by Andrea Merrell
In the past few weeks, we've talked about the overuse of exclamation points
and quotation marks, but here’s another tip: Italicize book titles, inner
dialogue, and words for emphasis, but don’t get carried away with italics.
With those basics under our belt, let’s continue to clean up
our manuscripts as we talk about writing tight.
What exactly does writing tight mean?
- Saying as much as possible in as few words as possible.
- Conveying exactly what you mean.
- Writing in concise, easy-to-read-and-understand terms.
- Eliminating extraneous phrases and words (especially adverbs).

Pet Words and Phrases
Everyone has pet words and phrases that must be weeded from their manuscript. The most common are: just, really, that, then, truly, simply, slowly, gently, as if, and began to. Writers also tend to over-explain. If you’re doing a good job showing your story, don’t continue by telling it as well. That’s overkill. Be careful not to overwhelm your reader with details, unless they move the story forward. Avoid taking rabbit trails. You don’t want your reader to get lost and have to use a GPS to find the way back to your plot.
More Sage Advice
Let’s get one more piece of advice from literary agent Chip McGregor’s blog post, What Drives an Editor Crazy?
Print out a copy of your proposal
or manuscript and look it over. If the FIRST WORD of every paragraph is the
same, you need to go back and change it.
(Unless the first word of every paragraph is the word “I,” in which case
you need to be slapped by the person sitting next to you, THEN go back and
change it.)
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this: Anything you use over and over in your story—whether punctuation, words, phrases, descriptions, or names—wears on your reader. I once read a book and decided if the author used a certain word one more time, I would blow my brains out. Actually, I had to make myself finish the book, and I’ve never read anything else by that author.
Please leave a comment and let me know which pet words and
phrases you struggle with.
(Photos courtesy of howtowriteeverything.com.)
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