Words editors hate

rwam · Nov 16, 2006

After four drafts (3.8 actually), the creative sphere of my brain is totally shot, and to avoid the process of querying, I figured I'd take one final pass through my manuscript....especially the first 50 pages. The goal? Try to get rid of as many adverbs as possible (sign of lazy writing). When finished with that, I thought it wise to remove as many instances of 'that' and 'had' (passive voice). Then I was reading something somewhere about the perils of the word 'was' (passive voice). When I did a 'find all' on 'was' it turned up roughly a gazillion and five instances of it. Yech.

Aside from adverbs, that, had, and was......are there any other hack signals I've missed? And of these 4, which are the ugliest to agents and editors?

Rob

poetinahat · Nov 16, 2006

This is a thread I want to follow. Good question.

One word I remember getting pinged for as early as ninth grade was 'nice' (so many other, more descriptive words; 'nice' doesn't say much).

Rolling Thunder · Nov 16, 2006

I'm just gonna be quiet and bookmark this as well. Interesting question.

ETA: On a quick note, Gary Provost has a book "100 ways to improve your writing" and I've found it helpful. There is a chapter on word power (dense verbs, strong verbs, active verbs) and active voice that is quite good. It's short (158 pgs) and costs about $7.00 US. Well worth the price.

Carmy · Nov 16, 2006

I'm watching this thread, too.

When doing critiques, the words I find annoying are: 'just', 'very', and 'only'.

Have you searched for phrases? The one that annoys me the most includes some form of 'stood', for example: 'we just stood there' and 'I just stood'.

Don't know if that will help, but I hope it does.

Silver King · Nov 16, 2006

I use "just" way too much. See, I did it just now.

Maybe it makes up for "wherefore." I hardly ever use that word.

Silver King · Nov 16, 2006

Carmy said:
Don't know if that will help, but I hope it does.

Rewritten to read, "I don't know if this helps, but I hope it does."

Besides the sentence fragment, we got rid of a "that" and a "will" in one fell swoop!

limitedtimeauthor · Nov 16, 2006

Wow. Gitterdun, Silver King. Please don't go gunnin' fer any a mah posts! (Suddenly I've decided I'm going to write in redneck/cowboy language - cough, ahem, I meant redneck/cowboy talk - whilst I'm in this here grammar forum, case I mess up. Then I kin jes say I was a doin' it on purpose-like!

)

But speaking of

(dense verbs, strong verbs, active verbs)

, has anyone ever come out with a reference book of verbs??? Is there such a beast?

I sure do want one! It would have other verbs for, say, "walk" and include ambled, shuffled, moseyed, sashayed...

Wait - that's a thesaurus, isn't it? :e2paperba

never mind.

ltd.

not exactly the rootinest tootinest tonight

Tish Davidson · Nov 16, 2006

Silver King said:
I use "just" way too much. See, I did it just now.

Maybe it makes up for "wherefore." I hardly ever use that word.

I despise the use of "way" to mean far or very as in the sentence above or in "It was a way big wave." I don't mind it in dialogue too much, but its creeping into narrative. Ugh!

Silver King · Nov 16, 2006

Tish, you're being way way WAY too sensitive.

Maybe I shoulda used "far too sensitive..."

triceretops · Nov 16, 2006

"so" What a killer that one is for me, especially when I love to start sentences with it.

So they walked down the path together.

Is that author intrusion? Is that trying to help the reader along? Or is that really reminding the reader that this is a story? "But" is another word I use to start sentences. What's up with that?

Another thing. Watch sentence fragments in dialogue. They might seem cool, and express some type of urgency, but too many of them can lead to choppy text.

Tri

jenfreedom · Nov 16, 2006

I use JUST all the time too. I've given up trying to stop. I've just learned to accept it. I write a first draft and then I go back and just cut every just I find. Uh oh.

I had an English teacher in college who hated 2 words:
1) "thing" she'd always say, "There is a better word than 'thing' out there - find it."

2) And she hated "it" when used in a second sentence - for instance:

I had a dog who was so cool and one day he went to Alaska and never came back. I was so sorry that it never came back.

See, I should have used 'dog' or 'my dear pet' or something I guess instead of 'it' - I'm not really sure if this is a real rule or not but I cannot let myself write 'it' and feel comfortable. That teacher would say, "Who is IT, what is IT, what are you talking about?" Like she lost track from seven words or so before.

