I edit books almost every day of the year, and I'm pretty sure that the biggest single mistake that writers make is using too many words.
There are plenty of words, about a million in English and more joining all the time. We bolster our thoughts with words that repeat the meaning of other words or that mix up the reader more than ever.
The first thing I do when I get a new book to edit is to do a "find-delete" command for the word "very." Then I do the same thing with "just." Once in a while I leave the word in place. Most of the time I delete it. Guess what? No meaning is lost, no emotion is flushed away. It's better!
First tip: Get rid of empty words. The most commonly used empty words are "just" and "very." Your writing is better without them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment