Physician, Heal Thyself...

I am part of an editing and writing group, as everyone who wants to take writing seriously should be. As part of that, every two weeks we receive about 10,000 words of three people’s work to edit. Ignoring for a moment the larger pieces of editing such as scene, structure, plot, or character, I have amassed a pile of things which catch my eye. I didn’t write them down for the website; I wrote them down because what is so obvious in someone else’s writing is somehow not obvious in my own.

Writers must learn to fix their own work

It should be. I make some of the very same mistakes.

But the good news is, in the modern world of find and replace—or at least find—I have the power to not have to see them myself. I can search my work for these words and murderate them as appropriate.

As a preface, we will say anything in quotes is not on the table. People’s mannerisms and speech patterns can be anything you want, so long as you know you are doing it. Now, on to some examples you can also find and replace.

1) Something / Somewhere / Somehow

I was reading a book by Frederik Pohl the other day, and on pages 1–5 I encountered no fewer than three uses of the word something as a descriptor. I was shocked. I love so much of Pohl’s work, and in this case, it took me right out of the story and took me ten pages to get back into it. He actually said, “Something was on the floor.”

I knew nothing more than I did the sentence before. He didn’t go on to explain what it looked like or why it caught the narrator’s attention so starkly, and moved on with the tale. Now, to be frank, Pohl is broadly a far better writer than I am, but nobody is perfect.

Something gives the reader no information. You used up some of your precious 100,000 words to say nothing at all. Replace something with what that something is, from the POV of the narrator or experiencer of the thing.

The same goes for somewhere. Where? What kind of place? Somehow? Well... how? As a rule, these words help us very little to be immersed in your world. Kill them off. They serve nobody.

2) Hedging Your Bets

Pretty good

Almost noon

Nearly red

About five

Hardly warm

I have long lists of times when a writer will not commit to a thing. These are words that take away from the impact of a moment. Sometimes narration calls for it to actually be not quite a thing, but it isn’t often, and usually there are other words for it that are stronger.

Pretty good = decent, fair

Almost noon = Noon. Go for it. The reader understands unless the person just looked at a clock, they don’t know it is exactly noon.

Nearly red = pink, auburn, crimson, scarlet, wine, burgundy... etc. There are so many reds. Each can have other tones and meanings to add to your work without using the word nearly. In fact, let’s add to the list all the primary colors. Kill them.

ROYGBV = dead. Find better words.

3) Filler / Qualifiers

Really, just, very, quite, that, so... (BOY I’m guilty of the last one.)

These words, outside of speech, add nothing to the story. They are almost always able to be replaced by better words, or removed altogether.

Very good = excellent, fantastic, outstanding, stellar

Really fast = swift, hurried, rapid

Quite strong = mighty, powerful, robust

There are better words to use than these modifiers. Come up with lists of your own that fit your characters.

4) Boring

Before we briefly speak about weak verbs, we need a qualifier. Sometimes you want a weak verb. Said. Or, asked. Nobody even sees the dialogue tags. They are weak because you want them to be ignored. If the point is that a person just gets to a place or does a thing and the doing and the going is not important, by all means stick to weak verbs. Let the reader get to the meat. But in the meat, our readers deserve real words.

Walk. Really? Someone walked somewhere? That tells me nothing of how they walk, their mannerisms, the speed at which they arrive. Use a better verb.

Smiled. This is one of my errors. I need to give more subtlety to it. People smile all the time, except they don’t. They smirk, they grin, they glow, they beam, sneer, simper, snarl—and all kinds of modifiers to go with. Let’s let go of smile together.

Find your repetitive or weak verbs, and replace them with something better.

These are four simple tips to uplift your writing, but you can find plenty more. Make your own lists. Read your friends’ writing and read your own. Find your errors and ruthlessly find and replace.