January 28, 2016January 28, 2016 The Story Reading Ape

8 Words to Seek & Destroy in Your Writing

This is a piece previously posted by Robbie Blair that contains useful information that I want to share with you. Since I’m in the process of doing my final edit on Princess Adele’s Dragon I found this article helped me. Maybe it can help you also. Have a blessed week. Shirley

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Creating powerful prose requires killing off the words, phrases, and sentences that gum up your text. While a critical eye and good judgment are key in this process, some terms almost always get in the way. Here are eight words or phrases that should be hunted down in your story and deleted with extreme prejudice.

“Suddenly”

“Sudden” means quickly and without warning, but using the word “suddenly” both slows down the action and warns your reader. Do you know what’s more effective for creating the sense of the sudden? Just saying what happens.

I pay attention to every…

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10 comments

jazzfeathers says:

January 31, 2016 at 07:56

I confess I’m guilty of all of these words but ‘sudden’. And I know they are bad, but they keep shwing up in my first drafts. Lots and lots of them. Taking them out the MS is half the job of the first revision.

Very helpful list 🙂

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adeleulnais says:

January 29, 2016 at 10:04

Just going to edit all my books, -hangs head in shame- over use of the word suddenly. Great post thank you.

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- The Story Reading Ape says:
  
  January 29, 2016 at 10:07
  
  LOL – I’ve had quite a few overnight emails from authors about their sudden urge to re-edit Adele 😀
  
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patriciaruthsusan says:

January 29, 2016 at 04:16

Thanks, Shirley and Chris, for this helpful information. I added the ones I didn’t have to my list I keep for editing Useful 🙂 — Suzanne

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- The Story Reading Ape says:
  
  January 29, 2016 at 06:55
  
  😀
  
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BunKaryudo says:

January 28, 2016 at 14:50

I’m afraid I use all of these words in my posts regularly. I got to the end of the article and suddenly I was wondering if I really should have started reading it, even though it was very informative. Then I realized that it might, like, improve my writing.

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- The Story Reading Ape says:
  
  January 28, 2016 at 15:08
  
  LOLOL
  
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- jazzfeathers says:
  
  January 31, 2016 at 07:54
  
  True, eh? I try to keep all those words out of my stories, but my posts… oh, man… éè
  
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  - The Story Reading Ape says:
    
    January 31, 2016 at 09:15
    
    😀 😀 😀
    
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  - BunKaryudo says:
    
    January 31, 2016 at 14:04
    
    I think it might be next to impossible, at least for me. 🙂
    
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