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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The 7-Sins of Bad Writing

Writers love to describe things: scenes, people, places. It’s no wonder we get carried away sometimes and over qualify our descriptions.

I thought I'd share my list of 7-deadly sins to boring writing:

1) Rather
2) A little
3) A lot
4) Seemed
5) Only
6) Slightly
7) Just

These are words to watch out for and then, when you find them in your writing, cut them. This is one time you don’t want to reuse – instead, recycle and reduce your word count by eliminating these unwanted words.

Here are a few more to watch out for:

8) Almost
9) Nearly
10) Sort of
11) Kind of

I hope this helps you find ways to watch your “word” weight and cut down on your waste

;-)

Happy Writing

8 comments:

Bish Denham said...

That and so are two words I keep an eye out for.

Kelly Polark said...

Ooohhh, good tips. I'll have to reread my current WIP and scratch these words!!

Rena Jones said...

I'm so guilty of using these words, not only in my writing, but just speaking in general. I always have to go back and cut them out. Thanks for the reminder!

Clementine said...

Great list! I have another writer buddy who keeps a personal diary JUST to find these words. They creep into our verbal conversations and it's easy to let them slide into our writing too. Thanks Kim!

Anonymous said...

I try so hard to use the most accurate nouns and verbs. Writing is exhausting.

Shelli (srjohannes) said...

how about "that"

Nora MacFarlane said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nora MacFarlane said...

I'm slightly guilty of only just a few of these...