverbs. You use them to emphasize something when in reality you could just use a single, more impactful word. Or just delete the really, very unnecessary word!
6. Sit Down...
Seated? Not reading this while standing for whatever reason? Good... It's totally irrelevant, but whatever.
If you use "sit down" or "stand up" in your story, you can safely delete the up and down. "Sit." "Stand." Obvious enough, readers get the point, I didn't know you could sit any other way than down, so... Yeah!
7. Then
Then is like a filter word, it makes the action slow down and seem like the reader isn't actually there... "I kicked out at him, then rolled to avoid his punch." --> "I kicked out at him, rolling to avoid an incoming punch." Not the best example, but you see the point? More immersive, more punchy (I'm not apologizing for my pun), the action just flows much quicker!
8. Start/Begin
Yet some more unnecessary words! (Are you seeing a pattern yet?) These are usually used to mark the start of something, but often it isn't necessary to do this... For example, "The cat started to purr." --> "The cat purred." or even better, "A gentle rumble rose in the cat's throat."
9. Sudden
Sudden makes your action less sudden... Much like then. It just sticks a wrench in the surprise! "Suddenly, something flashed before my eyes and collided with my head." ---> "Something flashed before my eyes and collided with my head." The sudden is like a warning, and your readers brace themselves for whatever's coming, effectively killing all surprise. Without the sudden, they don't see it coming any sooner than your character does, meaning they'll be just as surprised!
10. Redundant Phrases
These greatly affect your final outcome; it's an actual fact and unwelcome added bonus of these phrases that in real life we repeat again as figures of speech, clog up your writing and are hard to find in close proximity.
Yeah, that sentence was really forced sounding... How many redundant phrases can you pick out? Or basically, words that each on their own could effectively describe the thing but somehow seem to make sense when paired? There were five redundant phrases in the above sentence, and in every case of you remove on words from them the sentence still makes perfect sense!
Since they're 1. redundant and 2. clog up your writing, you should just delete one of those words... Easy enough.
Here's the after version of the above sentence, which takes one of the words out of the phrase... These greatly affect your outcome; it's a fact and unwelcome bonus of these phrases that in real life we repeat as figures of speech, clog up your writing and are hard to find in proximity.
11. The
Is this a surprise? Yeah, me too. Be careful with this one, because "the" is a common word and also commonly needed! But sometimes, it's just as unnecessary as "then"... For example, "The wind whispered through the branches." --> "Wind whispered through the branches." (Don't use that in your novel; wind whispering in trees is cliche, especially if it's a spooky scene!)
"The" is not always necessary, and if a word doesn't need to be there... Destroy it.
12. Almost, Rather, Somewhat...
Again. Like an adverb, these words only clutter your writing! You can always rephrase the sentence, just delete the word, use a more descriptive word, there are a lot of ways to get rid of these words.
To be clear, this doesn't count for all uses of these words! If a character would rather do something else, that's okay, but if the sentence is rather crowded then you need to get rid of the word! (Rather used as a wish/want of someone is okay, rather used as a word to describe something is not okay.)
13. Last Note
That's all the words I've found that you should avoid in your writing! But here are the last few notes... This is not for every instance of every word. There are places you have to use certain words, and using some words in small portions os perfectly fine! You can use adverbs, just very sparingly. As with all advice, take it with a grain of salt and use your head. Definitely use advice, but think for yourself too!
Thanks for reading, leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions or you know any words that should be on the list! Or just leave a nice comment, that's good too, or even a not-so-nice comment, if you don't mind my sarcastic replies or the fact that it won't hurt my feelings in any way. Thank you!
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