And second, you may have missed the announcement that Maggie Phillippi and I finally finished our second round of edits to "The Healer and the Pirate"!
One thing we noticed when going through is that we had quite a few words that we used more often than we should have.
Here are all the ones we noticed in this last round of editing, in one convenient sentence.
Soon, Nessa blinked, gazed around, almost shivered against the cold, and just looked about, staring forward toward Aridin's whole back.
Maggie pointed out "just" should probably be there at least three times! (And in fairness, "back" was really meant as the direction "back," not the part of the body. But it's really hard to write a sentence with so few nouns.)
Most of these words are OK in moderation, and in fact most are necessary at least sometimes. But when we used them, many of them could be removed with no ill consequences. Editing is good.
Do you have any words you overuse, in writing or in person? (In real life, one of mine is probably "Oh, goodness.")
Those plain words are so good, it's no wonder, and too bad, they're over-used. I watch myself for "seemed" and "appeared." I'm so tentative. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah; "almost" and "about" are two major tentative culprits for me! We'll have to do a check for "seemed" as well, though I THINK Maggie might have kept me in line on those.
ReplyDelete