Since this story will be used only as promotion the only person doing the editing will be me. No professional book fixer will give me advice. All the editors I’ve worked with have helped me identify weak words. Now I’ll have to try and catch them all myself.
I’ve tried to break my habit of using certain pet works. We all have them but successful writers learn to overcome the temptation to use them. How many times can I write, ‘just, even, surely.’ Those are some of my favorite offenders.
How about triple words. Have you written or read one like this. ‘He hoped to try to begin to heal.” There has to a better way to say that one.
How about made up words? ‘Terrifyment, Terrifical.” What exactly do those mean? Get rid of them.
Sometimes it’s so easy to insert wishy-washy verbs instead of rewording and finding a more active verb. I try to get rid of all the ‘made, began, became, put, take’ and a few more that deserve no place in my story.Along those same lines of weak verbs are the one representing abstract mental processes such as ‘knew, thought, realized, recognized, seemed, appeared.’
Some editors advise you to reword any sentence starting with ‘there.’ And of course cut all words ending with ‘-ly.’ I recently read an article cursing all use of pronouns. I don’t possess the talent to attempt that. Yet.
Every day I write is also a day of learning. Every time I work with a different editor I learn something new. Sometimes one editor contradicts another and perhaps proves a little of the ‘weak word’ identification is affected by personal preference or experience.
What weak words plague you? Have you learned to strike them from your writing? Is there a particular book or workshop that has helped you with word choice?
