Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Bad words, bad words, what ya gonna do when they come for you?


Yes, you are supposed to be singing the theme to Bad Boys when you read this title J, but no, I’m not talking swear words. I’m talking about the words that make writers’ swear when we realize we have them lurking in our WIP's.

These words have many names, but for today we’ll call them the invisibles.

These are the words that do nothing for your writing, yet get tossed in everything we do. Many times they are place holder words, ineffectual words that just get thrown in during the heat of a fast and dirty first draft, yet become invisible when we go through and edit.

Was, that, then, just, even, obviously, these are just a small sample of words that gang up on your innocent novel and makes it weak and floppy. Now, sometimes a beta reader will notice them for you, a word, phrase, or term may pop out if it’s noticeably annoying. But oft times, theses invisible bad words hide even from a trusted crit partner! They may notice your writing doesn’t have much “oomph”,  that it’s not as forceful or evokotive as it could be- but they may not actually see these sneaky words.

You need to go on a hunt and destroy mission to eradicate them and give a shot in the arm to the resulting anemic writing. If you know what your problem words are, you can use your trusty 'find' program in word and hunt them down. A word of warning- sometimes these words are valid! You don’t want to go insane and create an unreadable mess because you’ve decided to have no “was” in your mss. But most times a careful examination of the sentence in question will let you see where a stronger, more vibrant word choice would clear out the bad word. Some common ones include: very, all, important, used to, every, never, feel, seem, think, often, almost, big, small, have got, just…to get you started.


But if you aren’t sure what your words are, or think you know but want to make sure, you really should find some of the lists floating around the internet, and do a search. You may be unhappily surprised ;). You can also use one of the programs out there that will do a search for you. One such critter is http://www.smart-edit.com/but I’m sure there are more.

Bad words are like fudge- a little is ok, too much and you and your writing become bloated and weak. Some of my bad words are : was, that, even then, clearly, obviously, and and. What are some of your “not-favs”?

Thanks for coming by!

10 comments:

  1. Wow this post is timely. I am rewriting something I had first written 8 years ago. The original sounds like a third grader wrote it, I swear, and it's because of all those "bad words." Thanks for sharing!

    Melanie

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    1. Thanks for coming by Melanie :). I hear ya on looking at old work- some of my older stuff is very cringe-worthy!

      Marie- at day job, blogging as Anonymous :)

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  2. Great post! :) Every word should matter, and when they do, magic happens.

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    1. Excellent way to put it Rachel :). Those invisable words are weightless in terms of mattering to our context- we get rid of them, our writing improves :)

      Marie- at day job, blogging as Anonymous :)

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  3. They are invisible! I use wordcounter.com. Get the results, print, and go down the list with the word search feature to take away the Bad Boys. And the writing is always fresher. Thx!

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    1. Hi Vicki :) I'll have to check out word counter.com, looks like my kinda site!

      Thanks for coming by!

      Marie- at day job, blogging as Anonymous :)

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  4. I'm a "just" girl, myself. Didn't even notice until a contest judge pointed it out to me. And then I counted how many I had in the contest entry and.... Let's just say it was a disturbingly high number.

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    1. LOL- 'just' is one of my biggest weaknesses Shoshana! Isn't it horrific when you do a search and see the actual numbers? What's worse in a way- is seeing a few hundred of a certain trouble word- then reducing it down to 20 or so....and wondering how in the heck you had all those evil words in there in the first place!

      Thanks for coming by! :)

      Marie- at day job, blogging as Anonymous :)

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  5. *Though* is one of my foibles. :)

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    1. OOO- that's a bad one for me too. Thanks for coming by and adding to the list Tamara! :)

      Marie- at work can't get on blogger

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