Useless Words

Useless is defined as

1.       Of no use

2.       Not serving the purpose

3.       Without useful qualities

I submitted a question to one of my online writing groups,

What would be the one piece of advice you would give a new writer?

Within hours I got a bunch of replies.  Some, well most, were very helpful and I will be using the advice I was given.

One email was short and simple, it suggested that I do a search for the following words.

1.       Just

2.       Well

3.       So

4.       Okay/ok

They are useless words and to remove about 80% of them.

Now I thought all words were important.  You have to use words to get your point across, so all words are important, right?

Not so, do you want to make your writing more direct and speed up the pace of your story?  Eliminate those words that don’t add anything to the piece.

As I did research on the net for that magic list of useless words I found a few articles, but they talked about the over usage of adjectives and adverbs.  I do believe this is important, but not where I wanted to go with this blog post.

I needed to redefine may search.  I hit the jackpot when I searched “overused words”. So let’s  go back and I will remind you that all word are important to get your point across or to tell a story, but there are some words that are over used.  I have also found a magic list of those overused words.

As writers we often rely on clichés or tired over used words.  We need to come up with an original way to get our voice heard.  We don’t  want to be lazy and or writing stale.  I spent two years writing my first manuscript, I would like people to read it and not get bored.  I am sure you are the same way.

Overused Words:  The Short List

That  --  just  --  well  --  many  --  a lot --  when

But  --  there  -- you  --  as   --  very  --  really 

Said  -- kind of

Use the list as a tool.  I’m sure some of the words are not over used in your writing, but others might be.

Example: All the lists I found listed the word “well”.  I searched my manuscript and found I used the word “well” a total of 189 times in a manuscript of 100,537 words, not too bad.  I did delete 124.  They were sitting there, not doing much.  “Well” added nothing to the sentence.  In fact the sentence sounded better when I deleted the word.

Even though the list is a place to start, you need to recognize the word or words you are over using.  Your list will have words that are not on my list.

How do I find my overused words? 

Have someone read a sample of your writing.  My daughter pointed out my overused words.  Go through a few pages of your manuscript and look at each word, hi-lite the words you use more often.  If you use those words a lot in those few pages, my guess  there are going to be a lot more.

Beware of favorite words, I have a few of those.

My Favorite Words

That  --  yea  --  yep  --  just

To give you an idea of how much I really like “that” I found I used it 1937 times.  I used it 8 times in one paragraph that was about 6 sentences long.  I deleted the ones that did not add anything to the sentence.  By the time I was done I had deleted 1117 “that”. WOW, I really loved that word! 

As I read the sentences I realize they were just not needed hey brought nothing to the sentence.  Now, before you get delete happy and annihilate all of your over used words, read the sentence, and then read the sentences around that target sentence.  Ask yourself,

1.       Does the word add to the sentence?

2.       Does the sentence still make sentence without the word?

3.       Could I use a different word in its place?

You may have to keep the word and this is fine, but if you can get rid of it, hit that delete button.

You have now recognized your overused words you now make an effort to avoid using them.  Try using a different word with the same meaning.  A thesaurus is a must have tool.  Right click on your overused word in your document and choose ‘synonyms’ for the pull down menu.

The best advice I ever received as “be true to the story.”  Do what is best for the story that you are trying to tell, keep it believable, not cluttered and stale.