What Words Do You Overuse in Your Writing?

Turned
Sighed
Smiled
Grinned
Faced

... Among others. I really do have a lot of words I would like to see out of my novel. But hey, I'm only on my First Draft right now, so I guess I can get away with it for the time being...

Sighed
Laughed
Barely
Quite

hehe...I think this list says something about my writing, but I don't know what.

apparent, apparently. I'm also quite certain that when it comes to revising, I'll find words like turned that show up too frequently. Even as I write, I try not to put them in, but I'm a visual person and I feel that it must be expressed when a character turns from one person to another or to face a new direction.

Massive.

So ... especially in lines of dialogue "So, what do you think?" That in the obvious places. Nodded or nodded his head. I never realized I was so predictable. Puma

All of the above. And below.

I use a lot of qualifiers in my first drafts, something I'm learning to do away with now, even in aforementioned first drafts because I think, "Write anything now, fix it later," is a lazy way to write and more often than not, there'll be one or two mistakes that slip through on the re-write.

I also say, "It seemed as if..." or "It appeared to him that..." more often than I should.

So I use qualifiers and filters too much. Actually, once is too much as far as I'm concerned.

I also start off too many sentences with 'well' and 'so'. Yes, people do that in real-life dialogue but it's grating to see it so often on the page.

Plain(ly)
Sudden(ly)
Found
Startled
Sighed
Looked (glared would be a close second to this one)

The phrase "it became..." pops up a lot more often than it should. And I've deleted more he-said she-said dialogue tags than I want to admit to.

slightly
damnation
thoughts

In the first draft, since I was writing it in the "now" frame of mind, I kept writing "he was going to" do something, as if when I was writing the sentence, the action hadn't happened yet. But once the sentence was written, the action would happen. Does that make sense? I must have used the phrase a couple hundred times.

To solve it, I either changed the action of the sentence or changed it to "He would" do something. I'm still working through the second draft, and it seems to be flowing better.

I didn't have that many "thats" but there was a lot of sighing and head shaking. I've allowed maybe a couple sighs, but each time one appears, I'm rewriting the sentence. Same with head shakes and nods.

Oh, and lots of uses of "So" at the beginning of dialogue sentences, but I think that's because I use "So" a lot in my own speech when I'm getting ready to say something. Most of them got crossed out.

allen

that
suddenly
as

And I'm big on facial expressions, so I have to watch how often I describe the eyes: glancing, scowling, flatlining, piercing, stabbing, staking, glittering...you get the gist.

sighed

The bane of my existence...

Overuse

And. But. That.

I have to tell myself to not write "just" and "even" a lot too. i.e. I just wanted to... or I didn't even want to...

I use seem and appear way too much. Ugh! And while on the subject of wishy-washy things to say, sort of creeps up a lot, too.

I also use ridiculous quite a bit, both in my speech and my writing.

That and anything that ends in -ly.

I do love my adverbs...but I delete them ruthlessly in my first edit. I think I overuse them because I use them when I speak and I tend to write the way I speak.

"Had"
"Immediately"
"Like"

I have to do a search-and-destroy for these stupid words. Glad I'm not alone.

Another one I've been finding as I go back through my manuscripts is "half" as in half glanced, half frowned, etc. I'm not exactly sure what a half frown would be - only one eye? Puma

really and just are my biggest offenders. I've gotten better about "that" . But I really just can't seem to write w/o really and just.

D. All the above!

It depends on the book...

My first editing pass catches most unnecessary instances of "that," though occasionally I choose to leave it in for cadence.

"Just" is one I always do a search for, removing it in some cases, leaving it in occasionally, and sometimes changing it to "only" or some-such.

The first novel I worked on had too much blinking in it, I think because I'll sometimes use a blink in the real world to dramatize the absurdity or oddity of a moment.

One book had too many non-contractions that should have been contractions. The voice I'd written it in only worked if it was read a certain way, but would have been awkward for most readers. I added hundreds of contractions during editing.

In the most recent one, "quietly" is used a little bit too frequently, perhaps because I like to understate things. (The small sound can be the strongest...)

mused
sighed
and
that
was
had (my biggest offender)
laughed
gagged
choked
turned
But

Tri

Towered. Anything taller than my MC tends to "tower" for some reason.

He.

I have one chapter in particular that has very little dialogue as my MC is on his lonesome and on the move most of the time. It seems every second sentence starts with 'he'. It's annoying the crap out of me. Is this little word considered along the lines of 'said'? Can I get away with many of them?

JJ