And unlike the person above I do like 'nice'. Sometimes stuff is just nice, not great, not amazing, nice. It's a soft word.

Nice thread! It's just such an interesting thing.

There, I fit in every wrong word!!!!

triceretops · Nov 16, 2006

I went to my first draft and randomly picked out the first sentence. It's typical of the needless crap that I'm troweling in the text.

"The doctor so much as admitted that these beetle exteriors could be breached."

Tri

KTC · Nov 17, 2006

I have to say a shout out for my least favourite word. THAT. Do a word search on that in your piece and make sure it's needed in every instance in which you used it.

JustinThorne · Nov 17, 2006

I'm no editor, but I hate it when I read 'Kind of' in a book.

He found himself in a kind of cave.

It's either a cave or it isn't!

Julie Worth · Nov 17, 2006

Was is not the problem. It was (as in It was a dark and story night) is the problem, i.e., a pronoun without an antecedent combined with a verb form of to be.

It was
There was
It is
There is
There are
It will be
and so on...

These beasties also appear in contractions: It's, There're, etc.

Kudra · Nov 17, 2006

I'm guilty of most of the above. I'll just go cry now.

Declan · Nov 17, 2006

Just write whatever the hell ya wanna write.

Dec.

MizzACEE · Nov 17, 2006

I find this interesting as well, now does this only apply to YA books and up? I mean, I write young childrens stories and since those words are "sight words" I would assume they are good for childrens books?

CaroGirl · Nov 17, 2006

I feel peevish about "very". I remember when I was about 9, when my enthusiasm for writing did not make up for my egregious lack of skill, and writing a sentence with three very's in a row, you know, for emphasis. Well, my ever helpful older brother scoffed at me so hard, I didn't write anything else for a while after that, so shamed was I.

Other bugaboos of mine: "you know," (I realize I used it above; I never practise what I preach) "well," "so," and I'm now firmly in the habit of stripping out my unnecessary "that"s before I even write them (yay me!).

limitedtimeauthor · Nov 17, 2006

Yikes! This is giving me a complex! Should we really be talking about these things during NaNo? Gah! <beating back internal editor>

I'll step out of the room for now. Maybe see you guys in December, okay?

ltd.

Freckles · Nov 17, 2006

I'm guilty

Good thread, for sure! I'm sad to say that I'm guilty of quite a few of these no-no's...

In college, profs drilled into my head that using "in order" was pure sin. I.E. He dragged the hose over the grass ~~in order~~ to water the tulips.

CaroGirl · Nov 17, 2006

Yes! I agree, I hate that one too. It's akin to "due to the fact that" instead of just using "because". And I thought of one more: "any". As in, "There weren't any people around" instead of "There were no people around." Or "The restaurant didn't have any employees to help me" instead of "The restaurant didn't have employees to help me" (or, even better, "The restaurant had no employees who could help me.")

rwam · Nov 17, 2006

Wow, and here I thought I'd be deluged with several "this was already posted elsewhere, you bumbleskin!" type posts! Thanks for the tip, Julie, on the use of "was". Sounds like there's ok ways to use "was" and poor ways. I think "was" is giving me the most fits, though. In my 93,000 word ms, there are about 1850 occurrences of "was". That's like 1-in-50 words...7-8 doublespaced ms pages full of was was was was was.

YECH!!!

Problem is most of us write in the past tense, so "was" is inevitable. I'll look through my ms and use your "It was a dark and stormy night" rule (which, technically, is an improper 'was' embedded within a cliche!).

Thanks,
Rob

ChaosTitan · Nov 17, 2006

"Suddenly"

I kill it without mercy.

civilian chic · Nov 17, 2006

Okay, I've got one for you guys: Find the instances of "almost" and "about."

Example: "She was about five-foot seven." "They stayed on the island for almost a week." "It was about seven o'clock."

You're the author... just make her five-foot-seven. Make them stay exactly a week on the island, or better yet, six days and seventeen hours. Seven o'clock ... or maybe 7:06.

"Almost" and "about" are little disclaimers, warding off that imaginary reader who's going to say, "Hey, she's not quite five-foot-seven! She's five-foot-six-and-a-half! You're wrong." If we're talking fiction, no one will ever say that. Own it!!

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