Have you ever been listening to someone speak, and everything is going along fine until it catches in your consciousness that they’re saying “um.” Hey . . . they’re saying “um” frequently. Um. Um. Um. From that point on, you’re doomed. They might be delivering the most masterful speech since the Gettysburg Address, and all you can hear is “um." Before you noticed it, you were fine, but once you noticed, it’s hard to un-notice.
Same with books. As authors, we sometimes use a word . . . and use it again . . . and again. As a reader, you’re fine until you notice it. Once you do notice it, you start cringing. I read a novel where if ONE MORE PERSON shrugged, my brain was going to melt. Don’t misunderstand me—there’s nothing wrong with shrugging. Shrugging is good, a nice bit of stage direction. But once I noticed it was happening frequently, it started to bug me. In another book, it was a sneering blitz, if I remember correctly. Stop sneering! Next person who sneers gets a timeout and a penalty job!
It’s super easy to slip into the repeated word trap. When we’re writing a novel, days, weeks, or even months can pass between when we wrote this scene and when we wrote that scene. I don’t know how good your memory is, but I’m sure not going to remember that in the scene I wrote three months ago, and the one I wrote five weeks ago, and three weeks ago, AND last week, people were shrugging in every scene, until it was some kind of new shoulder exercise craze. In my recent manuscript, a test reader pointed out that I was overly fond of the word “adrenaline.” I hadn’t noticed that, and I’m glad he did. I was able to mix things up a bit so I wouldn’t have readers saying what IS it with her and adrenaline?
Reading rapidly through a manuscript is a good way to catch word repetition—you’ll notice things you never would have noticed while working your way through a novel slowly, scene by scene. And that’s how your readers will read it—fast—so it’s good to try it out that way yourself.
At Writing on the Wall, Annette Lyon wrote a fantastic post dealing with editing out repetitive, deadwood words in our manuscripts. In addition to watching out for “pet words” she talks about getting rid of empty words that weaken prose—her post is one you’ll want to bookmark and refer to again and again when you’re editing. Thank you, Annette!
On one of the LDS Storymakers group chats the other week, there was a discussion where people listed “red flag” words they targeted in editing. Looks to me like ALL of us have to work--every time--to cut the deadwood from our prose. I'm glad to know I'm in good company!
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